{"id":129329,"date":"2026-03-04T13:18:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T13:18:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/129329\/"},"modified":"2026-03-04T13:18:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T13:18:06","slug":"faster-permits-or-your-money-back-it-worked-in-pennsylvania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/129329\/","title":{"rendered":"Faster Permits\u2014Or Your Money Back? It Worked in Pennsylvania."},"content":{"rendered":"

This essay first appeared<\/a> on City Journal\u2019s Substack.<\/p>\n

Several years ago, Pennsylvania had a permitting problem. Thousands of applications for building permits and environmental approvals sat in bureaucratic limbo. The state\u2019s Department of Environmental Protection alone carried a backlog of more than 2,400 permits<\/a>\u2014many of them required before construction could begin on housing, factories, energy projects, and other infrastructure.<\/p>\n

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The dysfunction extended beyond development. Pennsylvania also had some of the longest wait times in the country for issuing nursing licenses. That forced qualified workers to wait months<\/a>, or leave the state entirely, before they could start work.<\/p>\n

Then Pennsylvania tried something different. It promised to issue new permits quickly\u2014or give applicants their money back.<\/p>\n

Under a program dubbed \u201cPAyback<\/a>,\u201d agencies were required to publish firm review timelines. If they missed their deadline, applicants would receive a full refund of their permit fee. The initiative was part of a broader push<\/a> by Governor Josh Shapiro to modernize the state\u2019s permitting procedures and \u201ckeep Pennsylvania moving at the speed of business.\u201d Since its launch, the state has slashed backlogs and dramatically shortened approval times.<\/p>\n

At a moment when federal permitting reform remains stalled<\/a> in Washington, Pennsylvania is demonstrating how states can streamline regulatory processes without sacrificing environmental standards while improving service delivery to residents and businesses. Clear deadlines, transparency, and accountability can change bureaucratic behavior. Other states should take notice.<\/p>\n

The results of Pennsylvania\u2019s experiment have been impressive<\/a>. Since 2023, average processing times for business filings in Pennsylvania dropped from 14 days to one. Doctors\u2019 licenses went from 43 days to five. Pharmacist licenses fell from 20 days to four. Nursing licenses that took months are now issued in just six days.<\/p>\n

Faster processing meant agencies could finally eliminate backlogs. Last fall, the Department of Environmental Protection announced that it had eliminated<\/a> its longstanding permit backlog entirely.<\/p>\n

Ironically, because of this success, the refund provision has barely been used. Since PAyback launched, the state has issued just five refunds<\/a>, according to recent data. The possibility of issuing refunds created a credible performance commitment. Agencies now have a clear incentive to meet deadlines\u2014and visible consequences if they do not.<\/p>\n

As public-administration scholar Donald Moynihan observed<\/a> in a case study of the reforms, the success stemmed not from a \u201cvague governmentwide performance initiative,\u201d but from targeting specific bottlenecks. \u201cThe targets were public, which motivated personnel to meet them, created accountability, and made it easy to communicate progress to the public and stakeholders,\u201d Moynihan writes. This transparency made the deadlines real and effective.<\/p>\n

The refund guarantee, though headline-grabbing, was one part of a larger permit modernization<\/a> effort. Shapiro\u2019s administration pursued a suite of reforms that paired accountability with broader structural changes. That began with a comprehensive audit of every permit, license, and certification issued by state agencies. The Department of Environmental Protection alone identified 784 unique permits or licenses. Across all state agencies, the total came to 2,482 separate government approvals. Before the audit, no centralized inventory existed.<\/p>\n

From there, Pennsylvania established formal permit \u201cshot clocks,\u201d requiring agencies to define and publish standard processing times for each type of application. An online permitting dashboard<\/a> now allows users to track applications in real time rather than calling agency offices for updates. The administration also launched an Office of Transformation and Opportunity\u2014a one-stop shop<\/a> for businesses seeking to expand in Pennsylvania, designed to navigate what had previously been a maze of overlapping agencies and requirements.<\/p>\n

Another noteworthy reform was the SPEED program<\/a>, which allows applicants to pay for qualified third-party professionals to conduct initial technical permit reviews, with agency staff still responsible for the final sign-off. In practice, developers can move to the front of the line by bringing in private expertise to supplement government capacity. Rather than waiting for government to hire its way out of a backlog, the state allowed the private sector to help clear it.<\/p>\n

The economic payoff of these policies has been tangible. Last summer, Amazon announced<\/a> that it would invest at least $20 billion to build multiple AI infrastructure campuses in Pennsylvania\u2014the largest private-sector capital investment in the state\u2019s history. The decision underscores what\u2019s at stake in the permitting debate: businesses decide where to invest partly based on regulatory certainty and speed. Pennsylvania\u2019s permitting reforms strengthened<\/a> its competitive position.<\/p>\n

That competitive dimension is critical. States operate in a federal system where residents and businesses can vote with their feet. They compete for jobs, tax base, and investment. Unlike Washington, they feel the immediate economic consequences of bureaucratic delay.<\/p>\n

Other states are starting to follow suit. Last month, New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill signed an executive order<\/a> launching a similar set of reforms<\/a>, including a permit inventory, public dashboards, processing deadlines, and the creation of a \u201cregulatory simplification team.\u201d Legislators in Iowa have recently proposed<\/a> similar permit transparency measures. Even states long associated with regulatory paralysis, such as New York and California, are reexamining<\/a> their environmental review systems in the face of housing shortages and infrastructure bottlenecks.<\/p>\n

The federal government, meantime, remains largely stuck. Congressional debates over permitting reform continue to stall<\/a> amid disputes over which energy sources should receive faster approvals and which environmental reviews must remain untouched. States don\u2019t have the luxury of that kind of paralysis.<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania went from having one of the worst permitting environments in the country to one of the best. As other states are now reconsidering their permitting and environmental review processes, they\u2019d do well to study its success.<\/p>\n

Shawn Regan<\/a> is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.<\/p>\n

Photo by Jason Ardan\/The Citizens’ Voice via Getty Images<\/p>\n

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City Journal is a publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This essay first appeared on City Journal\u2019s Substack. Several years ago, Pennsylvania had a permitting problem. Thousands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":{"0":"post-129329","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","10":"tag-pennsylvania-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}