New Jersey’s top economic development officials didn’t pretend the state’s business climate is fine.
Todd Fisher, senior director for strategic initiatives and economic opportunity in Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s office, was very direct during a panel discussion last week at the 10th Annual Middlesex County Business Summit
“I don’t pretend that we’re doing everything perfectly or that we’re coordinated enough,” he told a crowd of about 500. “We all know New Jersey is a high-cost state to do business in.
“We all know … the business friendliness ratings are not high.”
Fisher was joined on stage by NJEDA CEO Evan Weiss and Choose New Jersey CEO Amy Herbold. For a half-hour, the three people most responsible for selling New Jersey to business spent less time selling and more time explaining what they’re doing to fix it.
Herbold summed up the administration’s approach in three words: “Fix the bones.”
There’s no quick fix, Fisher said. “There’s no one silver bullet on any of this, and so it’s a multi-pronged effort.”
And the biggest changes are still to come. Weiss said new initiatives will roll out with the governor’s budget address early next year, along with an overall economic strategy that’s getting its finishing touches.
“As the governor moves into her budget address coming up early next year, as well as the legislative session coming, that’s when we really start to see some of the new initiatives,” he said.
The panel made news on two fronts. The officials acknowledged that, until now, no one in state government had been assigned to focus on keeping the businesses already here, and that Choose New Jersey will now take the lead on that effort.
Fisher also said uncoordinated, competing applications have cost New Jersey federal grant money, one reason the state ranks 47th in academic research funding and laid out how the state is changing its approach.
But the conversation covered a lot more ground. Here are 10 things we learned, counting down.
10. HELIX gives New Jersey something to brag about
After years of touring other states’ innovation hubs, Weiss said, “we now have the best one in the country right here in Middlesex County.” It’s on a train line, where about three-quarters of a million people pass every day, not tucked away on a campus.
9. Film is about more than actors
“Any job you can think of is somewhere in film,” Weiss said, from accounting and hairdressing to high-end visual effects. He described a set in Kearny built to look like a Silicon Valley office in Cupertino, California. Two vendors that used to be based in New York have moved to New Jersey to meet the industry’s demand, he said, and the industry is building a workforce pipeline that starts around eighth grade.
8. New Jersey needs to talk better about itself
Herbold said the state’s sales pitch has to start at home. New Jersey was just ranked the No. 2 best place to live, but the state’s own business community doesn’t do a good job of saying so. “We want to change the way we talk about our state,” she said. “We need the businesses to be really vocal and be our partners in talking better about ourselves because our state’s amazing.”
7. No more one-size-fits-all incentives
Weiss said government incentive programs too often fail because “government [is] trying to guess what you collectively need.” The EDA wants to move past a “hammer-nail” approach and tailor tools by sector and geography.
6. Certainty is a cost saver
Herbold pointed to the administration’s “Time is Money” agenda, built on certainty, transparency and trackers. “I know when I was a business, if I had more certainty, we could have made different decisions,” she said. “That saves money.”
5. The state is comparing itself, process by process, to other states
Fisher said the administration is on stop 15 of a 21-county tour, collecting specific complaints about specific regulations and permits. The goal is to bring hard comparisons back to agencies: “This same process in Maryland takes this amount of time, and these are the process steps.”
4. Weiss is worried about the ‘valley of death’
Startups have support, and big companies get attention. Weiss is focused on the businesses in between. “I worry more about if you’re five or 10 or 20,” he said. His example is the successful restaurant owner who is “the manager, but you’re also in the kitchen. You’re literally cooking everything,” and can’t afford the hire that would let them grow. “I want to see us invest in the businesses we know that want to grow and can.”
3. AI could help small businesses cross that valley
Fisher said AI tools could “lessen that valley of death and make it a little bit easier to grow more rapidly.” He pointed to small-business programs at the NJ AI Hub and a statewide effort to train small businesses through public libraries.
2. A key permitting backlog is down 74%
Fisher said the state has cut a backlog of permit reviews with the Department of Environmental Protection by 74%, “by just focusing on it.” The fix wasn’t complicated, he said, but it takes relentless execution. “It’s not rocket science; we all know what to do, but it is really hard every day.”
1. One word explains a lot of red tape: distrust
Weiss said much of the EDA’s work involves monitoring old incentive programs, like Grow New Jersey, which ended early in the Murphy administration. Staff still go back and forth with companies over job counts and qualified facilities. Now the EDA will accept a company’s CPA certification instead. Weiss said that saves businesses “eight or 11 months” of compliance work and frees EDA staff to do other things. His diagnosis: “One simple word is distrust.”
