Editorial: Fixing Department of Planning and Permits Problems

Every significant project that Oahu residents hope for requires plans and permits, so the shortcomings of the office tasked with overseeing that task — the city’s Department of Planning and Permits — could be a major impediment.

Mayor Rick Blangiardi has made overcoming this hurdle a core element of his campaign. A year into his tenure, the progress report was due, and the State of the City speech was the right time to deliver it.

In his speech on Tuesday, Blangiardi laid out big plans to improve affordable housing, including tax incentives and other financing strategies. But none of this will gain traction without fixing some serious issues at DPP.

A year ago, five current and former DPP employees were arrested on federal bribery allegations, underscoring the feeling some at DPP are using a pay-to-play rulebook to reinforce its image as an agency mired in bureaucratic inefficiency .

Addressing dysfunctions in the department, Blangiardi described a DPP self-assessment to identify “gaps, inefficiencies and irregularities”. The mayor cited a DPP administrative audit of the outside assessors who provide permit-acceleration services: only about half of their projects met permit requirements.

Blangiardi’s approach starts with increasing staff at DPP. In three years, 80 positions are to be added and 80 positions to be filled. There’s new housing permit modernization software that he promised to roll out later this year. Much of the backlog has been the approval of solar photovoltaic systems and there is now an online platform to streamline this process as well.

The administration is also expanding the city’s active role in financing, issuing tax-exempt bonds for private activities, and granting general excise tax exemptions to qualifying affordable housing projects.

Why does this shaky stuff matter? Quite simply, he said, without solutions, the drive for housing and any post-COVID economic recovery will fail.

No argument here. Blangiardi needs to stay on that agenda and keep everyone informed. The mayor said staff increases and reforms would help morale. The taxpayer has to hope that they also address the obvious shortcomings in oversight and all these daubs.

It will take years to redeem a decades-long breach of public trust, no doubt a mission stretching beyond Blangiardi’s tenure at Honolulu Hale.