City officials say Acela rollout stabilized; auto-issuance and dashboard aim to speed permits

Baltimore City Hall — City permitting officials told the Council’s Housing & Economic Development Committee that the Acela permitting system has moved from an unstable launch to a stabilization phase after months of fixes, and that tools including an auto-issuance feature and a public dashboard are already producing measurable gains.

Deputy City Administrator Shamaia Kearney, who leads the cross‑agency permit Incident Command Structure (ICS), told the committee the team has implemented technological fixes, an expanded call center and a public dashboard to provide “more insight and specificity into application volume and individual permitting related tasks.”

Justin Williams, director of Permitting and Development Services, said the system’s new auto‑issuance capability “went live this week,” and estimated it could automatically issue roughly 20% of residential permits within 24 hours of submission. Williams added that early results from the first days after the go‑live showed a higher-than-expected auto-issuance rate on a small sample, and that the functionality is intended to free staff to focus on complex reviews.

Williams and his team said the public dashboard is now live and shows permits issued, permits in progress and task-level metrics. The department reported September permit issuance at 2,602 — about 91 fewer than the same period last year — and said the net weekly backlog added to workflow has declined from about +200 permits per week earlier in the year to about +47 in recent months, evidence officials used to argue the system has stabilized and can move toward optimization.

Officials described the work as three phases: Phase 1 addressed acute transition and technical issues at intake; Phase 2 — where the city says it currently sits — focuses on process changes such as auto‑issuance, abandoned-permit cleanup and staffing adjustments; Phase 3 is optimization and customer experience improvements including a proposed message board and developer support tools.

The department explained the composition of the permit workload: roughly 16% of all permit types are eligible for auto‑issuance; 54% of workload requires limited review; and about 30% of permits require intensive multi‑trade reviews (electrical, structural, fire, mechanical). To handle surge technical review needs, the city engaged outside reviewers (KCI) equivalent to eight full‑time reviewers to augment trade-review capacity.

Committee members raised persistent concerns. Some council members said they still receive constituent complaints about stalled payments, stamps not applied and other “technical” glitches. Interim CIO Layla Layman (VSIT) explained that an exported Jira ticket report would include raw tickets but not attachments, and DHCD staff said some Jira tickets needed manual cleanup to avoid exporting outdated status information.

Council members also pressed on enforcement and unpermitted work. The committee discussed possible operational approaches — including targeted phone follow-ups, use of community aides, autodialers or a proactive inspections trigger for permits that remain inactive — but officials cautioned more inspection staff would likely be required to sustain a proactive field enforcement program. DHCD said it plans to pilot phone outreach for a subset of stale permits and evaluate auto-dialer options.

On enforcement and consumer protection, council members discussed criminal or civil remedies for bad actors who misrepresent scope of work; staff noted the city has existing seller‑disclosure rules and code enforcement remedies, and councilmembers said they would follow up with the State’s Attorney’s Office as needed for potential fraud cases.

The committee asked for additional, more granular dashboard metrics: time in each workflow phase, breakdowns by permit type (for example, decks versus new-construction townhomes), and the time between application intake and inspection scheduling for use-and-occupancy permits. DHCD and VSIT agreed to produce more task-level KPIs for the next quarterly oversight hearing and said they will continue to expand third‑party and AI-assisted review tools and consider pre‑approved plan templates to speed common, low‑risk projects.

Ending: Committee Chair Torrance praised the team’s progress while urging continued attention to staff experience and internal discovery processes; the committee accepted written public testimony on permitting issues and scheduled follow-up oversight.