The 7-year traffic light — and other tales of government inefficiency

There was talk about improving workforce development programs. Comments about
how higher education needs to be more deeply engrained in everything. Taxes. There
were plenty of opinions about taxes — and the high cost of living that result from them.

But the highlight of the Morris County edition of Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s 21county Save
Time and Money tour last Friday was one incredible example of head-scratching
inefficiency.

Morris County Commissioner Director Steve Shaw, speaking from the heart of his day
job — as a builder, developer and past president of the N.J. Builders Association — told
the tale of how it took seven years to get a traffic light put in on Route 15 in Jefferson,
thanks to regulatory delays.

Seven years.

And it was a traffic light the town wholeheartedly wanted, too, he said. There was no
opposition to it.

Shaw ended his thoughts with a lighthearted business comment.

“It was great for the economy,” he said. “It keeps all the professionals very busy,
because nobody can navigate these regulations on their own. You don’t need one
engineer; you need a cadre of engineers and special attorneys.”

His ask was simple: streamline the process.

If you can do that, Shaw said, you’ll do a lot to impact affordability.

***

Give Lt. Governor Dale Caldwell and Chief Operating Officer Kellie Doucette credit.
They have been at the bulk of the more than a dozen listening-tour stops (it was
Doucette’s second of the day). And there hear their fair share of regulatory horror
stories.

To them, it’s more than just a listening tour. And far more than just a gripe session of
business owners. They could have one of those any day of the week.

Caldwell told the group of more than 100 assembled at COMET, an advanced
manufacturing center run by the New Jersey Innovation Institute in Landing, that it’s an
opportunity.

The LG said he wants to hear about every issue, so the administration can clear out the
bureaucratic hurdles that are slowing things down.

“I learned that most problems are caused by poor communication,” he said. “Solutions
are great communication.

“We’ve really upped the level of communication across departments, both internally and
externally, so we can serve the residents of New Jersey that much better.”

***

But where do you start?

Doucette acknowledges that each county may have provincial challenges. But she said
there are more similarities than differences.

“Permitting issues, workforce issues, licensure issues are things we hear at each stop,”
she said.

Identifying issues is easy. Figuring out which ones to prioritize is a bigger challenge.

“It’s a combination of doing all this listening and doing a lot of the analytic work of where
we can put our resources to make changes that would have the biggest impact, based
on the diagnostics,” Oulette said. “It’s finding that intersection.”

Don’t be confused, this is not an entirely data-driven project.

Doucette and Caldwell both talked about having more cabinet meetings to make sure
every department is aligned — and meetings of subsets of the cabinet to drill down on
specific issues.

All of this starts with the selection of the commissioners.

“That was part of setting our culture,” she said. “All the work that we did during the
transition was about making sure this would be a priority for them.”

***

Caldwell and Doucette talked about what the administration has done in its little more
than 100 days in office: the first-ever statewide permitting catalog (which is attempting to
understand where the permitting process stalls) and a pilot project of a real-time
permitting platform (a so-called ‘shot clock’ that aims to increase accountability by
tracking the time to completion).

There even was talk about improving the state’s dismal efforts in providing Real IDs
(now that would be something).

Both marveled at how much Doucette’s role as the chief operating officer — the state’s
first — is a key to all of this. And noted how this all-of-government approach would not
have been possible without one person in that role.

And while they could only shake their heads at the idea of the seven-year traffic light,
they acknowledged making fundamental changes in how government operates will not
happen overnight.

As Doucette said, if this work was easy, others would have done it before.

That’s why they are making this tour. Not to just hear problems but to contemplate
solutions. And to find partners in the process.

Business owners, business organization heads (the event was organized by N.J.
Manufacturing Extension Program and the Morris County Chamber), higher education
leaders (NJIT and County College of Morris were present) and elected officials, even
those from the other party (State Sen. Tony Bucco and Assemblywoman Aura Dunn
were there).

“If we’re going to take a whole-of-government approach, we need to hear from everyone,”
Doucette said.

***