I was struck by the juxtapose of these two items:

• AquaMetal is building a new environmentally-friendly battery recycling plant near Sparks, NV. They considered California, but “In California, you put in your permit application, and six months later, someone tells you you filled out line 26 wrong.”
• “(T)he Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development (GO-Biz) today awarded 23 state officials across various agencies and departments certificates of completion for the Lean 6-Sigma training program administered by GO-Biz which helps streamline permitting and make state government more business friendly.”

California has many progressive and necessary regulations, but the state does an awful job of administering them. Too often, the bureaucrats are too wrapped up in believing the process is actually important. Instead, they should be thinking about how they can ease the permitting and compliance process so that businesses can focus on achieving everyone’s goals.

A bureaucrat should be filling in the missing blanks rather than waiting for months to kick back an application. A friend noted the all too common “NIGO” response–“not in good order.” Being NIGO’d is not conducive to good business.