Sweeney Center

  • 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 Releases New Jersey Economic Outlook: 

Continued strong income growth would cushion ‘any relatively modest and short’ recession

GLASSBORO – Coming off a year in which the state set new highs in jobs, output and income,  New Jersey’s continued strong personal income growth in 2023 would serve to cushion any relatively short and modest recession,  according to a report by Charles Steindel, a former chief economist for the New Jersey Treasury Department.

Dr. Steindel’s analysis, prepared for the Sweeney Center’s Multi-Year Budget Workgroup, cited the Federal Reserve’s interest rate increases, a drop in retail sales and industrial production in the latter part of 2022, an ongoing slippage in homebuilding and in housing sales, and layoffs by major companies as factors that are slowing economic growth in 2023.

“This independent five-year economic forecast by Dr. Steindel, who prepared economic projections for both Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is an important addition to the public debate heading into the Governor’s Budget Address,” said Steve Sweeney, who chairs the Sweeney Center Advisory Board.  “His projection that any recession would most likely be mild and short will be welcome news for the Legislature as it heads into its budget deliberations.”

The projections by Dr. Steindel, who also served as a senior vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, are in line with those put forward by the Multi-Year Budget Workgroup last June in its report, Comparing Multi-Year Revenue Forecasts With Current Services Budget Projections, which put the odds on a mild recession or slowdown at 80%.

The Multi-Year Budget Workgroup will update its five-year forecast of state revenue collections and whether those revenues would be sufficient to cover the cost of maintaining state services at current levels after the state’s April income tax receipts are tallied later this year​.