When he took office Jan. 2, Mayor Adrian Fenty expected the worst for the District’s permitting and licensing agency, which had long been chastised for poor customer service, below-par employees, inefficient management and allegations of corruption.
What’s wrong with the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs?
“Everything,” Fenty said Friday during a meeting with Examiner editors and reporters. “It really is an agency that across the board is managed, administered and structured substandard. We’re going to have to do a lot. As I’ve told a couple people in the last week, it really is like the schools without kids. It’s managed that poorly. We have to really turn it around.”
An agency with expansive responsibilities, DCRA issues business licenses and permits, conducts inspections, enforces building, housing and safety codes and regulates land use and development. But its traditionally bad performance is a sore subject for the business and development community, and the FBI has investigated allegations of bribery by at least one inspector.
Fenty said he has no intention of breaking up the department.
“There are agencies the size of DCRA, agencies bigger than DCRA that are very well run,” he said. “I just think it has not been attended to like it should have been.”
DCRA interim Director Lisa Morgan last week announced changes to boost customer confidence, and to make the permitting and licensing processes less stressful. It all starts with DCRA’s new slogan: “Making all the right moves — Right from the start.”
Online access is now available to construction permit applications, residential zoning standards, a guide to required permit reviews, and target and actual review times. And for the next few months, many DCRA permitting functions will be relocated to the seventh floor of 941 N. Capitol St. NE, while the second floor center is renovated.
“We’ve placed a lot of valuable information on the Internet and in hand-outs,” Morgan said in a statement. “But this is just the beginning, we’ll be creating even more web content, electronic forms and hand-outs over the next few months.”
But Morgan is unlikely to be named the next permanent DCRA director, Fenty said.
“In DCRA we don’t think we can hire somebody from within, which is a great way to hire someone,” Fenty said. “That shows that there’s at least one problem.”
