Creating Efficiency in the Permitting Process
Without Relaxing Environmental Standards
EXCERPTS FROM THE MORNING PANEL PRESENTATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The following outline of problems and recommendations was prepared by consolidating the results of all three working groups with some of the information from the panelists.
Recommended Solutions
A model for this is Orange County, where the County Board of Supervisors has formed a core committee, including agencies from state, region, city, chambers of commerce, and industry to develop a county-wide coordinated effort.
The San Gabriel Valley Commerce and Cities Consortium is a non-profit composed of cities and businesses. It brings together agencies to help mitigate road blocks businesses encounter in maintaining responsibility for implementing regulations, and helps cities increase business-friendliness and streamline procedures.
Another example is Long Beach which has a Technical Advisory Committee comprised of representatives of the different local departments of city government and coordinates all of their concerns.
SCAG's Regional Advisory Council, composed of individuals from the public and private sectors, non-profit organizations, and utility companies, is interested in providing guidance to SCAG in establishing sub-regional round tables in each of SCAG's member jurisdictions.
Potential benefits that could come from such collaborations:
Long term comprehensive environmental planning.
Uniform goals and uniform rules across agencies and jurisdictions.
Cross-media task forces, permitting procedures, and training for agency regulators.
Standardized permit application forms between agencies.
A centralized agency to educate applicants on all permitting requirements and handle all enforcement activity.
Industry-specific master permits for proven equipment and procedures.
Collaborative outreach plans and materials for applicants.
A coordinated data base.
A non-confrontational setting to air ideas, concerns and solutions.
Public/private partnerships and increased public participation.
2. Comprehensive Strategic Planning for the Economy and the Environment
Define environmental goals, integrate with economic goals, and devise uniform rules.
Integrate environmental values into all stages of business planning.
Ensure that regulations and incentives help achieve environmental objectives:
Measure environmental consequences, review regulatory procedures and eliminate permits where there is no environmental impact or the permit is outdated, no longer needed, or not useful.
Define costs and benefits of regulation to business and the environment.
Use a formula in which the agency computes the expected environmental impact value to determine level of scrutiny required for approval process (often called a "gray scale" procedure).
Regulate low risk industry through generic requirements rather than by permits, giving closer review to higher risk industries.
Permit particular kinds of equipment rather than particular installations.
Develop project allowances for general plan compliance.
Rotate staff among different agencies.
Develop consistent, on-going staff training in customer service, communication, and treatment of businesses as clients.
Reduce decision layers to one contact person per agency.
Create inter-agency focus groups to clarify policy.
Increase funding for staff and consultants for environmental enforcement and planning agencies.
Develop computerized electronic permit processing with a user friendly checklist.
Institute business-specific permit requirement documents (to find out all permit requirements for specific businesses), perhaps using a one page permit matrix and computerized, consolidated permit applications.
Clearly define and simplify enforcement authority with a clear line between statute and implementation responsibility.
Minimizing agency additions to statute requirements.
Standardize and simplify procedures and information, using clear language with clear guidelines for compliance.
Create workshops involving regulated and impacted communities.
Decentralize permitting and enforcement to the city level.
Pass legislation stating: "All local ordinances and private contracts in conflict with environmental (clean air) regulations are null and void."
Provide incentives for businesses involved in sustainable development or improving environment.
Incorporate public input into the planning process.
Use the media to let the public know about up coming regulations.
Make the legislative and regulatory process publicly visible, with clear intent and consistency between federal, state, regional and local agencies.
EXCERPTS FROM THE MORNING PANEL PRESENTATIONS
Keynote Address by Los Angeles Councilman Hal Bernson
The situation here in Los Angeles is that the defense and aerospace industries are going downhill, and there are tremendous environmental regulations that are often bogged down in red tape and delays. As a result, businesses are leaving in droves, and others are not choosing to locate here anymore.
If we're going to have an economically strong community, we have to become competitive. We do have to maintain a proper environment -- without it, we won't have a place that's worth living in. Business can be a good partner to maintaining a high quality of environment by getting rid of the red tape and delays in doing business in here. Potential investors are no longer coming here, because major projects take 3 - 5 years to get approved. Every year of delay represents a 10% increase in the cost of the project. That is why housing is unaffordable.
As Chair of the Planning and Land Use Management Committee of the City Council, I got the City Council to commission an audit of our planning permit process. The report has many recommendations that can be implemented in a reasonable period of time. A committee is now coming up with final instructions on how to restructure various departments of city government.
We have passed a bond issue to fund the re-computerization of our entire permit process system. We hope to have the toughest projects will be reduced from 3-5 years to 1 year maximum. If a project is a good project, it should be approved quickly; if it is not good, it should be quickly rejected.
Other current activities include: master environmental impact reports (EIRs) are being addressed by the Governor's conference; SCAG is doing a study for the six county region; LA is doing a environmental study for updating its general land use plan. These can serve as backbones for most of the environmental work that has to be done. Community plans can be tuned into these master documents, and if any additional environmental review work has to be done, it can be done at the community plan level.
It has taken 18 months to two years to get an environmental clearance from the city of Los Angeles. In Arizona or Nevada, you can get a permit the same day! Mayor Riordan is very aware of this and has established a department to try to retain and attract business to Southern California. Through the Earthquake Recovery Committee, I recommended legislation for economic incentives for people to invest in earthquake recovery, and tax credits for investment in housing.
The film industry has been leaving California because it is so much easier to do business elsewhere. Here, we have 188 jurisdictions that require permits in our region. Recently, I got SCAG to sponsor a consolidation to a single permit for the entire 6 county region. It still has to be signed onto by the various cities and counties. The city and county of LA are moving to consolidate their film permit process. We've lost approximately 10% of the film industry in the last few years because of regulations. That translates to about $2 billion. We can't continue to lose business like that. We have to hit a happy medium between no-growth and healthy profits.
PANEL I: DEFINING THE PROBLEM
Stephen Bisset - McDonnell Douglas Corporation
Title 5 of the Clean Air Act has strict permitting requirements on our production process. We need permits that are flexible enough to allow for swift changes in production, because each model and airplane we build has different assembly requirements.
We have over 600 permits that we have to analyze under Title 5, which will take about 8,000 hours to do (4 man years). We want to make sure we have an alternative operating scenario in these permits so we can build products in the future and not have to go through a significant process that would slow us down on schedule. The avenue to modify a Title 5 permit cannot be undertaken lightly, as the provision in the requirements is for a public hearing, and that can be a long process. I recommend that we work jointly with SCAQMD to develop a plan with the flexibility we need.
Another issue is environmental permit times: We had a project a few years ago that took 19 months for construction approval and another 33 months for the operating permit (a total of 4 years and 4 months). Now AQMD has made significant progress -- we recently got a construction permit in 6 months. We recommend that AQMD expedite the approval of all permit applications. They also should balance the staff for the construction and operating permits.
The city of Long Beach has a one-stop permit counter with all agencies, and have published guidelines so everyone knows their obligations. They hired an ombudsman to facilitate any problems. Maybe we can work out something like that for the various agencies represented here.
Michael Carroll - Latham & Watkins
The primary problems are the timing involved in obtaining regulatory permits and the need for flexibility in permits so companies can make necessary changes in their products quickly. Three "pet peeves" I have regarding the SCAQMD permits are the requirements:
1. "All equipment will be maintained in good operating condition." Whenever the equipment breaks down, you are issued a notice of violation. If you are in the middle of a controversial permit or rule revision, the consequences can be extremely serious.
2. "All equipment will be operated in compliance with all specifications in the application package." Since some of these permits take years to be issued, what ultimately comes out in the permit can be quite different from what was included in the permit application (often based on requests from AQMD).
3. "The equipment will be connected to air pollution control equipment whenever it is in operation." Take the case of storage tanks connected to vapor recovery systems. The vapor recovery system needs to be maintained on a periodic basis; it can't be maintained unless it is disconnected from the storage tanks, but as soon as you disconnect it, you are in violation of the storage tank permit. The company either needs to get a variance that takes several weeks and costs several thousand dollars, or just disconnect it and take their chances they won't get caught. This is not the kind of behavior that should be encouraged, and the conscientious companies have to go through a lengthy procedure.
There's no legal requirement that any of these conditions be in the permits, yet a violation of these conditions is just as serious as a violation of one of the emissions limitations.
Elizabeth Bailey - California Council on Partnerships
The California Council on Partnerships (CCOP) brings together the private and public sector to solve problems of mutual importance. CCOP recently commissioned a study, Cutting Through the Red Tape Together, to explore the effects of the regulatory process on job flight and economic development throughout the state. Some of the key findings are:
On the private sector side, Southern California Edison has taken the lead on partnering with the public sector. They've developed a business retention program to help other companies through the permitting process, and help foster partnerships that making doing business here less cumbersome. They co-host regional economic development forums in Ventura and Los Angeles.
At the request of CCOP, County Supervisor Antonovich has hosted a Red Tape meeting with private sector partners to get some of these things moving in his district here in Los Angeles.
Gail Ruderman Feuer - Natural Resources Defense Council
There is a lot of agreement among both the business community and environmentalists that there is too much red tape and paper work, that companies should not have to deal with such extreme delays and with so many different people and permits. We agree that there should be one inspector who covers different substantive areas dealing with air and hazardous waste problems at the same time. We should have one-stop permit centers.
Where we disagree is on how to solve the problem, and a definition of the problem.
1. We want to find a way to cut through the red tape without actually cutting out the environmental regulations. It's important to be business friendly, but people come here because they like the environment; if you have smoggy air, it's a less attractive place for business.
2. It shouldn't take 3-4 years to get a permit, but that is not mainly the fault of the environmental review (EIR) process. It takes so long because it sits on someone's desk for two years because they have so many applications for permits they don't even look at it until the third year. By the time they look at it, they want to do the environmental review real quickly because there's not a lot of time left. The solution is to give the agencies more resources so they can review the permit application more quickly.
Also, the solution is not to have something "deemed approved." If the regulator doesn't act quickly, you should be able to force him to act quickly, perhaps through civil penalties. But if you're trying to site a hazardous waste incinerator near a pre-school, the solution is not to move quickly and approve it without public input. I hope we can find common ground for solutions.
Marcel Verdooner - Fieni's Photo
I've been asked to give the small businessman's perspective. When we originally started our photo developing business in 1982, it only took 60 days to get everything approved. In 1987, we decided to move to a larger facility with more equipment; now it took 8 months to get all the permits approved.
One of the most difficult things we ran into was the government employees' interpretations of what we should comply with. There is too much personal interpretation by the employees of regulatory agencies. Also, the laws are not clear.
Some time ago, new legislation was passed in the state which required all photographic laboratories to install silver recovery equipment apply for permits. It took approximately two weeks of work, with the assistance of attorneys and others, to fully fill out all the paper work, which was ridiculous because some of it sounded like we were the worst polluters in the world. The silver dollar uses silver of the same purity, but a government coin is not considered hazardous while silver from a photo lab is. How do we resolve a problem like that?
Other problems include the cost of fees, the uncertainty if you're going to get approved, and the changes in legislation. Case in point, silver recovery: In the original rule, you had to pay $1,200 for the permit; under the new regulations, the fee is $50. We're trying to get our $1,200 back from the government. We`re now in the appeals state for doing this. In some cases, legislation is passed for which no technology exists to comply.
John Bowman - Reznik & Reznik
The permit problem, from the standpoint of the real estate development community, comes down to three things: uncertainty, delay, and cost.
By uncertainty, I'm referring to uncertainty in the entitlements -- what you're allowed to build and do with a particular piece of property. One of the biggest problems we've seen is the increasing reliance upon the discretionary review process. It used to be that you could look at the zoning on a piece of property and have some certainty on what you could do with it. Now, the discretionary review is the norm rather than the exception. Even single family homes in many jurisdictions now require layers of review by boards and commissions before they can be built. And the review is based on standards that often are drafted on very broad terms (general welfare, whether it's consistent with the character of the neighborhood). This leaves a lot of room for political decision-making, and means unpredictable results. Also, there's an increasingly multi-jurisdictional trend in the permitting process. For a large scale development project, land use approvals from the local agency, the city and county, could be just the beginning - a whole host of other permits could be required from federal, state, and regional agencies. What can happen so often is that a builder can be caught between agencies. For example, one of our clients bought a piece of property, wanted to build a single family home. They discovered that the lot was created by a lot line adjustment that had been approved by the county of Los Angeles many years ago. They discovered that the California Coastal Commission did not recognize that lot line adjustment because a development permit had not been obtained. So our client found themselves with no entitlements on that property. They were forced to file a law suit, and did recover a sizable judgement, but the permits are still not in sight. The problem is two agencies having different interpretations on essentially the same set of regulations.
Another big nemesis is delay. The increased reliance on discretionary review, the jurisdictional issues and the many layers of appeals contribute to the problem. A developer trying to build a 20 unit project took four years and 10 public hearings to do it. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) has had a tremendously positive affect on the quality of developments, but much more needs to be done to streamline the CEQA process. Recent legislation has given us the Master EIR (but it was really available before with less red tape). A lot more needs to be done and can be done by the local agencies under the existing regulatory framework, like focused EIRs and tiering of EIRs.
PANEL II: CURRENT STREAMLINING EFFORTS
Robert Pease - SCAQMD
At SCAQMD we are working on streamlining the process, not eliminating the requirements, but making it quicker to get there. We provide a number of helpful items to businesses so that they can understand our rules and prepare for compliance.
We used to have a real backlog of permit applications. Through setting goals, deadlines, and dividing applications into three levels of complexity, we've been able to eliminate our permit backlog. When an application comes into the District, it is assigned to one of three tiers: simpler projects are processed within a 7 day time frame, medium level within a 30 day time frame, and more complex ones in 180 days.
We are working on updating and revising our guidelines. We have a small business assistance group that works individually with small businesses to get them through the process, and we have a number of ways we can aid a small business. In terms of administrative assistance, we can help fill out the application form and give technical assistance. We also have established a loan guarantee program. The District is not the lender, but guarantees the loan to the small business, so the business will have the money available to them to put in the air pollution control equipment they need to comply.
We also do a great deal of outreach, advertisements, and we maintain an 800 number (800-388-2121) to answer questions. To make ourselves more accessible to the community, we have a number of facilities where the small business person can get assistance. We have inter-agency agreements, like one with the city of Los Angeles where we have a person who can help with AQMD permits in the construction permit service center in City Hall.
We also have a public advisor who makes sure the public has an opportunity to understand what we're doing, to participate in the process, and to ask questions. We try to involve the public to the maximum extent possible.
Florence Pearson - California EPA
There currently are six state-sponsored permit assistance centers in Southern California (L.A., Reseda, Orange County, San Diego, Ontario, and Riverside). In each, several regulatory agencies have been pulled together in one place to help companies get the permits they need. We're devoting time to three different areas, one of which is customer response. We put together a team of people to work on a project, and set up time frames through which that project should be put on line. We have a project manager assigned to that project who helps the company negotiate their way through the various steps. We also do follow-up with clients, to ensure they haven't encountered any problems in getting their project on line. We have a customer response survey that we send out after we've finished a project. All these things provide a different atmosphere for companies to work in than what they have experienced in the past.
We are also working on the development of resource materials. Many times we find that government regulators have never taken the time to put together a straight forward, layman's language description of the goals and objectives of their organization, so people understand the context of what we are trying to achieve. We have created packages of permit documents that companies can pick up that contain all the forms they will have to fill out to get a specific business on line.
We are also doing outreach - talking with various levels of government, working with the cities and counties, letting them know we are there to help them, assisting them with their permit streamlining efforts. Some of the permit obstacles have not only impeded the ability of companies to get projects on line, but have also held back the development of technologies that would aid in the prevention of pollution and cleaning up the environment. The one-stop permit centers will help companies that have new ways of doing things for better environmental protection get projects on line in a shorter time period.
Assistant Deputy Mayor Reginald Jones-Sawyer - City of Los Angeles
We're at the beginning of a 3 - 5 year process that started in December which, unlike previous studies that only identified the problem and some solutions, will also include an implementing part. Hal Bernson, as chair of the Planning and Land Use Management Committee, has brought together a group of community leaders, business leaders and other professionals in the Development Reform Committee (DRC). The DRC is led by Dan Garcia, the former chair of the Planning Commission, who has brought together a group of people to look at our dysfunctional land use system. The DRC is working in three main subcommittees: administrative, fees and exactions, and entitlements.
The administrative subcommittee is probably the most important. We haven't given people in the Building and Safety, Planning, and Environmental Affairs Departments the money, tools, and training to be business friendly or user friendly and we haven't given them the tools to make decisions. The solution is how to not shortcut or circumvent environmental regulations, general plans or land use regulations, but get through the system a lot faster. We should have the DRC report by the end of July. The mayor's office will look at it to determine ordinances that need to be revised and administrative changes. These will need to be passed by the Council.
We've also created a task force made up of department heads, assistant general managers, and the people working on this every day. It is our hope that they will all get together and come up with solutions.
John Kilgore - L.A. County Sanitation Districts
The Sanitation Districts provide sewer service (conveyance and treatment of waste water) to residential, commercial, and industrial users. We use 10 water reclamation plants and one joint plant in Carson that processes 400 million gallons a day and discharges it into the Pacific Ocean.
To meet industry's concerns, we have developed an Industry Advisory Council to improve efficiency in processing and in regulatory procedures. We have representatives from various different industries on the Council. One effort toward permit streamlining efforts is to inform and educate both industry and local agencies. Because we issue permits jointly with all the local agencies, we need to make sure they are aware of our programs and procedures so that if they are the first regulatory contact to an industry, they represent us accurately. We're also trying to consolidate all of our regulatory concerns and minimize paper work. Our inspectors provide consultation services in the field to help industries put the paper work together for a good permit application.
We have to permit, inspect and enforce, under the federal mandates or regulations that we're given, to prevent pass-through of contaminants to the ocean, to protect our publicly owned treatment system and sewer lines, and to prevent contamination of sludge which is composted and reused or landfilled. Streamlining of this particular type of permit cannot be done at the expense of public safety or at the expense of the mandate that we've been given. We've put together a concise instruction booklet that states our goals and guides the applicant through the process.
We've also tried to promote consistency within our permitting procedures by streamlining the process with a fairly sophisticated software package. All our industrial waste permitting engineers use the same permitting process and the same menu of requirements and directions.
Marco Brown - San Gabriel Valley Commerce and Cities Consortium
The Consortium is a non-profit organization representing 31 communities in the San Gabriel Valley. The organization was founded and funded through both the private sector and city governments who recognize the need to work together for better economic development of the greater community as a whole. Our economic development activities include business attraction and business retention.
Businesses in the San Gabriel Valley come to us if they have problems maintaining a financially sound business. We go in, identify what the issues are, and bring together the agencies that can impact those issues. The team tries to mitigate the business problems while still implementing the regulations and codes. We have been pleased with the very positive response we've had from all of the agencies involved.
To maintain the most business-friendly environment possible, we have created a program called Business Friendly: a Customer Service Training Program for Cities. The program is designed work with city staff to identify road blocks to implementation of good customer service practices and help work through the problems by giving them a better understanding of where the business person is coming from.
Relative to permit streamlining, we have an initiative called the San Gabriel Valley Right Choice. It has three prongs to it: a permit coordinator who helps coordinate the agencies for business; an on-line computer system to hook-up all the cities and the agencies within the San Gabriel Valley into one record; and a certification program for cities to be designated as a business-friendly city - a place where companies can do business and also live in harmony, fostering a good quality of life.
Clarence Woodbey - Business Environmental Assistance Center (BEAC)
BEAC has been established for more than four years. It is the forerunner of all the business assistance centers. It is statewide, sponsored by many of the major California regulatory agencies, including California Trade and Commerce, Cal/EPA, State Chancellor's Office of Community Colleges.
BEAC represents the platform for businesses to access information in a non-threatening, non-regulatory environment. BEAC now has a state-wide information bulletin board system that has an entry onto Internet to the Information Super Highway. This provides a means for the business client to access information through their computers or through business assistance centers that will all be interconnected to the BEAC system.
The current key project is to have on-line business regulations and permits. We are working on a major project for Orange County to bring on-line all their city profiles and business permit services for information and guidance for the public. We have formed a core committee, including agencies from state, region, city, chambers of commerce, and industry, to develop the county-wide program. BEAC will reformat electronically information that has already been compiled by many of the agencies and make it available. It can then be accessed by modems or fax machines. BEAC is a clearing house; if we don't have the answer ourselves, we will refer you directly to a person who can assist you.
I also represent the governor's Business Revitalization Center (BRC) in Los Angeles, which has all levels of state, county and city governments located in one place. It also has linkage to all of the business assistance centers. We have several major projects that are underway, relating to regulatory reform and permit streamlining, including electronic permitting, so we can track and identify areas of conflicts within and between agencies.
PANEL III: SOLVING THE PROBLEM
William Fray - SCAQMD
New Directions is a program that deals with standardization of our paperwork and procedures. When I joined the agency, we had about 30,000 permits, with an average processing time of 140-150 days. Today the processing time (except for those that take a full CEQA public notice) is an average of 37 days -- and more than half are out in far less than that. We've standardized and created supplemental forms. We emphasis compliance through an educational process to inform businesses of what they need to do to comply; we hold 30 - 40 one-day classes per year focused on specific industries. We've rewritten each of our rules into laymen's language explanations. We've adopted a posture of treating the regulated community the way that businesses treat customers. Every one of our staff has been through customer service training.
Inter-agency cooperation is very important to cut through the permitting labyrinth. With Cal/EPA taking the lead, we are co-located in six multi-agency centers and we're represented in 20 other city building permit departments. Co-location is a beginning of a paradigm shift. The government regulator is generally seen as inaccessible and imperious. We're trying to make ourselves more accessible and learn what better we can do. The people at these centers are fully on-line with our host computer, and are empowered to receive applications, process permits, and issue them from those spots. We are doing less business in these centers than we had anticipated, perhaps because we haven't made their availability known properly. Our access and availability in these centers is just a beginning. It can't be uated yet.
We permit over 3,000 different processes and equipment. We're trying to get facility-based permits so you can get one permit that covers your business. We've taken a lot of strides at AQMD in privatizing. We have over 200 consultants trained now who can prepare and uate permits, so when we get the applications, they almost don't get a review, just a statistical check.
On market based incentives, RECLAIM allows businesses the flexibility to take the lead on deciding how they will cut their pollution, and then its our job to do field audits and sampling to make sure that they do it.
At the office of permit assistance, we get a lot of complaints about businesses that are going through the process. But Edison has helped close the credibility gap through their public-private partnership and involvement in local government.
Our agency and representatives of the private sector are working jointly with CEED, the California Commission on Economic and Environmental Balance, to prepare legislation that we all feel is effective and can live with. We need to look at the overall labyrinth of environmental law.
Mike Kahoe - California EPA
Co-location is very useful. It allows staff people to talk to each other, and makes the whole regulatory framework accessible at one place. Getting these people working together takes care of maybe 30% of the problem, but it's really only a first step. You have to look at the whole picture.
Whenever California goes through a recession everyone gets involved in permit streamlining, but when the recession's over the pendulum starts swinging back. Our regulatory processes have sprung up rather haphazardly over the last forty years, and we have to take a step back and see if we've really prepared California for the next century. The one-stop centers are a good laboratory situation to see what the real problems are, but it's important to take the results of those one-stop experiences and do some fundamental changes in terms of making a clearer regulatory program for the business community and the public.
We need to recognize that we've put a lot of investment into our past types of regulatory approaches and we've gotten what we can as far as environmental benefits are concerned. To go further, we have to look at different ways of doing it, since the resources we have now are the same as what we will have in the future. Therefore, it is incumbent on the agencies to find better, more efficient ways of applying limited resources.
Over the last couple years, almost every regulatory agency has taken a hard look internally at what their processes are, defined how they can be more efficient and more clear both to the regulated community and to the public. We need to find those situations where we can move from the costly, long term case-by-case instances, and instead look at possiblities other than individual permits, such as a menu of things we need to do, or the total requirements for specific facilities.
Relative to Prop 65 regarding notices on hazardous waste facility siting, you have to recognize that we're talking about multiple information processes, multiple public processes, multiple notices. So the question is at what point do you have these different processes come together?
Jim Jenal - Citizens for a Better Environment
Representing a citizens-based, environmental protection group, I have a slightly different take on this. The bureaucratic problems should be resolved by the bureaucrats, but there is a more fundamental question that I think is at the heart of the problem: industry and community groups have two opposing interests. Industry wants flexibility. The public and citizens groups want information, the truth about what's going on. There's no reason these two interests can't be compatible, except for the fact that neither side trusts each other. We don't trust industry because we have been lied to.
So, when people talk permit streamlining, what community groups hear is cutting the public out of the loop. If you want to make the process more efficient, the most fundamental thing you have to address is getting the public into the process at a profound level early. That doesn't mean holding lots of public workshops during working hours out in Diamond Bar. It means sitting down with the folks who represent community groups and discussing what your alternative scenarios entail, and explaining to them why those are critical to what you are doing. In other words, put the information out on the table, be honest about it, and put it out in ways the public can understand, and get their buy-in into the process. If you do that, then public hearings will not be the contentious experience they might otherwise be, because the public has already bought into the process. But if you try to go around the public, you are guaranteed to thwart the very streamlining you are talking about achieving.
There are laws that require public notices as part of the permitting process if there is a high toxics emission risk, but most of these notices are worthless. They don't necessarily tell you what chemicals are being emitted, where they are being emitted, or who is likely to be affected or what the likely effect will be. The fundamental concept of giving notice to a person is to act as though you really wanted them to act on the information you were giving them.
We need to rethink public participation. The people who are most important in terms of getting your permit approved are not the agencies but the people who are likely to be affected by it. You can either get them on board from the start, in which case you have a chance of getting something sited, or you can try to do it through back door, and buy yourself a legal battle.
One of the things that makes businesses angry about jumping through all these hoops on permits is the knowledge that somebody down the street is ignoring the whole process -- they're operating without a permit. They ask why then am I as a legitimate business owner getting hammered this way? Enforcement that is uniform across the board, vigorous, but not vindictive, is critical.
Public agencies need to realize that they do not own the public records they possess. The public owns those records, and you shouldn't have to file a Public Records Act request in order to see a company's permits or their history of violations. Changing those kinds of things to make the system more open and less lawyer-intensive will go a long way towards making this a more streamlined process.
Vic Holanda - California Trade & Commerce Agency
A fundamental challenge to planners today is long term planning for our communities and for the state as a whole. There are mandatory elements in the general plan for every city and county -- the key elements are transportation, land use, and housing. But you never see any real coordination between cities, counties and regions regarding these issues.
When general plans are put together in a fragmented, incremental manner, no one is looking at the cost benefits or cost effectiveness of the policies that every city or county adopts in their jurisdiction. Businesses and developers blame the regulations for causing the problem for the delays, when in reality, in my opinion, they haven't. If there were a long term planning that addressed the sustainable environment of these communities, then the issues of protecting the environment regarding transportation, land use and housing can be thoroughly addressed.
We have never been challenged in that way in the state of California - planning is always city by city, county by county. Each element is completed and certified, but the plans aren't coordinated properly. Cities locate businesses wherever industry wants because they're zoning for dollars. The reality is that every city and county in California is financially strapped. By incrementally addressing every business that wants to come to the community, cities may trigger CEQA, or get challenged by the permit process, and the lengthy public hearing process begins. All you do is create more animosity.
As a solution, we should look at the economic aspect of planning in every community - the cost benefits, cost effectiveness of decisions, effects to the environment, and applying that to the planning process. Every city and county in California received one of our documents, Strategies for Local Government Permit Streamlining. Economic strategic planning is one of the proposals we talk about. The Councils of Governments throughout California needs to take some responsibility and look at the overall coordination of planning. They have to look at the demographics affecting that region. No one is really addressing how demographics affect communities and coordinating that.
Cal/EPA's 6 one-stop permit centers are educational. They were originally set up to help business, but they're also there to help educate the public relative to what Cal/EPA is doing. This reorganization of Cal/EPA, bringing all these agencies together in one unit to coordinate the regulations and not have duplication, is indicative that action is being taken. Cal/EPA together with many other agencies, looked at the needs in this state, and saw this is what the public wants. We need to do this to educate the public, help businesses, and protect the environment.
Everyone needs to get educated relative to the process. If people understood what was involved in actually getting a project through the system, and subsequently understood what it meant to make a comment on a project, I think it would help the process. So there needs to be a better way of notifying the public, local elected and appointed officials, and other forms of businesses.
Barry Sedlik - Southern California Edison Company
I'd like to give one example of the kind of coordinated, comprehensive planning Vic Holanda mentioned. Two weeks ago, SCAG approved an unmandated element of their Regional Comprehensive Plan, the economic element. ("Unmandated" implies a recommendation, an education process to demonstrate these linkages do exist, that difficulties need to be addressed in a proactive sense.) The intent was to incorporate the regional economic concerns. It was quite contentious because there was concern about SCAG getting into non-mandated issues that they're not otherwise required to do.
The planning process has been underway for two years. SCAG convened a wide group of parties from industry, environmental groups and others to look at some of these longer term questions on the economic basis for our region, and what do we need to do to help nurture and sustain it. For example, what are the industries that appear promising, and what are some of the things that need to be done to help them move ahead? The approach is not so much a master economic plan, but encouraging linkages between the economics of the region, the fiscal realities, and a context of a direction we're moving toward.
We still have an adversarial relationship of business against environment, regulators against business, but some of it is starting to break down. We see true collaborative efforts, such as Calstart, the state-wide effort for the advanced transportation industry. It's the more generic issues that haven't been addressed, such as what needs to be done to advance new and existing industries, so issues can be resolved in a more collaborative process up front. We see it in an effort we're involved with in the apparel industry, which is one of this region's biggest employers, employing over 100,000 people. It is very fragmented, has many small businesses, the majority of which are trying to comply with all types of regulations for environment and labor. The problem is that there's so little understanding of what this industry entails. The enforcement activities focus on the individual businesses, not what we need to do to help resolve these issues in a more global sense. This is where public involvement really makes the most sense, to look at what is the value to the economy and what are some of the difficulties they have to handle, so we can get an understanding at the beginning and not end up waiting till the point where the actual application is pending to try to resolve major policy issues.
When we first tried to establish our business retention program at Edison, we were told by a staffer at the Public Utilities Commission that we shouldn't do that because the state could better meet its energy conservation goals if more companies left the state. It's that kind of attitude that California has traditionally been pegged with, but we have made great progress in recognizing that we do have common goals. We see ourselves in a catalytic role between the public and private sector, helping to facilitate and foster a true collaborative process. It is something for which there is a lot of continued opportunity that will ultimately benefit all parties, and help us resolve some of these difficulties.
Steve Sullivan - Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers
I'd simply like to cast a warning: when you're dealing with agencies, people have to have confidence that they're really getting what they need, and not just lip service. We can all look back on the Hamilton test center for smog checks as a wonderful example of a model that has done harm to getting people to understand the need to get their cars smog checked regularly.
We are trying to improve society's health, and there are many ways we can do that. We seem to make regulations so onerous that business cannot survive here, yet people still drive their cars, so we won't have the healthy air that we need. As a member of the public, I don't agree with the statement the regulations have gotten so far out of hand, so poly-syllabic, that you're forcing small business owners to hire attorneys to get an interpretation on everything that we do.
Co-location is great, provided you have the people there who can go ahead and make the decisions. Perhaps we could hold joint public hearings, possibly 5 - 6 public hearings in a one month period. By getting all of the various agencies involved, we'd have sufficient public participation.
I think a compelling motivation for that is cost-effectiveness, because of the money you'll save by doing some of these things up front. There would probably be a lot less fear on the part of the impacted community. Maybe even involve the local municipal agencies, the city councils, and the city planners. And by getting everyone together up front, ahead of time, saying what they want to do, how it may impact the community, getting out the concerns, then we can see what we need to re-engineer or re-address. By doing this ahead of time maybe you'll save a few dollars and come up with a plan that doesn't get challenged with as much zeal as one that you just shove down the throat of community and environmental groups.
I would suggest that people put together an inter-agency task force, including also business people, environmental people, and grass-roots community people. Look at if it's feasible to establish a joint facility where you can have a round table for a permit and have it reviewed by the various agencies that have to sign off on it. We also need to look at whether it's possible to establish a similar committee to take a look at all the current regulations that are on the books that apply to businesses for health and safety and eliminate some of the duplicative regulations, going with the ones that are in the best interest of the public and society.
Robert Coombes - L.A. County Sanitation Districts' Industrial Advisory Panel
In response to Jim Jenal's comment that industry lies, on behalf of the Sanitation Districts' Industrial Advisory Committee, I don't think any of these people lie, and I don't think any of the industry people we deal with lie. I think trust is extremely important, and the adversary relationship that is generated at times is one of the things that puts off the healing process. So one of my suggestions is that we work with truth and trust.
It may not be possible to achieve both environmental compliance and a more healthful business climate without taking a look at the basic environmental regulations, because there are so many of them that are in conflict with each other. Some even go beyond what is really correct and necessary.
Regulatory agencies are often not well acquainted with the processes and dynamics of a particular industry. A simple solution is that the regulatory agencies might employ people with in depth experience and knowledge from the industries they're going to regulate.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We greatly appreciate the following people's contribution to the success of the conference:
MODERATOR
Dr. Leroy Graymer, Director of Public Policy, UCLA Extension
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Hal Bernson, L.A. City Council
PANELISTS
Elizabeth Bailey, California Council on Partnerships
Steven Bisset, McDonnell Douglas Corporation
John Bowman, Reznik & Reznik
Marco Brown, San Gabriel Commerce & Cities Consortium
Michael Carroll, Latham & Watkins
Robert Coombes, L.A. County Sanitation District's Industrial Advisory Panel
Gail Ruderman Feuer, NRDC
William Fray, SCAQMD
Vic Holanda, California Trade & Commerce Agency
Jim Jenal, Citizens for a Better Environment
Reginald Jones-Sawyer, A