Last year in March and April hospital staff recounted harrowing tales of using garbage bags as hospital gowns amid severe statewide shortages in personal protective equipment. Respirators were not properly fit, leaving health care workers dangerously exposed to COVID-19, according to the Health Professionals and Allied Employees nurse’s union. Masks were worn throughout 12-hour shifts, even when they needed to be changed between patients.
The shortages were the source of fines levied by the federal Occupational Occupational Health and Safety Administration against hospitals and nursing homes. And to help alleviate them, Gov. Phil Murphy last May said that he and the governors of Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island would coordinate the purchase of medical supplies and personal protective equipment so the states would not have to barter and compete against each other.
Now, a $30 million program, which was announced on June 4, is meant to subsidize the production of personal protective equipment – such as gloves, face shields, masks, N95s and gowns – here in the Garden State.
Proponents argue that the shift could build New Jersey’s health care infrastructure resiliency in the event of future public health crises, be it on the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic or much more localized outbreaks.
Senate President Stephen Sweeney speaks at a signing ceremony for the state’s Fiscal Year 2021 Budget at the Trenton War Memorial on Sept. 29, 2020. – EDWIN J. TORRES/GOVERNOR’S OFFICE
“The shortages of masks, hospital gowns, gloves and other protective equipment we experienced last spring when states were competing to find scarce supplies makes it clear that New Jersey needs to have its own manufacturing capacity for the most critical health care supplies,” reads a November statement from Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-3rd District.
This new program – called the PPE Manufacturing Tax Credit – runs over three years and allocates $10 million for 2020, 2021 and 2022. It’s part of the broader $14.5 billion New Jersey Economic Recovery Act of 2020, meant to help fuel the state’s rebound from the COVID-19 recession.
Tim Sullivan, head of the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, which oversees most of the $14.5 billion of incentives including the new PPE subsidies, said the tax credit will incentivize job creation in a “high-growth sector while ensuring New Jersey is well-prepared to meet any future PPE needs.”
The tax credits would be available to manufacturers that spend money on building or expanding equipment and facilities in New Jersey for the production of PPE that, according to the draft rules, “increase the availability of critical public health care products and create manufacturing jobs.”
Under the proposed rules, the new incentives include looser requirements for South Jersey than North Jersey, meaning a manufacturer in Atlantic, Burlington, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Ocean and Salem counties would have to create fewer jobs and could get higher tax breaks for the lower square footage of their facilities than in North Jersey.
They’d have to be located in parts of the state designed for “redevelopment or rehabilitation,” or in a “large, long-vacant building.” The facility could also be located in a “Smart Growth Area,” that is, a neighborhood designated for economic redevelopment while benefiting the local environment and ecosystem. Or the facility could be engaged in a research collaboration or partner with a pre-apprenticeship program with a New Jersey educational institution.
Kennedy
John Kennedy, who heads the New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program, a not-for-profit that works to train and connect the workforce with the state’s manufacturing industry, said last year production of PPE, and many other products for that matter, are not typically based in New Jersey “because we can get them cheaper elsewhere.”
“We have tremendous manufacturing capabilities in this country. We can make all this stuff, but if I can make it for a nickel cheaper somewhere else … then I’m going to do that.,” he said.
