NJ Launches Budget Transparency Portal

By Nikita Biryukov, New Jersey Monitor

April 28, 2026

New Jersey launched a new dashboard displaying information about the budget Gov. Mikie Sherrill introduced last month and the nine spending bills that preceded it on Thursday.

The dashboard, dubbed the New Jersey Report Card, displays topline spending figures the governor has proposed for the coming July-to-June fiscal year and features brief descriptions of the state’s large spending items and some smaller state programs.

“This is your government. You should be able to see what it’s doing with your money and what the services that you’re paying for are delivering,” Sherrill said during a press conference in Trenton.

On the campaign trail, Sherrill pledged to create the budget portal to boost transparency over state spending and improve access to information typically relegated to spending bills that run for hundreds of pages. Sherrill’s first detailed budget is 618 pages long.

Many of those pages feature balance sheets or dense, legalistic language that governs how funds can be spent or how specific programs operate.

At present, the dashboard includes performance data for five specific programs, including for the state’s down payment assistance program and an initiative to reduce veteran homelessness.

Dave Cole, the state’s chief innovation officer, said more information would be added to the platform as time wore on, including performance data for other specific programs.

“Right now, we’re starting with the budget in brief, but we do have the ability to display other data about program outcomes. Part of what we want to do is to make sure this is staying current even outside of the budget cycle for the program outcomes,” he said.

The Treasury annually publishes the budget in brief alongside the governor’s budget address. The document includes brief overviews of how spending is changing across various departments and shares topline budget figures for those agencies.

A team of roughly six aims to update the dashboard to include new programs or other information every two weeks, though staffing levels would vary based on the office’s other programs, Cole said.

At present, the dashboard does not break down how each state department spends its funds, though it describes the agencies’ duties and presents their spending across broad categories and over the preceding 10 years.

Advocates praised the platform’s introduction as a positive step for transparency.

“We’ve been fighting for transparency of any kind for a very long time at New Jersey Policy Perspective, so this is a great start,” said Nicole Rodriguez, the think-tank’s president.

She added she looked forward to the platform being further developed to show spending in finer detail “so that people actually know specifically where their tax dollars are going.”

New Jersey Monitor, the Garden State’s newest news site, provides fair and tough reporting on the issues affecting New Jersey, from political corruption to education to criminal and social justice. The Monitor is part of States Newsroom, a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit supported by grants and a coalition of donors and readers.