Improving Pennsylvania’s competitiveness will expand economic opportunities for our Commonwealth’s residents, workers, families, and businesses. In addition to adopting more business-friendly tax and regulatory policies, permitting reforms are necessary to ensure Pennsylvania can lead the future by building a more modernized public infrastructure system, establishing advanced manufacturing hubs in innovative industries, and continuing to provide the energy and goods needed in a diverse, 21st century economy.
Advocating for Change
Pennsylvania’s current permitting processes are infamously costly, time consuming, and a major detractor to investment and job growth, which is why permitting reform is among the Pennsylvania Chamber’s top policy priorities.
We’re urging the House to take up S.B. 350, a comprehensive permitting bill that passed the Senate last year and would enact meaningful and necessary reforms to Pennsylvania’s permitting system. We’re also promoting similar reforms at the federal level, including legislation that would protect small business owners from excessive federal regulations, as a staggering 12 percent of the U.S.’s entire GDP is spent on regulatory compliance alone, which can be especially burdensome for small to mid-sized employers.
As lawmakers negotiate the FY 2024-25 state budget, the PA Chamber is further advocating for legislators to pass permitting reforms, particularly considering the Shapiro Administration’s proposal for investments in a newly created PA SITES fund for site development and infrastructure and the availability of state and federal infrastructure funds. Enacting permitting reforms will help to ensure that Pennsylvania can maximize infrastructure investments and become a more attractive location for future, shovel-ready projects.
Our Solutions
Senate Bill 350 and other permitting reforms complement a set of comprehensive solutions we’ve developed to reform the permitting process. Together, these reforms address state agency resources, permit deadlines, and updates to the permit appeals process that have long been the crux of employer complaints and will help drive more investment and get more projects permitted and built expediently (and safely!) than ever before.
Leading the Call on Permitting Reform
The PA Chamber spearheaded a group of 68 leading business associations and local chambers of commerce in sending a letter to Governor Josh Shapiro and members of the Pennsylvania state legislature, urging them to take decisive action in reforming the state’s “dysfunctional and unpredictable permitting system.”
“The Commonwealth has too often lost out on investment to other states, and our inadequate permitting system is one key factor,” the letter reads. “The current process takes too long, lacks transparency, and costs businesses money and good-paying jobs for our state’s workers.” “Reform should be built upon the tenets of predictability, transparency, efficiency, and durability,” the letter continues. “Now is the time to coalesce around meaningful reforms that will allow our state to truly compete and lead. Doing so will build upon bipartisan momentum at the federal level to streamline permitting and unlock American investment.”
The full text of the letter is available here.
Lockstep with Labor
“Business and labor agreeing? This has been a rare sight over the years,” PA Chamber President and CEO Luke Bernstein and Pennsylvania State Building & Construction Trades Council President Rob Bair wrote in a joint op-ed in the Reading Eagle calling on state lawmakers to enact permitting reforms that will benefit businesses, employees, and communities.
While the agreement might be rare, the leaders acknowledged the bipartisan support that permitting reform has gained. Lawmakers ranging from Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro to the Republican-led Senate have agreed that the current process is broken, and we need to work together to ensure it gets fixed!
The op-ed outlines several bipartisan steps lawmakers should take to streamline the state’s permitting process, including:
- Having permits be “deemed approved” if an agency fails to meet a required deadline;
- Allowing for qualified, third-party reviewers of permit applications;
- Providing certainty to state agencies that their decisions will stand up in court;
- Limiting attorney’s fees to combat frivolous lawsuits; and
- Introducing transparency into the process by allowing applicants to see the exact status of their applications.