{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://dustyjohnson.house.gov/media/press-releases/johnson-peters-introduce-bipartisan-legislation-digitize-permitting-process", "Johnson, Peters Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Digitize the Permitting Process", "2025-07-17", "2025", "2025-07", "Republican", "House", "SD", "Dusty Johnson", "J000301", "dustyjohnson.house.gov", "dustyjohnson", "https://dustyjohnson.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "Washington, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Representatives Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.) and Scott Peters (D-CA) introduced the bipartisan ePermit Act to digitize the United States permitting process, reducing processing time for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews.\n\nIn April, President Trump published a memorandum to emphasize the importance of modernizing permitting technology. In May, President Trump launched a Permitting Technology Action Plan directing federal agencies to make maximum use of technology in the environmental review and permitting process. The ePermit Act builds on the recommendations from the Administration and provides legislative clarity and direction on how agencies should implement such an electronic permitting system.\n\n\u201cThe government, industries, and citizens all agree that it takes too long to build in America,\u201d said Johnson. \u201cCompleting the permitting process by paper is an archaic waste of time. Digitizing the system will speed up the process, save federal dollars, and cut down delays. Making this commonsense change will unleash investment in American communities and workers.\u201d\n\n\u201cOur permitting system is old, complicated, and slow\u2014if we want to build the roads, bridges, broadband, and clean energy of the future, we need to modernize and streamline the permit process,\u201d said Peters. \u201cOur bipartisan ePermit Act builds on the efforts of the last two Administrations and brings our permitting process into the 21st century. I look forward to working with Representative Johnson to pass this commonsense bill into law.\u201d\n\nBackground:\n\nThe current permitting process has failed to ensure project permitting is on-time and on-task. Oftentimes, the root causes of delays in the environmental review process have little to do with questions about environmental protection and a lot to do with failure to embrace modern technology and move on from legacy bureaucratic approaches, like paper forms.\n\nCongress must address the root causes for delays, which include compiling and reviewing lengthy paper documents, a lack of accessibility and transparency \u2013 leading to misunderstanding, conflicts, and all too often, protracted litigation \u2013 and continued reliance on outdated technologies and processes for interagency review and comment.\n\nThe ePermit Act would address these root causes by establishing a framework for agencies to implement a digital permitting system and unified portal.", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-07T14:40:33Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://dustyjohnson.house.gov/media/press-releases/johnson-peters-introduce-bipartisan-legislation-digitize-permitting-process"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.9335977956652641, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}