IPTD-296
A-901 Unit, Licensing Billing Project
Description
The A-901 Unit needs a platform in NJEMS to facilitate billing for initial applications, subsequent add-ons, and annual renewals. This project is derived from a statue amendment known as the “Dirty Dirt Law”, P.L. 2019, c. 397 (C.13:1E-127-135.6) and 7:26-16.13 which outlines the directive requiring NJDEP to collect fees to defray costs associated with administrative duties related to licensure. Specifically, the law reads as follows:
“The department shall establish application and license fees, annual fees, and any other fees the department determines necessary to defray the costs of administration, for any license or soil and fill recycling license issued pursuant to P.L.1983, c.392 (C.13:1E-126 et seq.), or the soil and fill recycling registration issued pursuant to section 1 of P.L.2019, c.397 (C.13:1E-127.1). The fees shall be used to pay costs related to consideration of license and soil and fill recycling license applications, investigations, monitoring, enforcement, and related activities, and to reimburse any State agency for expenses incurred by the agency in the performance of pre-licensing investigations, post-licensing compliance monitoring, or any other related activities consistent with the provisions of P.L.1983, c.392 (C.13:1E-126 et seq.). Annual fees shall be assessed on licensees and the holders of soil and fill recycling licenses based on a percentage of their gross operating revenue from intrastate operations during the preceding calendar year. Fees collected under this section shall be deposited into a special account, to be administered by the department, and shall be used only for the costs associated with administering the provisions of P.L.1983, c.392 (C.13:1E-126 et seq.).”
The A-901 Unit will require support from IT to design the billing system process in NJEMS. There is no need for design of new Site or PI ID’s in this request. The data already flows through NJEMS, it’s the billing process that is lacking.
The current A-901 billing system is run by the Office of the Attorney General – Division of Law on mainframe. The statutory amendment requires DEP to process billing going forward.
To achieve the project, milestones will direct and keep the project on task. These milestones will be agreed on by the Project Sponsor and Project Lead at the beginning of the project. (Possible milestones: gathering intelligence on DEP wide billing systems to determine the best method for the A-901 unit; assist Treasury in creating bill deposit accounts; sending out initial and reminder letters to license holders about changes in the annual updates; revising the website and any corresponding materials; creating a tracking system for when bills are received and paid; producing a method between Division of Law and A-901 to verify receipt of applications, add-ons, annual updates & other additional licensing fees).
This project needs to be available as soon as possible to enable the A-901 unit to bill incoming Solid Waste & Soil and Fill applicants as prescribed in the Law
As per Roxanne, manual billing using new reference data and processes has been established. A future project is anticipated to pursue automating some or all of the billing now possible through this project.
Per Michele Zola:
VCL has been set up in DEV and Production. I’m still waiting on a response on reference data needed to be able to create the bills in NJEMS.
Per Mike Gage:
Project is ongoing, meeting scheduled (Roxanne, Seth, Mike Gage, Mike Gerchman, Corey, Kyle) for 10/30 to discuss next steps:
Per the more recent statute change, the A-901 Unit is required to starting billing A-901 applicants and licensees for various fees and cost associated with the A-901 program (list below).
Anticipated billing startup will be early 2025.
Currently, the Office of the Attorney General bills A-901 applicants, using the very outdated Mainframe. They only collect initial application fees.
We (NJDEP) are now required to do this billing as well as collect other defined fees, as well as collect an annual assessment based off the company’s revenues, similar to CPCN annual assessments.
We have been working with Michele Zola, and she has already created/given us the ability to manually bill in NJEMS from VCL from tasks (gray bars).
We need to discuss the best ways to accomplish all the billing requirements. Thanks.
New Applicant Fee
1 key - $100
Plus BCD – 500
2 keys - $100 each
Plus BCD – 1000
3 to 7 keys – $100 each
Plus BCD – 3000
8 or more applicants – 100 each
Plus BCD of 9,000
Annual Update Fee –
One-sixth of one percent (1/6 of 1%) of previous calendar years gross waste and or S&FR operations with a minimum of $600.00.
Undisclosed and or Added Keys Adjustment Fee
Missing Keys – 100 per key
Adjusted one time BCD total – varies (difference from original BCD fee paid to adjusted BCD total fee with more keys), not to exceed 9,000.
Change in Ownership
Additional key – 100 each*
Adjusted one time BCD total – varies (difference from original BCD fee paid to adjusted BCD total fee with more keys), not to exceed 9,000. –
If 9000 was previously paid for BCD, Additional Key, - $600 each
Other Fees
Name Amendment - $200
Change of corporate structure - $200
Change of controlling interest - $1,000.00
from meeting 5/24/23 - Roxanne, Jim, Michele, Knute and Mike
We clarified that an initial bill currently issued by DOL is meant to be replaced by DEP billing, plus new bills to come from DEP for specific services tied to the same NJEMS activity where we expect to tag the initial bill. There is a need to coordinate the transfer from DOL to DEP. Priority is driven by lost revenue to the state for lack of the additional billing not yet occurring.
Next steps:
Roxanne is lead on account numbers and codes for the new billing. Which comes first.
Mike can direct Kyle and Corey to set up all the activity reference data.
Michele will handle the billing and reference data and AEC creation from info provided by the program.