With no deadline by which a permit decision has to be made, issuing entities can indefinitely postpone consideration of an application, effectively denying it.
It is time for Utah to be a leader in rectifying past failures and empowering individuals to have a voice in how these tools and technologies are used, if at all.
The problem with this practice is that it undermines the important difference between a fee and a tax. Fees are payments in exchange for a quantitative public service while taxes cover the remaining immeasurable services that benefit society as a whole.
