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PF— <br />Audif Results <br />Beyond the state law requirements, sharing permit review times with applicants <br />helps ensure predictability, a key Growth Management Act goal. Governments can <br />also use this information internally to identify areas where process improvements <br />may be needed. Therefore, although not a requirement for all governments, this is a <br />leading practice for all governments. <br />For this portion of our audit work, we surveyed other local governments that are <br />required to post these reports, so that we could measure statewide compliance <br />with this requirement. Our survey population included 45 required governments: <br />42 responded, for a 93 percent response rate. For more details on our survey <br />methodology, see Appendix B. <br />c ���► one-third of local governments publicly <br />included all information requireLJ by state law <br />Of the six audited governments, four are required to publish permit performance <br />reports. Two - Bellingham and Snohomish County - did not publicly post this <br />information. When asked why they did not do so, staff said other matters had <br />taken precedence. Officials at Bellingham said that they had published permit <br />performance metrics under a previous mayor but had stopped for unknown <br />reasons; the planning director said the city intended to resume publishing this <br />information but had not yet done so. <br />Another 29 governments also failed to publish annual permit timeliness reports, <br />which means only one-third of required local governments did post them. <br />The surveyed governments that said they did not post permit performance reports <br />offered three main reasons for not complying with state law: <br />Most governments mentioned limitations in their IT systems, including <br />having older systems that Iacked the functionality necessary to track the data <br />or produce the reports, as well as working to develop and implement new <br />systems. <br />Thirteen governments said they had concerns about the quality of the data <br />they would report. <br />Seven governments said they were not aware of the requirement or believed <br />the requirement did not apply to them. <br />Growth Management Act Audit Results 33 <br />