[ransom1538]

"The only people who are experts in a particular industry are the people running the businesses that make up that industry."

Funny. Yes. I worked at a consulting firm doing permitting for California (wetland delineations etc). The only way to get something approved was to use a former gov employee. They could write a proposal "correctly", attach the correct docs, etc. Gov employees knew the cash wasn't in their position, but, in consulting later on. Tin foil hat on: I also think, the Gov employees knew when a proposal wasn't from a former Gov employee -- and would reject -- thus keeping the cycle going.

[acollins1331]

This is 100% opposite my experience in wetland water quality permits. Sorry your state has super corrupt army corps districts. Ours (NC) let's all kind of stuff slide, but we still do thorough work that meets all applicable regulations even when the assessor insists they don't need the entire NRTR.

[dsfyu404ed]

I'm in the northeast and my state is exactly like CA in this regard (source: good chunk of immediate and extended family works for the state). I've lived in three other states too and they weren't like that but they were all rural enough where people didn't really need government permission to do what they wanted and the political will to go after reasonable people doing reasonable things but without government approval wasn't there.

Everywhere I've ever lived I've seen a pretty wide variation from place to place within a state that seems to get applied on top of the state's baseline. In the poorer areas anything reasonable pretty much gets waved on through and in the rich areas they're much more controlling (because they have the resources to throw at it) and you can benefit from hiring people who know people or are at least known as "regulars" to whatever official is calling the shots. It's a lot like hiring a traffic lawyer.

[NikolaNovak]

I've seen similar situations in Canada:

- In Nova Scotia, an acquaintance food & safety inspector became a consultant to industry on how to navigate the arcane laws of food & safety. There was no fraud or wonkiness there that I could easily perceive - the companies wanted to do the right thing; knew they were not experts in what the right thing is; so hired a person they were confident knew what the right thing is.

- Though we had our own bright security analysts in the company I worked for, when dealing with the public sector we have been heavily advised, and learned the wisdom of, hiring from a pool of rotating local security analysts that knew how to write documents, architecture, assessment in a way that would clearly conform to regulations. Again, not due to any wonkiness - our security analysts who knew the product worked with security analysts who knew the rules, to make sure solution is amenable to all.