Editorial: Changes at Department of Planning and Permitting looking better

Honolulu is grappling with many crises, from affordable housing to rising seas. But solving them will be all but impossible unless the dysfunction of a core city agency, the Department of Planning and Permitting, is addressed first.

Fortunately, there are new signs of life in the long-promised reform of DPP, which at last could remove some of the obstacles to efficiency — as long as the administration shows the determination needed to make the changes stick.

The ability of DPP to issue permits enables the construction of homes, the review of projects that may be set too close to the shoreline, the installation of solar panels to advance the state’s clean-energy goals. And for many years, that capacity has been hobbled by bureaucracy and a need for updated systems for permit applications and review.

Additionally, the department’s function is to implement the controls on building and development to ensure that standards of safety and land use are maintained.

And when faith in enforcement lags due to lapses in pursuing citations and fines, growth and development controls are lost. The effect of this can be seen in the proliferation of everything from illegal vacation rentals in residential zones to the “monster homes” that strain the limits of city infrastructure.

Simply delivering adequate permitting services within a reasonable time frame is the critical first step that Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s administration seems poised to take. The long waits for permits have put a completely unfair burden on applicants whose larger business or residential plans are left hanging.

In addition to the understandable frustration and financial loss applicants may face, this also creates a fertile ground for corruption, as applicants attempt to make an end run on the process.

And there are city officials who have been drawn to the lure. Most recently, in March 2021, this led to federal bribery charges, five cases involving people who were at the time either current or former DPP employees.

Blangiardi had made fixing DPP a central part of his 2020 campaign, and this corruption scandal certainly added fuel to the fire.

While the feds handled the prosecution, the city administration turned its focus to prevention, seeking to clear the actual bureaucratic backlogs. Dean Uchida, then the DPP director, along with Chief Innovation Strategist Danette Maruyama, both resigned in September, the mayor citing a disagreement in strategy.

Blangiardi pressed ahead, along with Dawn Takeuchi Apuna, now the acting director, to implement a new approach, a welcome show of resolve. As a start, DPP has remade its website (honolulu.gov/dpp), with a new tab on permitting to pull together crucial, up-to-date information on the process.

DPP already has used current automation “bot” technology to prescreen the estimated 3,500 applications and identify those that can proceed to review. Starting Monday, department officials have said, applicants will receive email notices with indications of any elements that need work.

This in itself would be an improvement. Too often, applicants have been in the dark on their status, losing time that could have been used filling in any blanks. The mayor has said he hopes this could cut the average delay in permit approvals, now about six months, roughly in half.

THERE IS MORE on the to-do list for Blangiardi and DPP, not the least of which is the matter of collecting fines, starting with violations of the new short-term rentals ordinance. Here, too, the administration is following the correct instinct by deciding to hire a collection agency, which is incentivized to pursue payment aggressively to reap part of that revenue.

Apuna has pledged that the city’s goal is to collect all the fines rather than negotiate them down, or away entirely. However, the proper aim here is clear: It’s less about padding city coffers than in curbing the drive to violate the law to begin with.

There’s plainly a need to do that.

“We’re not good at collecting fines,” the mayor said last week, appearing on the Honolulu Star-Advertiser “Spotlight Hawaii” webcast. That’s understated, for sure. A recent accounting has shown uncollected penalties amounting to $130 million. If this works well — still a big “if” — the collection outsourcing should be considered for other delinquent penalty categories.

What needs to happen now is oversight, and the setting of proper benchmarks to gauge progress. Understandably, the Honolulu City Council has cut the department some slack. In October, the Council postponed a proposed audit of DPP, allowing the agency two months from that point to solve some of its problems.

But the Council, and the public, need to hear regular feedback on the goals of reform, and how it’s proceeding.

DPP has so much on its plate, including the overhaul of its land-use code, and it needs to get up to speed. Though this will be a long trek, at least its leaders are headed in the right direction.