At EPIC, we’ve spent years working with Congress and a number of administrations to make federal permitting better, and we’ll keep at it. But, here’s what we kept noticing while Congress failed to pass a permitting reform package: the states weren’t waiting.
The State Innovation Explosion
Over the past few years, blue, red, and purple states have made hundreds of changes to how permits get reviewed and issued. Everything from new offices that coordinate the permitting of major economic development projects, to permits automatically approved when an agency misses its deadline, to payments for communities that host clean energy projects, to multifamily housing allowed by right, and so so much more.
Good ideas are spreading from state to state
In 2022, Virginia DEQ built PEEP, a dashboard that allows the public to track the status of any state environmental permits. It’s far more than a pretty map or online spreadsheet, which many more places have. As a result of the Department having the ability to understand its own bottlenecks, it achieved a 65% drop in average permit processing time in a year.
65% faster is a remarkable improvement for any level of government. So it makes sense that in the years since PEEP was announced, Pennsylvania and Minnesota deployed their own permit tracking systems, and West Virginia and New Jersey are well on their way to doing the same.
Congress is starting to take note
The bipartisan ePermit Act, which passed unanimously in the House in December, is now moving through the Senate. If it became law, it would drag federal environmental review into the 21st century and digitize federal permitting, requiring the creation of agency dashboards for tracking the status of permits. That’s Virginia’s approach, applied federally.
And, digital permitting is not the only example of the feds learning from the states on how to build good things faster. The housing law Congress just passed, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, has a handful of permitting and zoning ideas the states tested first.
50 States of Permitting
Today, EPIC and Lawyers for Good Government are launching 50 States of Permitting: the most comprehensive database of state permitting reform.
For each state, you can filter by EPIC’s 9 Types of reform or by project type, and explore the individual actions and tools states are using to streamline how permits get issued.
We built the database for state legislators who want to see what their peers are doing, and for advocates who want to understand the breadth of what’s been tried in just the last four years.
If you have any questions or feedback about the dashboard, or would just like to connect, please reach out to Brent@policyinnovation.org.
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P.S. If you’re interested in the reforms EPIC thinks every Governor should be pursuing, check out our First 100 Days series.
