Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration unveiled a new website that will allow the public to track the status of government permits.

The Virginia Permit Transparency website aims to bring “greater visibility to the regulatory and permitting processes,” said Youngkin in a statement on the release Monday. 

https://www.virginiamercury.com/blog-va/virginia-launches-platform-to-make-environmental-permit-info-public/

Piloted by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality as the Permitting Enhancement and Evaluation Platform — aptly abbreviated PEEP — the site currently includes records of permits issued by DEQ, the Virginia Department of Energy and the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. 

Permit records from the Virginia Department of Health, Department of Transportation and Department of Conservation and Recreation are scheduled to come online this summer.  

Information is available on the status of each step the permit must undergo before approval, the target and actual timelines for review and the body that oversees each step. 

The tracking system does not include any of the actual documents involved in permitting, although it lets the public more easily identify which documents might be available at a state agency. 

“Today’s launch of the Virginia Permit Transparency website is just the first step to attracting top-quality business and job opportunities to Virginia,” said Youngkin spokesman Christian Martinez. “The website was built and is configured with future expansions in mind beyond the option to ask permit reviewers follow up questions.”

The governor’s office said the Office of Regulatory Management is leading the development of the Virginia Permitting Transparency site. That office was created by an executive order from Youngkin in June 2022 with the goal of cutting regulatory requirements by 25%, streamlining the regulatory process and increasing transparency about the regulatory process. 

Youngkin chose Andrew Wheeler, the former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to lead the office after Senate Democrats blocked his appointment as the state’s secretary of natural and historic resources during the 2022 legislative session.