Former Maine Governor Brennan’s appointee to the Board of Environmental Protection outlines a three-bucket model: collaborative rule-making, customer-oriented permitting, and evenhanded enforcement. He recalls BEP reforms—delegating major site reviews to “qualified cities” and creating a “permit-by-rule” path where applicants self-certify minor work and face random audits—and urges Portland to adopt the same system to clear staff bottlenecks and unblock housing approvals. The real barrier, he argues, is not headcount but common-sense governance: regulators must swap red-tape walls for transparent windows.