SENATE BUDGET AND APPROPRIATIONS COMMITTEE

STATEMENT TO

[First Reprint]

SENATE, No. 3710

STATE OF NEW JERSEY

DATED:  DECEMBER 15, 2025

      The Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee reports favorably Senate Bill No. 3710 (1R).

      As reported, this bill proposes to enhance enforcement of the "Landscape Irrigation Contractor Certification Act of 1991," P.L.1991, c.27 (C.45:5AA-1 et seq.), by empowering local enforcing agencies to: institute civil actions for injunctive or other appropriate relief, and assess civil administrative penalties, upon those who appear to have violated the act or the rules adopted pursuant thereto.  Currently, the Department of Community Affairs is solely responsible for enforcement of the act, without local support, to inspect job sites around the State to ascertain whether contractors are violating the act.  The bill allows each local (construction code) enforcing agency to inspect, fine, and shut down a work site if it is determined that a contractor has violated a provision of the act, including the provision that requires a contractor to be licensed in order to perform irrigation work.

      Additionally, the bill increases the amount a person may be penalized for violating the act to not more than $5,000 for the first offense, not more than $10,000 for the second offense, and not more than $15,000 for each subsequent offense.  Thirty percent of the revenues derived from the civil penalties and civil administrative penalties are to be deposited into the Landscape Irrigation Penalty Enforcement Fund, established pursuant to the bill.  The remaining 70 percent of the revenues derived from the civil penalties and civil administrative penalties are to be retained by the municipality or pilot county in which the violation occurred.

FISCAL IMPACT:

      The Office of Legislative Services (OLS) estimates that authorizing local enforcing agencies to enforce landscape irrigation law would result in an annual State expenditure decrease and local expenditure increases.  The OLS cannot determine the number of cases which would be enforced by a local enforcing agency instead of the State, or the precise cost of enforcement per case.

      The OLS determines that the bill would have an indeterminate net impact on State revenues due to the:  (1) increase in State revenue as a result of the increase in the penalties for violation of the landscape irrigation law; and (2) decrease in State revenue as a result of the retention of 70 percent of the revenue from penalties levied by a local enforcing agency.