Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the United States Fish and Wildlife Service Relating to ``Endangered and Threatened Wildlife and Plants; Lesser Prairie-Chicken; Threatened Status with Section 4(D) Rule for the Northern Distinct Population Segment and Endangered Status for the Southern Distinct Population Segment''

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. RICKETTS. Madam President, I rise today to join my colleagues in calling for the need for permitting reform for our Federal Agencies. The current system we have right now is in dire need of reform. It takes too long and costs taxpayers too much money. As Governor of Nebraska, I had direct experience with this. Let me share some of those experiences.

The Natural Resources District, which is in charge of flood mitigation around Offutt Air Force Base, saw the need to raise the levees around Offutt Air Force Base.

Offutt Air Force Base is very important. Not only does it house the 55th Wing, but it also is the home of Strategic Command, which controls our nuclear forces.

They went about the process of getting the levees raised; however, the Army Corps of Engineers took 6 years--6 years--to grant the permit. The permit was granted, and construction was set to begin in March of 2019.

March 2019 was also the same month that we experienced the most widespread flooding in our State's history. As part of that flooding, Offutt Air Force Base was damaged. Floodwaters covered the runway and damaged over a dozen buildings. Ultimately, the cost to the U.S. taxpayers was nearly $1 billion. If the Army Corps of Engineers had only given the permit in 4 years--which, by the way, still would have been horrible service--those levees would have been built up, and we could have avoided nearly $1 billion in damage to Offutt Air Force Base, risking our national security and costing taxpayer dollars.

In another case, the Natural Resources District was looking to raise a different levee, R616-613. That permit took 7 years to get issued and at a cost of $6 million. The overall project was set for $45 million. That means that the cost of the permit alone was 13 percent of the overall cost of the project.

In hearings today with the Army Corps of Engineers, we find out that the Army Corps of Engineers has about 80,000 regulatory reviews and permits they issue, and they claim they turn those permits around in 11 months. However, they have no system of detecting or reviewing outliers like these 6- and 7-year permits, nor do they have any goals for what a permit should cost in the overall percentage of a project.

Here is the good news: This is something we can fix. In the State of Nebraska, we undertook permitting reform as well because we wanted to do a better job serving our customers and reduce our costs.

For example, with our air construction permits that the Nebraska Department of Environment and Energy issues, we looked at the process of doing that. It took almost 200 days to issue those permits. The process to issue those was 110 steps long. Only four of those steps actually offered any value. We were able to cut that number of steps down to 22 steps, and by 2019, it cut the days it takes to issue that permit down to 65--all without sacrificing any quality.

Through our department of transportation, we also have green sheets. These are the sheets we give to contractors to make sure they are complying with things like environmental regulations, antiquities, endangered species, erosion control, and also things such as hazardous waste disposal. It was taking us about 16 days to issue those, and the process was 87 steps long. We cut it down to 60 steps and were able to reduce the time it takes to issue those green sheets by 81 percent, down to just 3 days. What that does is it then allows the contractor to get in the field and start building our roads faster, employing people faster.

When you have a regulatory environment where people know they can have that certainty, it helps businesses. In fact, Yahoo said they invested about $20 million in Nebraska because they knew they would have that regulatory certainty in our State because we focused on good customer service.

We need to have the same sort of permitting reform at the Federal Government. In the State of Nebraska, we use Lean Six Sigma, which is a process of proven methodology to be able to do our permitting reform. Our Federal Agencies can do something similar.

I look forward to working with Ranking Member Capito on the Environmental and Public Works Committee on how we can come up with ways to reform our permitting system here at our Federal Agencies. This is something that will impact power generation, power transmission, infrastructure, flood control--a number of different things. This is vitally important for our country to continue to grow, for us to create jobs and ultimately be able to save taxpayers' money.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source