Notary no longer needed for most permits

Many Houston business owners are celebrating a new ordinance that drops the need for a notary when applying for hundreds of permits and allows the city to offer more applications online.

The Houston City Council lauded the change as business friendly and tech savvy.

“So many of the permits require you to notarize your statements, which makes it difficult to do things online,” said Mayor Annise Parker. “We think you ought to be able to get virtually any permit from the city of Houston online.”

Astate law passed in 2011 cleared the way.

Aone-page bill, authored by Galveston Democrat Rep. Craig Eiland and passed without much attention, allows governments and courts, for the first time outside of prisons, to use unsworn declarations instead of notarized affidavits.

The same punishments for perjury are connected to the declarations, which favor simple language over legal terminology.

“It just means you don’t need to have a notary put a stamp next to it,” said Bruce Haupt, the city’s deputy assistant finance director. “It makes the paperwork side of this a lot easier.”

Bennett Sandlin, executive director of the Texas Municipal League, said he is unaware of any other cities updating their ordinances since the 2011 law. Like many business leaders, it was the first he heard of Eiland’s

bill. “It sounds like Houston’s on top of it,” Sandlin said.

It is not clear exactly how many permits and licenses will be affected, but Haupt counts them in the hundreds, ranging from an antique dealer license to a fire alarm permit.

Notarized affidavits will continue to be used with applications for building permits, certificates of occupancy, modular home placement permits and manufactured home permits.

City officials admit they did not consult Houston business leaders before making the change, saying the community usually welcomes anything that makes permitting easier.

Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business, welcomed the idea.

“Anything that can be done to reduce the cost and annoyance of permitting is a good thing,” he said.

Parker admitted Houston lags behind some other cities.

She said expanding online permitting will be a priority in ongoing efforts to better share information between departments and to upgrade technology.