The city’s Department of Planning and Permitting would continue to use third-party reviewers, but licensed architects and engineers would have to attest that their submitted plans comply with applicable laws under a proposed bill.

With an ongoing wait time of nearly a year, DPP continues to seek ways to reduce its backlog of building permit applications.

City Council Chair Tommy Waters has introduced Bill 6, which would give the DPP director authority to continue the use of third-party reviewers who are overseen by DPP staff. But new to the process would be self- certifying licensed architects and engineers, who will have to attest that any plans, specifications, computations and other data they submit to the department are true and correct.

If passed, the self-certification provision under Bill 6 would be repealed — or sunset — seven years after it takes effect.

“The department supports this bill, which will allow us — as we fix our processes (and) bring our backlog down and function more efficiently — temporarily to get outside help in our permit review,” DPP Director Dawn Take­uchi Apuna told the Council’s Committee on Zoning last week.

In addition, Takeuchi Apuna requested that the draft measure impose penalties on outside contractors who issue “false statements” to the city, “to ensure that we don’t have rubber-stampers and there are consequences for people who aren’t 100% very careful about the work they do without having to go through our permitting process.”

In March, as part of the city’s latest budget cycle, Takeuchi Apuna had requested $34.6 million for her department to hire and train more staff and for technology fixes in order to alleviate DPP’s backlog of building permit applications.

DPP has approximately 105 vacancies to be filled, and the proposal is problematic for the Hawaii Government Employees Association, according to Kauanui Sabas.

“We do believe DPP should invest in its current and future workforce — public employees,” Sabas said. “As you folks know, DPP is currently facing vacancy rates, and we encourage DPP and the city to look at increasing the pay for some of these employees that are involved in the permitting process. And we believe that is a much more sustainable approach than contracting out to third-party reviewers.”

At a committee meeting on April 5, Council member Radiant Cordero asked the DPP director how penalties would be imposed and what those penalties might be.

Takeuchi Apuna said her department had looked to other places around the country — Chicago, New York and jurisdictions in Arizona — where “they have a whole program for training and rules and regulations for these professionals who want to self-certify” as options to follow.

Audits could also be conducted, she added.

“So if we find out some of the work is not living up to code, we can make note of that, and we can either kick them out of the program and/or look for false statements and then use part of an ordinance that has these penalties,” Takeuchi Apuna said. “I think an ordinance like that would be helpful as far as penalties.”

Takeuchi Apuna said roughly 60% of plan checks are being done by third-party reviewers.

An audit of third-party reviews was conducted in 2022, showing some of the reviewers “were not living up to what was required of them,” Takeuchi Apuna said.

The department’s rules allow third-party reviewers to be removed or penalized for any ongoing problems.

Earlier this week DPP faulted a third-party reviewer for granting an unwarranted building permit.

DPP asserted that local architect Jimmy Wu — working on behalf of the department — reviewed and certified the plans for what was later deemed a “monster home” in the Kalihi area. DPP issued a building permit on March 28, 2022, for the project at 1532 Hanai Loop.

But based on an inquiry from City Council member Tyler Dos Santos-Tam and state Rep. John Mizuno, DPP “re-reviewed” the plans and determined that incorrect information was provided to DPP by the project applicants and that the planned two-story, single-family home with nine bathrooms, no side yards and insufficient parking was a gross violation of the city’s “monster homes” ordinance, the city said.

DPP revoked the project’s building permit and issued a notice of violation and a stop-work order to the owners, Junqin Chen and Maonan Wang.

Although third-party reviewers have been used within DPP for some time, according to Takeuchi Apuna, self-certification has not been used at all.

Bill 6 has received support from the Hawaii Solar Energy Association. “We agree that there should definitely be accountability if you should go to a self- certification process,” said Rocky Mould, executive director.

Vice Chair Esther Kia‘aina questions whether DPP staff — not third-party reviewers — should be handling matters related to historic preservation, noting the checkered history of DPP’s use of third parties to handle the department’s work. “Certain projects risk encountering iwi kupuna, archaeological sites and other historic and cultural properties,” Kia‘aina said.

The zoning committee will again discuss the bill at its meeting in May.