Or alternatively, companies can bribe a few local politicians to stall, then start building anyways when the deadline hits.
Comment on GOP overhaul of broadband permit laws: Cities hate it, cable companies love it
HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world 4 weeks agoIn other words, city governments are mad that they can no longer hold up approvals in order to get more fees coughbribes from these companies.
mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks ago
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
That’s closer to it. The local permitting jurisdictions get nothing out of approving or denying applications. They get held up for two reasons: the proposal is incomplete/unapprovable by law; and political intervention from an outside entity. Maybe the mayor or a commissioner, sometimes a director of an agency or organization. That’s where any bribery or other such shenanigans would take place. Not the permitting office.
AliasAKA@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
More like, large corporations not at all invested in local communities are now empowered to completely run rough shod over local governance processes. They’re actually more likely to pay for folks to stall out slow approval processes so that they can take advantage of this law and start building, especially when the permit would have likely been denied because it didn’t consider easements, fire or flood risks, building and local regulatory standards, or any other manner of things. So this actually increases the likelihood of bribes, and ensuring that corporations actually pay less to your local government and more to personal pockets of those being bribed.
A better version of these flawed tactics would’ve been that failure to meet timelines would open the project to public vote and also that every project would require a public option (eg government supplied bid on the infrastructure) to compete. That way if timeline expires, it’s not automatically awarded to people who have a vested interest in it expiring at the expense of a community. It could be awarded to a local municipal project instead.