The New Jersey League of Conservation Voters awarded Gov. Rebecca ‘Mikie’ Sherrill an “A” for her first 100 days in office, praising what it called “swift and decisive environmental leadership,” but that glowing report card collides with her record as the self-described Blue Dog Democrat advances fossil fuel infrastructure, calls for dangerous nuclear power, cuts environmental funding, and accelerates development permits.
Sherrill was the first governor-elect in decades who failed to create an environmental transition team during her transition period. Executive orders painted a disturbing picture dotted with red flags that revealed a disturbing blueprint for rolling back environmental protections just as New Jersey should be building a bulwark against the federal assault on the air, land, and water.
The Sherrill administration approved a controversial fossil fuel pipeline that the LCV itself condemned as “unnecessary and dangerous,” cut direct funding for the state Department of Environmental Protection by $150 million, accelerated a permitting initiative critics say weakens environmental scrutiny, and continued diverting hundreds of millions of dollars from funds intended for clean-energy and climate programs.
The contradictions raise an unavoidable question: What does a New Jersey governor have to do to earn anything less than an “A” from one of the state’s most prominent environmental organizations?
The question is particularly significant because Ed Potosnak, the LCV’s longtime executive director, was selected by Sherrill to lead the DEP — placing the former head of the organization now grading the governor inside the administration receiving the grade.
That relationship has given critics reason to question whether the LCV’s report card represents an independent assessment of Sherrill’s environmental record or an endorsement shaped by political relationships.
Perhaps no issue exposes the contradiction more clearly than the Northeast Supply Enhancement pipeline.
In May, the state Tidelands Resource Council gave final approval to the NESE project, allowing construction of a fracked-gas pipeline beneath Raritan Bay.
The LCV did not treat that decision as a minor policy disagreement. It denounced it.
“We are extremely disappointed that the Tidelands Resource Council has allowed the unnecessary and dangerous NESE pipeline to move forward,” Allison McLeod, the LCV’s interim executive director, said at the time.
The organization warned that the project “will lock us into decades of expensive fossil fuel infrastructure while damaging our air, water, and public health.”
Those are extraordinary accusations to level against a project approved under an administration the organization would soon award its highest grade.
Environmental opponents say construction could disturb more than one million tons of contaminated sediment in Raritan Bay. The project would also expand fossil fuel infrastructure at a time when New Jersey has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition toward cleaner energy.
Yet the pipeline approval apparently was not enough to prevent Sherrill from receiving an “A” rating from the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters.
DEP Takes a $150 Million Hit
The disconnect extends beyond pipelines.
The state budget reduced the DEP’s direct appropriation from $662 million to $512 million — a $150 million cut — even as the department confronts increasingly complex responsibilities involving climate change, flooding, drinking-water contamination, PFAS chemicals, environmental justice, coastal resilience and development pressure.
Longtime New Jersey environmental activist Jeff Tittel has described the administration’s approach as one of the most serious assaults on environmental safeguards in decades.
Tittel notes that DEP enforcement staffing has already declined by roughly 40% over the years. The department now accounts for about 0.5% of the state budget, compared with approximately 1.2% in 1994, despite managing substantially more public land and assuming significant new regulatory responsibilities.
At the same time that environmental enforcement resources have eroded, the administration has added employees specifically to accelerate permit approvals.
That imbalance goes to the heart of critics’ concerns: New Jersey appears increasingly willing to spend resources helping developers get permits faster while devoting proportionately fewer resources to ensuring that environmental laws are enforced after those permits are issued.
‘Operation FAST’ Cuts Environmental Review Time
Sherrill has promoted “Operation FAST” as a way to streamline government and eliminate bureaucratic delays.
Developers and business interests have long complained that New Jersey’s permitting system is cumbersome and unpredictable. Improving administrative efficiency is not inherently incompatible with environmental protection.
But critics say the administration is measuring success by how quickly permits move rather than how carefully projects are evaluated.
“When politicians say they’re cutting red tape, what they usually mean is they’re cutting environmental protections,” Tittel wrote. “They’re replacing science with stopwatches, public participation with corporate consultations, and environmental review with rubber stamps.”
The criticism strikes at the premise behind accelerated permitting.
Environmental reviews take time because wetlands, drinking-water supplies, flood hazards, contaminated sites, endangered species, stormwater runoff and cumulative pollution burdens cannot always be evaluated according to a developer’s construction schedule.
“The governor keeps talking about cutting red tape,” Tittel wrote. “Clean water is not red tape. Flood protection is not red tape. Wetlands are not red tape. The Pinelands are not red tape. Public participation is not red tape. Environmental review is not red tape.”
If faster approvals become the institutional objective, critics argue, the pressure inevitably shifts from applicants proving that projects satisfy environmental standards to regulators explaining why they have not approved them yet.
Clean-Energy Money Keeps Disappearing
The administration’s environmental contradictions are also written into the state budget.
New Jersey has repeatedly diverted money collected for clean-energy purposes to pay for other government priorities. Under Sherrill, that practice continues.
The budget diverted $140 million in clean-energy funding to NJ Transit while authorizing the diversion of as much as $510 million in Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative revenue.
The raids are particularly difficult to reconcile with claims of transformational climate leadership.
Money collected through programs designed to finance emissions reductions, energy efficiency and clean-energy investments cannot accomplish those objectives when lawmakers redirect it elsewhere.
The LCV highlighted the budget’s preservation of the School of Conservation as an environmental victory. But that accomplishment exists alongside hundreds of millions of dollars in potential diversions from programs intended to address climate change and accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.
The organization has also criticized previous administrations for failing to codify a 100% clean-energy standard into law. Sherrill has not delivered that statutory mandate either.
Nevertheless, she received an “A.”
The Watchdog and the Administration
The most uncomfortable issue may be institutional rather than environmental.
Potosnak spent years as one of New Jersey’s most visible environmental advocates as executive director of the LCV. Sherrill then selected him to run the DEP.
There is nothing inherently improper about appointing an environmental advocate to lead an environmental agency. Indeed, such an appointment could reasonably be welcomed by conservationists if it did not look so much like a political payoff.
But when the organization that the executive once led subsequently issues a glowing grade to the administration that hired him, transparency and independence become especially important.
An advocacy organization that grades elected officials derives much of its credibility from the belief that those grades are based on measurable performance rather than access, relationships, or political allegiance.
That makes the gulf between the assessments from genuine environmentalists about individual Sherrill administration decisions and the LCV’s overall assessment especially striking.
The organization says the NESE pipeline is “unnecessary and dangerous.”
It says the project threatens air, water, and public health.
The administration nevertheless allowed it to proceed.
The DEP received a $150 million reduction in direct appropriations.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in environmental revenue can be redirected elsewhere.
The administration is accelerating permit approvals while critics warn that enforcement capacity has deteriorated.
And a 100% clean-energy requirement remains uncodified.
The grade is still an “A.”
An ‘A’ That Raises More Questions Than It Answers
Environmental report cards are supposed to help the public distinguish rhetoric from results. They lose much of their value if virtually irreconcilable policy choices can coexist with the highest possible grade.
Sherrill can reasonably defend her policies. Her administration can argue that economic development and environmental protection are compatible, that permitting delays should be reduced, that transportation spending advances climate objectives and that difficult infrastructure decisions require balancing competing interests.
But an environmental organization presenting itself as an independent watchdog has a different obligation: to measure those decisions against the standards it publicly professes.
By the LCV’s own description, the NESE pipeline threatens New Jersey’s air, water and public health and locks the state into decades of fossil fuel dependence.
If approving such a project, cutting DEP appropriations, accelerating permits and diverting environmental funds still produces an “A,” the most important question may no longer be whether Sherrill deserves the grade.
It is what, exactly, the grade measures.
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