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APRIL SAUL / Staff Photographer
Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno at a meeting at Rowan University with Assemblyman John Burzichelli (left) and Sen. Steve Oroho.
Lt. Gov. Guadagno takes on red tape in N.J.
Gov. Christie Whitman declared New Jersey "open for business" in 1994 and appointed an ombudsman to lead entrepreneurs through "the expanding maze of regulation."
Before her, an environmental commissioner under Gov. James Florio urged permit applicants to call him directly if something in the process didn't make sense.
But business leaders say New Jersey's regulatory quagmire - years-long permit processes and contradictory requirements from state agencies - remains as complicated as ever. They're hoping for change under Gov. Christie.
What's different this time around? Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.
"There's never been a governor who ran and got into office and said, 'This is a top priority of mine, and I'm putting my right-hand person in charge,' " said Philip Kirschner, president of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association.
As the state's first lieutenant governor, responsible for leading in the governor's absence, Guadagno is defining the role as she goes.
Christie appointed her secretary of state, with oversight of elections, cultural resources, and tourism. But in her first weeks in office, as he focuses on closing an $11 billion budget gap, Guadagno is spending most of her time on policy affecting business.
"I get to focus on doing something positive, bringing people back to New Jersey, creating jobs in New Jersey," she said in an interview this month.
Guadagno chairs the Red Tape Review Committee, a group of legislators and agency heads charged with revising the state's process for writing rules and deciding which ones to amend or repeal. She also will oversee a team of "expediters" aimed at fast-tracking important economic-development projects.
A career prosecutor, Guadagno brings to her new job a frank and emphatic demeanor. Though she does not have a traditional business background, her legal career has been useful in deciphering 26,000 pages of state rules, she said. Her experience overseeing an office of about 650 people as Monmouth County sheriff taught her about managing people and money.
Guadagno could take on additional roles in her new office. Christie's transition team recommended giving her authority over permitting across all state agencies and over the state planning process, which maps areas where development is limited or encouraged. She said she's waiting to hear what the committee members think.
Kirschner said he was encouraged by Guadagno's growing role.
"You want somebody at the end of this [review process] that has the governor's confidence," he said.
Making New Jersey an easier place for businesses to operate was a major tenet of Christie's campaign. Delegating that responsibility to Guadagno is not unusual.
"It's mirroring a tried-and-true Republican approach to [regulatory] relief," said Richard Harris, director of the Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs at Rutgers-Camden.
As President Reagan's second-in-command, George H.W. Bush led a regulatory task force. Like Christie, Reagan froze all pending regulations and required new rules to be judged on their costs and benefits. Reagan cut the pages of new rules produced in his first year by about 45 percent.
"What Reagan found, and I expect what Christie would find, is that undoing rules is going to be awfully, awfully difficult," Harris said.
Faced with resistance from Democrats, Reagan ultimately gave up on wholesale regulatory reform and took a piecemeal approach, he said.
Christie and Guadagno have a few factors working in their favor.
If not renewed, most New Jersey rules expire after five years. Christie already has directed his agency heads to examine which should be changed if they don't comply with his "commonsense" guidelines "to energize and encourage a competitive economy."
The political tenor of the process so far is largely positive. Senate Majority Leader Barbara Buono (D., Middlesex), a red-tape committee member, has been emphatic that rule making should be streamlined.
Assemblyman John Burzichelli (D., Gloucester), also a member of the committee, called Guadagno "an asset."
"When the regulatory system is not functioning, it's not a Republican issue, it's not a Democrat issue," he said.
Harris also cited the economy.
"One of the main things we can fix without costing the taxpayer any money is how we do business in New Jersey," Guadagno said.
The committee is hosting public meetings and taking testimony from regulatory experts and some members of the public. It will meet at Montclair State University on March 23. The group must present a report to the governor by April 18.
So far, the Department of Environmental Protection has drawn the most criticism.
Neil Yoskin, a Mercer County lawyer who has practiced administrative and environmental law in New Jersey for 25 years, testified last month about the need to give the DEP the ability to waive rules in limited cases.
He cited as example its denial of a permit to build a county library in Stone Harbor because the project would eliminate 16 parking spaces, hindering beach access, even though the library would have given the elderly and people with disabilities all-season access to an ocean view. Yoskin is appealing the decision.
He has been encouraged by Guadagno's efforts to change the regulatory process.
"This is the most serious effort I have ever seen," Yoskin said. "It needs to be done."
Though Guadagno's committee has drawn the ire of environmental groups such as the Sierra Club - director Jeff Tittel called the review "dangerous" and said it could "strangle environmental regulations" - it has found favor with others.
Christie's opposition to offshore liquefied natural gas terminals and dredging the Delaware River has drawn the confidence of groups such as Clean Ocean Action.
Guadagno met with executive director Cindy Zipf before taking office. She repeatedly told Zipf the goal was not to dismantle environmental controls. So far, Zipf believes her.
Guadagno's goal is simple, she said: for state agencies to work faster in answering permit requests.
When the first of about 50 backlogged tidelands permits landed on her desk showing six months of inaction, Guadagno called a Friday-afternoon meeting of the "paper-pushers" involved. She sent the kind of message she might use with her three sons: No one is going anywhere until we fix this.
"That's the kind of thing that you can do as the lieutenant governor," she said.
Contact staff writer Chelsea Conaboy at 856-779-3893 or cconaboy@phillynews.com.
