Governor Youngkin Signs Executive Order to Promote Transparency and Efficiency in Permitting and Licensing

“Since day one, we have made it a top priority to improve government efficiency for Virginians. We’ve reduced red tape, streamlined 50,000 regulatory requirements and saved Virginia citizens over $1.2 billion. Now, with our first in the nation approval tracking system, we are making it clearer, easier, and more efficient to apply for these critical approvals and taking a big step towards making Virginia the best place to live, work, and raise a family,” said Governor Glenn Youngkin.

“Virginia is the only state that has built a government-wide platform that includes permit applications,” said Office of Regulatory Management Director Reeve Bull. “Executive Order 39 takes this pioneering work to the next level, tasking agencies with bringing the few remaining permit types online and with speeding up processing times across the board.”

“Governor Youngkin has been clear since day one – streamlining the regulatory and permitting processes while reducing regulatory burdens are not at odds with environmental protection. We can, and will, do both – create an increasingly prosperous and unencumbered economy, and an increasingly clean environment. Not only is this possible, it is essential, because our economy and natural resources are integrally linked. A strong economy provides the resources to protect our environment,” said Secretary of Natural and Historic Resources Travis Voyles.

“We are thrilled to have started the work of revolutionizing the permitting process in this Administration through the Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) Permitting Enhancement and Evaluation Platform,” said DEQ Director Mike Rolband. “We have used process improvements and our public scheduling and tracking system to improve our permit processing times by 70%, while allowing the public to see the proposed schedule for every permit and track how its review is proceeding.”

“Our responsibility is to ensure licensing minimum standards protect the health, safety and welfare of our Commonwealth without unnecessarily restricting approval and critical vocational growth,” said Secretary of Labor Brian Slater. “We need to make sure that we get people to work quickly, so they can start serving the public and providing for their families as soon as possible, as long as they meet the basic qualifications to enter their field.”

“Increasing transparency, process efficiencies, and digitization of the permit and license application process is a critical component to supporting business growth and economic development,” said Secretary of Commerce and Trade Caren Merrick. “Whether it is shortening critical infrastructure timelines through permit reforms or increasing the timeliness of professional licensing, these actions help make Virginia the best place to live, work, and raise a family.”

The Office of Regulatory Management (ORM) was created in June of 2022 and has since made significant progress in modernizing regulation to alleviate burdens on Virginia citizens and promote transparency throughout the regulatory process. The Office of Transformation collaborated in these efforts, and the initiative is one of many successful transformations the office has driven across agencies in the Commonwealth.

Reforms implemented by ORM have already yielded impressive results, with agencies shaving over 50,000 regulatory requirements (17.5% of the total number). Enhanced transparency has been at the core of these initiatives. ORM has worked with agencies to ensure that 100% of regulatory actions and guidance document amendments appear online. And it worked closely with the Department of Environmental Quality in connection with a pilot program that ultimately went state-wide as the Virginia Permit Transparency (VPT) permitting dashboard. VPT covers over 100,000 applications issued per year across six agencies. Now that these permits are available online, the participating agencies can turn to tracking and improving processing times.

The Executive Order builds upon these efforts by directing agencies to eliminate obsolete approvals; include approvals involving multiple steps on VPT; reduce the number and complexity of approvals through streamlining; and digitize and enhance the user experience for the approval application process.

Licensing and permitting reform will bring about a dramatic improvement in the Virginian’s experience, enforcing Governor Youngkin’s promise to ensure Virginia is the best place to live, work, and raise a family.