permitting reform

Reinventing NEPA

What do we really want NEPA to do?  And what’s the best way to do it?

Imagining reform legislation from Congress is difficult, but it’s worth imagining, if only as a thought experiment, how we could do better.  I would suggest we start by asking what we can expect NEPA to accomplish after fifty years of judicial decisions and agency practice – and whether there are better ways of accomplishing those things.

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Permitting reform in the Trump Administration

It’s hard to do a deal when one side can’t be trusted to keep their side of the bargain

There’s more chatter about permitting reform again in Congress.  I’m supportive of the concept, and thought the deal on the table at the end of the Biden Administration was probably worth doing.  So there are now bipartisan efforts to amend NEPA, and also to do a broader permitting reform bill.  I’ll leave specific analyses of …

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SPEED bump?

Recent proposal for NEPA reform in House of Representatives is sweeping and perhaps counterproductive

The House of Representatives recently held a hearing on the SPEED Act, a proposal for NEPA reform advanced by Representatives Westerman (R-Arkansas) and Golden (D-Maine).  While the public announcement by the majority for the bill is that it is simply “commonsense upgrades,” a close review indicates that it would produce potentially dramatic changes to NEPA, …

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Another Attempt to Measure NEPA’s Impact

This most recent report is better, but still has significant flaws

The Breakthrough Institute has produced another report on litigation under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), building on a report it prepared earlier, which I sharply criticized in this prior blog post.  The updated report is a mixed bag: It doesn’t solve many of the methodological issues I identified in the earlier blogpost; it does …

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Major permitting reform will (likely) be bipartisan

Senate parliamentarian shoots down effort to use “pay to play” to avoid judicial review of NEPA

Several weeks ago I wrote about an effort by House Republicans to use reconciliation, a process which avoids the Senate filibuster, for a “pay to play” proposal to gut NEPA.  The proposal would have allowed sponsors of projects going through NEPA review to pay an extra fee and avoid judicial review of the NEPA review.  …

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The $133 Million Bat Tunnel

Here’s what permitting reform in the United Kingdom can teach the United States about building and abundance.

“We’ll rip out ‘insane’ environmental rules that block growth.” “We can’t get anything built anymore. Everything takes too long.”  “We will streamline environmental obligations. We will limit the cynical legal challenges that block major infrastructure projects. We will strip away the years of consultation that drown builders.” You might well expect these threats and worries …

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A Stealth Repeal of NEPA

Proposal from House Natural Resources Committee would effectively repeal NEPA

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives is working on reconciliation language – legislation that can pass via a majority-vote in the Senate, but only so long as it relates to fiscal matters.  It looks like House Republicans are going to try and use the reconciliation process to effectively repeal the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). …

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Permitting Reform as Policy Stability

Compromise Congressional legislation could dampen the swings of Presidential regulatory policy

I’ve noted earlier the problems that rapid swings in regulatory policy at the Presidential level have caused over the past 12 years, swinging from Obama to Trump I to Biden to Trump II.  And, as in so many other ways, the second Trump Administration is ramping up the swings to a whole new level, with …

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Fix Our Forests, version 2

A revised bipartisan proposal in the Senate is a step forward in the right direction

I wrote previously about the Fix Our Forests bill which has been passed by the House and is currently being considered by the Senate.  I noted some concerns I had about its overuse of emergency authorities, its expansion of categorical exclusions, and some changes to litigation, as well as some positive features of the bill. …

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The Downsides of Ping Pong Governance

Judicial review, by moderating policy swings, may be important to facilitating long-term investment

I’ve written about debates over permitting reform and other versions of regulatory streamlining to support the development of infrastructure that we need to address climate change.  Another view, well articulated by Nicholas Bagley at University of Michigan, is that the problem is more fundamental: Excessive focus on governmental procedures and process, reinforced by searching judicial …

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