By Thomas G. Dallessio Twenty-four years ago, the Governor’s Council on New Jersey Outdoors released a report that determined, “…the open space needs of our present and future generations greatly outweigh the resources we have been able to provide.”[1] The report added, “The public said that we are protecting too little open space, too slowly, [...]
In this opinion piece, Policy Fellow Linda Stamato goes in search of New Jersey's promised state bank which has yet to materialize.
by Jessica Cruz Angela Siefer, founder and executive director of the Ohio-based National Digital Inclusion Alliance (NDIA), has done digital equity work dating back to the ’90s. Up until 2019, Siefer was encountering many public officials who did not understand what digital equity was or why it mattered despite the increased digitalization of the government [...]
Maia de la Calle, Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/ECON™) The impact of the pandemic on poverty and inequality continues to be studied at a global and national scale.[1],[2] Although the U.S. Census data have yet to reflect the full extent of the pandemic on poverty, numbers are expected to rise [3] due to an economic [...]
Robert B. Noland The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), more commonly known at the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill will soon be delivering large amounts of transportation funding to the states, including New Jersey. The Bill extends beyond just traditional transportation funding, including funds for an electric vehicle charging network, broadband, and resilience, among other critical [...]
By Adam Scavette Last summer, then acting New Jersey Governor Sheila Oliver signed legislation to devote $42.5 million toward restoring the state’s Urban Enterprise Zones (UEZ) to full operation for fiscal year 2022. In this piece, I discuss the history and performance of UEZs and opportunities to increase their effectiveness. The UEZ program is designed [...]
By Rachel Brown For more than 50 years, community leaders and researchers have been drawing attention to disproportionate environmental burden and health disparities in low-income and communities of color. Here in New Jersey and as far back as 1998, the state has been working to systematically address Environmental Justice as an overarching public policy goal. [...]
By Sarah Small and Debra Lancaster With so much economic precarity brought on by the pandemic, many women in New Jersey have been confronted with issues of homelessness and inaccessible healthcare. According to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Point-In-Time Count data, the number of individuals experiencing homelessness in New Jersey actually [...]
Tia Azzi and Michael Lahr, Rutgers Economic Advisory Service (R/Econ™) Introduction This is the third brief that reports data on New Jersey from the 2020 decennial census. The first presents a summary dataset that R/Econ™ produced for the New Jersey State Policy Lab in the form of readily accessed spreadsheets.[1] The second examines differences between [...]
By Elisabeth Kim, Ph.D., Bernie Lombardi, Ph.D., and Robyn Brady Ince, Ed.M. The Newark City of Learning Collaborative (NCLC) and the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies at Rutgers University-Newark are working in partnership with the New Jersey State Policy Lab to explore the implementation and impact of Community College Opportunity Grant (CCOG) and [...]
