A Better Way to Make the Rules

At Issue

By Ray Cantor, NJBIA Deputy Chief Government Affairs Officer On Dec 1, 2025

As lobbyists for the business community, we spend a good amount of time weighing in on bills in the Legislature, and this garners the most public attention. However, those of us who have been around government long enough understand that the passage of legislation is only part of the story. The rest is told through the adoption of regulations by state agencies that implement laws.

In many cases, the rulemaking becomes even more important than the underlying law.

While New Jersey’s Administrative Procedure Act (APA) was intended to make the rulemaking process more open and allow for public input, the reality falls short of the goal. Too often, agency staff craft the rules behind closed doors, drafting language to regulate industries they don’t understand, and imposing conditions that do not work in the real world. 

While the APA requires agencies to respond to public comments on proposed rules, the reality is that the APA largely prohibits the agency from making changes in response to those comments. 

Also concerning is that agencies often rely on outdated or inaccurate information without giving the public access to those documents. 

To solve some of these problems, Senate President Nick Scutari has introduced S-4373, which would make substantial reforms to the APA rulemaking process. Agencies would be required to work with stakeholders before a rule is proposed, and to share preliminary drafts, so that the rulemaking considers all possible outcomes and achieves its purpose. If new information is learned during the comment period, the agency would be able to make changes on adoption, as most other states and the federal government are already allowed to do. 

Scientific and other information relied on by the agency will be required to be made available when a rule is proposed, so the public can determine if the most recent or accurate information was used. While the APA currently requires various impact statements, there is no enforcement mechanism to ensure that the true impacts of a proposed rule are set forth. This bill would change that by requiring an outside entity to review and sign off on those impact statements.

With a better process for crafting rules, we will have better outcomes for both the business community and the public. There will be cost-savings, increased compliance, and less litigation so that the original goal of the legislation can be more easily met. 

We thank the Senate President for his sponsorship of this legislation, and we will work with him and our business colleagues to ensure a swift passage.

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