DEEP to streamline services

The head of the state’s environmental agency has a message for business: She wants to make it faster and simpler to get permits and comply with regulations protecting Connecticut’s air, water and soil.

Speaking to 220 business leaders, lawyers, lobbyists and consultants on Thursday, Katie Dykes, commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, presented a new “20 by 20” initiative — 20 goals her agency will accomplish over the next 18 months.

These are not rollbacks of environmental protections. Rather they are proposals to improve bureaucracy and make it easier for companies to comply with state oversight. By making the agency more productive, Connecticut may see more enforcement of environmental rules, Dykes said.

“We have so much progress that we can make in improving the predictability, efficiency and transparency of our regulatory processes,” Dykes said. “That is what is driving our efforts.”

Businesses in Connecticut hope that means real change.

Michael Polo, president of Manchester-based aerospace manufacturer ACMT Inc., described his own difficult relationship with DEEP — one that sometimes boxed him and other companies out of opportunities, he said.

“Working with them has been very slow,” Polo said. “We wouldn’t even look into doing anything to do with chemicals here because it is way too difficult.”

Although it employs consultants to help with environmental regulations, ACMT once decided not to purchase a new facility in Connecticut because the permitting process would take years, Polo said. Meanwhile, in Florida, where ACMT has part of his operation, permits are guaranteed a look in about two weeks under a fast-pass process, he said.

“It is unbelievable how easy it is,” he said. “It’s more of a conversation than it is a ruling, so it is much more collaborative.”

Taking a small step in that direction, Dykes laid out 16 of the Connecticut

environmental agency’s goals on Wednesday, such as publishing permitting time frames to the web, giving companies better technical assistance before they apply for permits and moving more applications online. She plans to put more of her agency’s environmental data online and develop predictable timetables for adopting new regulations. They will look at possibly consolidating some types of permits and eliminating some types of permits, too.

The agency will crowdsource from businesses and the public the last four goals.

Her presentation acknowledged that DEEP may have a long way to go to be truly business-friendly: One category of permits has 1,200 pending applications, she said.

Dykes’s “strategic, metric-driven” initiative excites business leaders, said Eric Brown, vice president of manufacturing policy and outreach for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association.

“Soliciting input from the regulated community is positive,” he said.

But Connecticut companies still struggle under burdensome, time-consuming permit processes when they want to open in a new

location or add a new product, he said. That can hinder the rapid pace of innovation. And it is unlikely to disappear, even with a solid dose of agency streamlining, he said.

Dykes spoke to the CBIA’s Energy and Environment conference at the Red Lion Hotel in Cromwell on Thursday. She contrasted her approach to that of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump.

“When you have a federal government that is retreating from its environmental obligations, that is in denial about the impacts of climate change, what it is doing is holding back investment,” she said. “What we think builds our competitive economic advantage for the state of Connecticut is having that sound environmental quality, that clean and healthy environment that makes people want to live here, that makes people want to grow and expand jobs here.”

Dykes was nominated to lead the DEEP by Gov. Ned Lamont in November, before he took office. She chaired the Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority under former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy.

Lamont, like Malloy, is pressing to make government

more user-friendly by cutting back some regulations and bureaucracy to help residents and, especially, businesses. That means changes at the state Department of Motor Vehicles, Administrative Services and now Energy and Environmental Protection.

Lamont championed legislation to reduce residents trips to the DMV by extending the life of drivers licenses — a change that was approved by the General Assembly last week.

In April, Lamont proposed several ideas to slash the state’s red tape. The state Department of Administrative Services is making several procedural changes including creating a state certification for small businesses copying the federal process and updating state data processing to allow more online bidding for state contracts.

During his administration, Malloy also took many strides to reduce some regulations with the goal of helping businesses, saving the state money and reducing the workload for government staff, which shrunk by about 1,000 workers during his administration. In 2014, he signed legislation eliminating nearly 1,000 pages of state regulations his office deemed unnecessary.