White House Releases New Permitting Action Plan

What happened: The Biden administration May 11 released a ‘permitting action plan‘ aimed at accelerating the time it takes to complete infrastructure projects.

Why it matters: The plan’s goal is to ‘ensure the timely and sound delivery of much-needed upgrades to America’s infrastructure.’ However, the plan itself highlights many actions that are already part of federal law, including lead agencies setting schedules for environmental reviews and using the Federal Permitting Dashboard to increase transparency of the regulatory process. The plan also calls for a new analysis of greenhouse gas emissions to be included in the permitting dashboard.

One of the most significant permitting reforms introduced by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) was setting a two-year goal for the completion of the environmental review and approval process by legislatively codifying the Trump administration’s ‘One Federal Decision’ executive order. While the action plan states that it ‘fully leverages’ the IIJA’s permitting improvements, One Federal Decision is only mentioned in a footnote and there is no discussion of completing the environmental review and approval process within two years.

What’s next: The Council on Environmental Quality will be issuing guidance to agencies on the action plan within 90 days. Then agencies are directed to issue their own guidance on how to achieve the plan’s goals. There has been no indication whether the agencies will take comments on any of the guidance once issued. ARTBA will continue working with the federal agencies to ensure the voice of the transportation construction community is represented on this issue.