Refunds for Missed Permit Deadlines

A policy lever where agencies publish firm review timelines and must refund application fees if they miss the deadline, creating a credible, low-cost enforcement mechanism to speed approvals. Pennsylvania’s PAyback program paired the guarantee with audits and process changes and saw dramatic drops in permit and professional-license wait times and an elimination of an environmental-permit backlog. — If adopted more widely, fee‑refund guarantees could become a scalable state-level fix to chronic permitting and licensing delays that block housing, energy, and workforce deployment.