Permitting Transparency and Accountability Act
Summary
What This Bill Does
The bill requires the head of each federal agency that issues permits to maintain a website page showing the status of each permit application. For every application, the page must identify stages already completed by the issuing agency or any other reviewing agency, the number of days spent in each stage, the current stage and its duration, contact information for each individual reviewer, the stages still required, and an estimated decision timeline. The measure uses the Administrative Procedure Act's definitions of agency and license, and it treats a non-issuing agency as a reviewing agency when that agency reviews the application or participates in any step toward issuance. It creates transparency duties but sets no deadline for the permit decision itself and does not alter substantive approval standards.
Who Benefits and How
Federal permit applicants benefit from a centralized, application-specific view of completed work, delay duration, responsible reviewers, remaining steps, and the agency's estimated decision date. Permit-dependent construction developers and other regulated applicants gain information that can improve project scheduling, identify stalled reviews, and make follow-up with the correct agency employee more efficient.
Who Bears the Burden and How
Covered permit-issuing agencies must build and continuously update public webpages with detailed process and timing data for each application they handle. Reviewing agency staff must provide current stage, duration, and individual contact information for publication, creating data-maintenance and privacy-management work even though they do not issue the final permit.
Key Provisions
- Requires each covered permit-issuing agency to publish a permit-application status webpage.
- Requires disclosure of completed stages, days spent in each stage, current status, and time at the current stage.
- Requires reviewer contact information, remaining process stages, and an estimated determination timeline.
- Defines covered agencies, permits, and reviewing agencies by reference to the Administrative Procedure Act and the bill's participation test.
Evidence Chain:
This summary is generated from the full bill text using AI analysis. Expand "Detailed Analysis" below for identified beneficiaries/burden bearers with clause-level evidence links.
At a Glance
What This Bill Does
Require every federal permit-issuing agency to publish application-specific status, timing, reviewer contact, remaining-stage, and estimated-decision information online.
Key Policy Areas
Government Operations, Regulatory Policy
Primary Purpose
Require every federal permit-issuing agency to publish application-specific status, timing, reviewer contact, remaining-stage, and estimated-decision information online.
Policy Domains
Permitting Transparency and Accountability Act
Identified Gains
- Federal permit applicants
- Permit-dependent construction developers
Identified Costs
- Covered permit-issuing agencies
- Reviewing agency staff and administrators
Sponsors
Legislative Progress
ReportedCommittee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Ordered to be …
Mr. Scott of Florida (for himself, Ms. Ernst, Mr. Tillis, …
Read twice and referred to the Committee on Homeland Security …
Introduced in Senate
Stakeholder Effects
cui bono?How this legislation distributes effects. Mention counts reflect frequency, not effect magnitude.
Covered federal permit-issuing agencies, Federal reviewing agency staff
Bill Structure & Actor Mappings
Who is "The Secretary" in each section?
- "applicant"
- → Applicant for a federal permit
- "covered_agency"
- → Federal agency that issues a permit
- "reviewing_agency"
- → Non-issuing federal agency participating in permit review
Key Definitions
Terms defined in this bill
A license as defined in 5 U.S.C. section 551.
An agency that issues permits.
A non-issuing agency that reviews a permit application or participates in any step of the issuance process.
We use a combination of our own taxonomy and classification in addition to large language models to assess meaning and potential beneficiaries. High confidence means strong textual evidence. Always verify with the original bill text.
Learn more about our methodology