On Wednesday, State Rep. Jim Struzzi (R-Blairsville) announced he had introduced legislation that would review the permitting process for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
House Resolution 468 would direct the Legislative Budget and Finance Committee (LBFC) to conduct a survey of DEP’s permitting process. The move comes as a reaction to budget hearings held earlier this year where DEP Acting Secretary Jessica Shirley gave committee members a list of 800 permits that had been issued by the department.
“The issuance of 800 permits from DEP begs the question of whether there are duplicative or unnecessary permits required by the department,” Struzzi said. “We need to understand why this number is so high, and if some of them are not necessary.”
Struzzi said the resolution was about “ensuring government efficiency.”
“Pennsylvania has plenty of places where we can do things better, and any serious look at ways to improve governmental process moves us a step closer to growing our economy and attracting more business and opportunity to the Commonwealth,” he said.
The resolution would require the LBFC to determine what permits had been issued by DEP and the initial date of each permit’s issuance; whether those permits overlap or are inconsistent or antiquated; which permits are required under federal regulations and an analysis of which permits go beyond those federal requirements or are not required by the federal government; and how many permits were applied for over a calendar year and which ones were approved, as well as the system for filing for the permits and the wait time for approval.
The resolution would also require LBFC to do an analysis of other state environmental protection permits to determine best practices while helping to improve performance, and an analysis of the resources and workloads for permitting programs and offices charged with the administration of the programs.