Sweeney Center
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Left to Right: Tony Lowman, Nawal Ammar, Steve Sweeney, Ali Houshmand, Mark Magyar
Sweeney Center
The Steve Sweeney Center for Public Policy
Welcome to the Sweeney Center. The policy center was created to fill the need for an independent bipartisan public policy center to conduct research and develop pragmatic solutions to complex policy issues based on data-driven analysis, rigorous academic research, and convening working groups that bring together policy experts, stakeholders and advocates to reach consensus.
Former Democratic Senate President Steve Sweeney serves as chair of the advisory board and Mark Magyar as founding director of the new policy center.
The Sweeney Center's first major policy project was New Jersey’s Fiscal Future: Comparing Multi-Year Revenue Forecasts With Current Services Budget Projections, an analysis of state budget revenue and expenditure projections over the next five years that was developed by a bipartisan group of former Treasury and legislative budget officials, policy experts, economists and academics.
The Sweeney Center is part of Rowan University’s College of Humanities & Social Sciences and is located in historic Bunce Hall, on Rowan's Glassboro campus.
To reach the Sweeney Center, call (856) 256-5868 or email sweeneycenter@rowan.edu.
To reach Mark Magyar, the Sweeney Center’s Director, email magyarm@rowan.edu.
Follow us on Twitter at @SweeneyCenterR
Sweeney Center Issues Offshore Wind, Multi-Year Budget Reports
The Sweeney Center for Public Policy issued two major public policy reports in June, Benchmarking
New Jersey’s Offshore Wind Initiatives and New Jersey’s Fiscal Future: Comparing Five-Year Revenue Forecasts
with Current Services Budget Projections
Benchmarking New Jersey’s Offshore Wind Initiatives compared the Garden State’s policies and
programs with offshore wind development plans and activities in other states and nations. The
report warned that New Jersey could lose its “early mover” advantage in developing manufacturing and supply
chain initiatives could be lost because of the state’s failure to join other states in allowing
developers to use federal offshore wind tax credits. The Senate and Assembly subsequently passed
legislation sponsored by Assembly Majority Leader Lou Greenwald and Senate Environment Committee Chairman Bob Smith that authorized the use of tax credits by Orsted while requiring $200 million to be set aside for investment in manufacturing facilities in Gloucester and Salem counties.
New Jersey’s Fiscal Future: Comparing Five-Year Revenue Forecasts with Current Services Budget
Projections was the second annual report issued by the Sweeney Center’s bipartisan Multi-Year
Budget Workgroup to guide the Governor and Legislature in final budget deliberations. The report
warned that there is an 80% probability that New Jersey state government will face a $3 billion to $4
billion annual gap between projected revenues and the cost of maintaining state aid and government services at current levels from FY25 to FY28. The cumulative $12.5 billion to $18.5 billion shortfall in those four budget years will require budget cuts or revenue increases, according to the workgroup, which included a former state
treasurer, OMB director and Treasury chief economist, Democratic and Republican legislative budget aides and other policy experts.