LEGISLATIVE FISCAL ESTIMATE
[First Reprint]
ASSEMBLY, No. 2210
STATE OF NEW JERSEY
222nd LEGISLATURE
DATED: OCTOBER 29, 2026
SUMMARY
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Synopsis: |
Requires homemaker-home health aide and nursing assistant certification examinations to be translated into multiple languages. |
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Type of Impact: |
Annual State expenditure increase. |
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Agencies Affected: |
Department of Health; Department of Law and Public Safety. |
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Fiscal Impact |
Annual |
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State Expenditure Increase |
Indeterminate |
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· The Office of Legislative Services (OLS) finds that the Department of Health and the New Jersey Board of Nursing in the Department of Law and Public Safety will incur indeterminate annual costs under the bill to provide written and oral examinations for the nursing assistant certification and the homemaker-home health aide certification in new languages.
· The OLS is unable to estimate the total costs of the document translation services and oral interpretation services required under the bill because of various unknown factors, such as the length of the documents requiring translation and the number of oral exams administered annually in the newly required languages. Moreover, the number of languages that will be mandated under the bill is uncertain as the bill only provides guidance on a minimum number of languages to be offered. The cost of the bill will increase proportionately to the number of languages in which the examinations, both written and oral, are translated.
· For context, the OLS solicited translation rates from one provider serving State government entities. That provider charges $0.15 per word to translate documents into that vendor’s 12 most requested languages. A language such as Tagalog, Hindi, Gujarati, or Polish would cost either $0.16 or $0.17 per word. Document translations also incur an additional cost of $39.50 per hour for desktop publishing. That same provider charges $0.89 per minute for video remote interpretation services.
· To the extent that the State’s Language Access Law applies to the written examinations under this bill, the costs of the bill may be mitigated as State agencies work to translate the affected certification examinations into the additional language required under the bill.
BILL DESCRIPTION
This bill requires that the written and oral homemaker-home health aide and nursing assistant certification examinations are to be made available in multiple languages. The bill requires that at a minimum the certification examinations are available in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, Tagalog, Arabic, French (homemaker-home health aide certification examinations only), and Gujarati (nursing assistant certification examinations only) and any other language determined to represent a significant portion of the respective workforce. In this regard, the Department of Health has oversight of nursing assistant certification examinations, and the Board of Nursing has oversight of home-maker home health aide certification examinations.
The bill directs the Department of Health and the Board of Nursing to periodically review the list of translated languages and add additional languages by regulation as the respective workforce needs change. Under the bill, the Department of Health and the Board of Nursing are also responsible for developing, translating, validating, maintaining, and updating all standardized translated examinations made available under bill for the respective certification examination.
FISCAL ANALYSIS
EXECUTIVE BRANCH
None received.
OFFICE OF LEGISLATIVE SERVICES
The OLS finds that the Department of Health and the New Jersey Board of Nursing in the Department of Law and Public Safety will incur indeterminate annual costs under the bill to provide written and oral examinations for the nursing assistant certification and the homemaker-home health aide certification in new languages. These expenses will be ongoing as the department and board are required to periodically review the list of translated languages and to update the examinations according to workforce needs.
The OLS is unable to estimate the total costs of the document translation services and oral interpretation services required under the bill because of various unknown factors, such as the length of the documents requiring translation and the number of oral exams administered annually in the newly added languages. Moreover, the number of languages that will be mandated under the bill, upon initial enactment and over time, is uncertain as the bill only provides guidance on the minimum number of languages to be offered. The cost of the bill will increase proportionately to the number of languages in which the examinations, both written and oral, are translated.
For context, the OLS solicited translation rates from one provider serving State government entities. That provider charges $0.15 per word to translate documents into that vendor’s 12 most requested languages of Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Arabic, Russian, Farsi, Vietnamese, Swahili, Somali, Korean, French, Portuguese, German, and Italian. A language such as Tagalog, Hindi, Gujarati, or Polish would cost either $0.16 or $0.17 per word. Document translations also incur an additional cost of $39.50 per hour for desktop publishing. That same provider charges $0.89 per minute for video remote interpretation services.
For reference, using the above rates, the cost to translate a single 2,500-word document that takes six hours to translate from English into one of the applicable languages under the bill, at $0.17 per word, would be $662. Additionally, an oral exam that requires 3.5 hours to administer, in one of the applicable languages under the bill via remote methods, would cost $186.90.
The OLS notes that the State’s Language Access Law requires Executive Branch agencies that provide direct public services to offer oral interpretation and translate vital documents into the State's most commonly spoken non-English languages. To the extent that this existing law applies to the written examinations under this bill, the costs of the bill may be mitigated.
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Section: |
Human Services |
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Analyst: |
Principal Research Analyst |
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Approved: |
Thomas Koenig Legislative Budget and Finance Officer |
This legislative fiscal estimate has been produced by the Office of Legislative Services due to the failure of the Executive Branch to respond to our request for a fiscal note.
This fiscal estimate has been prepared pursuant to P.L.1980, c.67 (C.52:13B-6 et seq.).