Let me begin with the words a local developer recently asked during a meeting where we were considering efforts to streamline the development review and permitting process: Why do we issue permits.

His comment was made deliberately to get us bureaucrats thinking “outside the box.” Now, I don’t (usually) have any trouble thinking of creative solutions to problems, and I don’t often delude myself that doing something for a long time makes it right. I was reminded by his words that sometimes we need to rethink why we do things as well as how efficiently we do them.

While I was doing some research recently for a new book, I was freshly reminded of all the fire disasters we’ve experienced in our nation that have led to changes in the building and fire codes.

If the building and fire codes exist predominantly for public safety, then having each developer sign an agreement that they will follow the code would certainly simplify things—if we had any reason to expect that everyone would do so without any oversight. But I’ve seen (and so have you) too many violations—and violators—to trust that all business people will do the right thing and not try to cut corners where they can. And after they’ve collected their money, closed their company and moved, the recourse of angry property owners and occupants for substandard work is left to lengthy court battles. I explained to this gentleman that the reason we issue permits is the difference between Haiti and Chile. During a major earthquake, a city will sustain serious damage even with modern building codes (Chile). But creating buildings without serious attention to those codes provides a recipe for disaster (Haiti). That recipe? No codes. No oversight to make sure people construct buildings properly. And limited consequences—if any—for bad business practices.

Now, I often overstate (and oversimplify) things to make a point. That is certainly the case with my claim about the difference between Haiti and Chile. But the developer got my point.

Put simply: We issue permits to make sure that things are constructed the way we have (culturally and legally) decided they need to be built. As part of the permitting process, we review plans and check the construction in the field to make sure the codes are followed.

How, Not Why

But is there room to look at the process differently? You bet. We can take a look at which codes are most important. We can look at how big jobs should be before we need to intervene. There are some jurisdictions that issue the equivalent of a “self-inspection” in the permitting world. Minor work is sometimes allowed by certain qualified contractors with a blanket permit and little or even no field inspections.

The basic question then isn’t why we issue permits—it’s about how we administer them. It’s about how we might re-envision the way we do business so that we can make it more efficient and cost effective for both developers and government. Will something get missed? Yes. Do some things get missed now? Yes. It’s all a matter of degree, and how much risk our communities are willing to take in the name of efficiency.

In an ideal world, all contractors would follow the code, and there would be little for code enforcers to do. But it’s not an ideal world. Some level of oversight is a basic reality for the human race.

For those who insist we look at reinventing government, I say that absolutely we should. In general, we need to look at our critical public safety services and examine what we can no longer do, things that people will have to do for themselves.

But I’d also recommend that those political forces in the community who are taking advantage of the economic crisis to “reinvent” government out of business read Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit Is Transforming the Public Sector. Published in 1993 and written by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler, the basic premise of this book is that government services can be encouraged to act more creatively. The examples they found of entrepreneurial spirit in government were achieved in large part because of incentives that stimulated local governments to save instead of spend, and then to invest in things that made them more efficient, more effective—or both.

The authors stipulated that government, unlike the private sector, doesn’t have competitors that keep it sharp. I would suggest that efficiencies can either be brought about by mandate (like a tax revolt that reduces budgets) or by investing in a long-term strategies that reward creative thinking.

But creativity won’t solve all of our economic problems. And government—in this case the part that is devoted to public safety—is here for a reason.

Jim Crawford recently retired as deputy chief and fire marshal with the Vancouver (Wash.) Fire Department and is chair of the NFPA technical committee on professional qualifications for fire marshals. He has written “Fire Prevention: A Comprehensive Approach,” published by Brady, and has also written a chapter on fire prevention in “Managing Fire and Rescue Services,” published by the International City/County Managers Association. Crawford is a past president of the International Fire Marshals Association and has served on the NFPA’s Standards Council. He is a member of the IAFC.

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