New Abundance (Ezra Kline) YIMBY Caucus In Congress

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What’s so unacceptable about wanting to remove red tape? Anyone who has had the most minimal involvement in local zoning/licensing knows the process is wholly dysfunctional. I can’t think of a better area for democrats and republicans to make common ground.

There is an acknowledgement in the book that "red tape" gets added because something bad happened in the past.

A good example is around competitive contracting. Those laws and regs were created because of past example of fraud, waste, and abuse by those entities contracted by the government or corruption by government actors. Those who approve contracts - ie, government workers - are scared sh#tless about giving out a contract that ends up being fraudulent. So they design this crazy process to try to prevent fraud that requires lots of paperwork, measuring work in progress, etc. This all requires gobs of money to be spent by both the contractor and the government to ensure compliance. The politicians love to holler about fraud/waste/abuse and crucify any government employee who inadvertantly approved it.

How do you balance those very real issues with a desire to speedily get the project done? It's a real problem and requires a rethink about priorities.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What’s so unacceptable about wanting to remove red tape? Anyone who has had the most minimal involvement in local zoning/licensing knows the process is wholly dysfunctional. I can’t think of a better area for democrats and republicans to make common ground.

There is an acknowledgement in the book that "red tape" gets added because something bad happened in the past.

A good example is around competitive contracting. Those laws and regs were created because of past example of fraud, waste, and abuse by those entities contracted by the government or corruption by government actors. Those who approve contracts - ie, government workers - are scared sh#tless about giving out a contract that ends up being fraudulent. So they design this crazy process to try to prevent fraud that requires lots of paperwork, measuring work in progress, etc. This all requires gobs of money to be spent by both the contractor and the government to ensure compliance. The politicians love to holler about fraud/waste/abuse and crucify any government employee who inadvertantly approved it.

How do you balance those very real issues with a desire to speedily get the project done? It's a real problem and requires a rethink about priorities.

I think there should be a shorter NEPA timeline for smaller infrastructure projects and improvements to existing infrastructure should often be eligible for NEPA exemptions. I would also support federal level NEPA exemptions for solar farms. However, I do not think that Congress should interfere with local zoning rules regarding development.