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MutterFodder's avatar

I own a building in Washington state that rents to a preschool. (MGP is my rep) You can't use the same sink for food prep as you do for washing hands, for example, so we had to install an extra sink. When we were going through the permitting process to get ready to open, the building department rep made a careless mistake that cost us an extra $10,000 and two months. They would sometimes give us incorrect information, we would follow their instructions, and then the inspector would tell us it was something different. No recourse - we just had to eat their mistakes. We have a huge waiting list for parents desperate to find care for their kids, but can't accommodate any more kids due to the bog of regulations that would make it prohibitively expensive to expand.

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Greg Jordan-Detamore's avatar

This also seems like a prime example of the problem—both within government operations and in terms of government policies regulating people and businesses—of creating an environment of “No one seems to know for sure what the laws/regulations do or don’t allow; you only find out for sure if someone decides you’ve broken them and takes enforcement action.” Everyone just sticks to whatever seems the safest option, whether it’s not peeling fruit or mandating an Enterprise Service Bus.

It should be easier to get definitive answers about what is allowed!

To be fair, such answers do exist for plenty of things, e.g. getting building permits approved prior to construction. But far too many other things effectively operate in a way that’s analogous to “we don’t issue building permits—just do your best to interpret the law, and we’ll take enforcement action after you’ve built the building if we decide you were wrong.”

People inside and outside of government ought to be able to get more definitive answers in the form of “GO energy” and not just “STOP energy” (as you referenced in the other post).

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