New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection has a plan to use private contractors to review land-use permit requests. It's drawing heat from environmentalists who say its sneaky way to get around civil service requirements and it undermines independent environmental protections.
Perhaps an overlooked question is: Will it make DEP's more responsive and wouldn't this benefit the state's economy and the public?
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The RFQ requires at least 16 employees to serve at DEP offices in Trenton for a year. Sounds like only a large politically connected company will get awarded the job...
ReplyDeleteAt least someone will be reviewing land use
ReplyDeletemakes it a lot easier to push through bad projects - no more need to make calls to senators, assemblymen or mayors to pull "favors" because the contractors will be all politically connected and pro-builders / anti-clean water, wetlands protection, t&e habitat, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe issuance of this RFP implies Land Use cannot do its job, and are overburdened by their own lumbering complicated matrix of permitting systems. Additionally, The potential for conflicts for the consultant are enormous.
ReplyDelete"Will it make DEP's more responsive and wouldn't this benefit the state's economy and the public?" I'm sure that is the very question that this administration is asking. But is THAT the right question either? We keep forgetting that the point here is environmental protection, not economic development. We also keep ignoring the positive impacts of environmental protection on public health and the economy, but I digress. Can the process be made more efficient? Possibly. Is the answer privatization with all of the potential conflicts of interest that go with it? Not in my view.
ReplyDeleteEnvoromental Protection and Economic Development are not mutaully exclusive,they can work together with some thought and a willingness to change the old way of doing things. Some of this thinking is already going on in DEP and more of it needs to happen
ReplyDelete