Online Permitting Portal Bill Becomes Law

From PA Chamber of Business & Industry

Act 107 of 2018 (formerly H.B. 1284) brought a welcomed and overdue reform to the permitting process in Pennsylvania when it was signed by Gov. Tom Wolf last week.  The measure directs the state Department of Community and Economic Development to create a one-stop-shop online permitting portal for businesses, in order to help streamline and bring efficiency to existing permitting processes.

The PA Chamber advocated in support of this measure as one bill within a broader legislative package of much-needed regulatory reforms, and had previously communicated to lawmakers that recent efforts to employ e-permitting within the Department of Environmental Protection have been met with success, including improved permit review times.  “We have been encouraged so far with the results achieved by the Department of Environmental Protection moving to e-permitting in a number of their programs,” the PA Chamber wrote in a memo issued last month.  “Additional deployment and use of this type of technology across all of DEP’s permit programs … will allow for better use of taxpayer resources and improve consistency and regulatory certainty for the business community.”