Dear New Jersey Economic Development Authority,

This is a request for public records made under the common law right of access. I am not required to fill out an official form. Please acknowledge receipt of this message.
Records requested for any small business grant program actively soliciting applications for grant funding with a maximum award of $100,000 or less and opened for submission on or after January 1, 2022:
1. Any standard operating procedures, policies, guidance documents, or rules for the grant reviewers to follow when scoring a grant.
2. Score sheets used by the reviewers
3. Policies or procedures that state: a) the number of reviewers per application and b) timeline or turn around time from application submission to notification to applicant of award or decline. If any other record shows the desired or anticipated turn around time for the "rolling award/submission process" that is not formally codified in a rule or procedure, please provide that record or any statement from a grant program administrator/ authorized NJEDA employee showing the anticipated/desired turn around time would be requested herein.
4. Statistics showing number of grants submitted by women business owners (applicant business is majority or wholly woman owned) from January 1 to present. Statistics showing number awarded and declined is also requested for applications submitted on or after January 1, 2022.
5. Statistics showing number of grants submitted by women with businesses in opportunity zones versus not in opportunity zones January 1 2022 to present.
6. List of businesses by name who were or are being awarded a grant meeting the above definition and those whose applications were declined.

Yours faithfully,

Edythe Salade

Dear New Jersey Economic Development Authority,

Please kindly respond here with the anticipated date records will be available.

Yours faithfully,

Edythe Salade

Dear New Jersey Economic Development Authority,

Hello Marcus,

Tomorrow, April 5 is the end of two week extension for this request under the Common Law Right of Access.

There are many business applicants from various New Jersey Shore towns who make all or most of their income in the summer tourist season. Public disclosure of the current application status for these businesses, along with other businesses in the state is important because many have to make go/no-go decisions now for capital improvements ahead of this tourist season. I'd imagine the lack of knowledge is frustrating for many applicants.

While not an applicant, I am concerned at what I perceive is a lack of transparency. The agency's past dealing with Krishna Singh, who was sanctioned by the Tennessee Valley Authority for bribing its officials and then publicly disparaging Camden residents as unemployable, concerns me that ordinary less influential New Jerseyans won't get a fair shake from the NJEDA programs. Accordingly, I am very concerned about the potential for retaliation by NJEDA officials to New Jersey residents seeking transparency through the records request process.

Please disclose the requested data to OPRA machine as soon as possible.

I will be placing a copy of this transmission to OPRA machine so the public will view it and make their own judgment.

Sincerely,

Edie Salade

Dear Marcus Saldutti,

The request is incomplete. Under the Excel file of All SBIG submissions, the list includes only those submissions from "outside" an opportunity zones. Please refer to column I where the pivot table has no option to select "Yes." Please be advised that I also see some errors as it relates to the opportunity zones.

I also see some errors. Since the all SBIG applicant list does not include the address, I can only check businesses I patronize. The errors I see are as follows:

1. I see a business based in Wildwood itself, CAPP-00009468, that is misclassified as not being in an opportunity zone (OZ). Public maps show that business is in the Wildwood Opportunity Zone.

2. I see another listed as in Wildwood, an OZ, on your Excel sheet of awarded grants but the public domain says it is in Wildwood Crest, which is not in an OZ, see CAPP-00004154.

3.I see the application to the Newark Arts Council, CAPP-00011898, is also not listed in an OZ.

4. The Newark Performing Arts Corporation is also misclassified as not in an OZ, see CAPP-00011896. However, when the address of this applicant is searched, it also comes up squarely in the Newark OZ.

These errors could lead to a miscalculation of OZ and non-OZ funds. It can also deprive OZ businesses of funding that should be allocated to them versus the open competition.

If you would like me to check the whole list of applicants against the DCA interactive map, please let me know.

Pursuant to the Common Law Right of Access, please provide me with the updated SBIG list, with errors address/corrected and the missing OZ applications pending but not included with the non-OZ applicants.

Yours sincerely,

Edythe Salade

Dear Marcus Saldutti,

Please provide an update as to the incomplete records request. I respectfully seek a deadline date when the OZ applicant list versus funded OZ applications will be produced.

Yours sincerely,

Edythe Salade

Dear Marcus Saldutti,

Thank you for completing the request. I spent one hour of time comparing the "claimed" opportunity zone reported to NJEDA by the applicants. This was done by filtering the responsive records to "yes" for the opportunity zone. In the one hour of time, I found nine out of ten applicants claiming opportunity zone advantage were not operating within an opportunity zone. I wish this information to be relayed to NJEDA leadership.

Yours sincerely,

Edythe Salade