D6 councilmember Dan Strauss made a comment at the transit town hall today that would be fairly easy to overlook in the context of the budget issue.

Paraphrasing:

“We reduced the number of permits required from ~160 to ~75, and in turn reduced the number of opportunities for public comment by half”

I take this to mean that there have consistently been people or groups opposing the construction of voter approved light rail by challenging it at the permitting phase.

This itself is a little sad, however I’m glad to see these kind of reforms ease the burden of beaurocracy on building the things we need. We really don’t want ST3 to turn into california high-speed rail.