Opinion: If You Think Bay County is Red, You Must Be Referring to Red Tape

Remember the good old days when local governments in bright-red counties were about efficiency, business-friendliness and avoided getting in the way of the private sector?

Sadly, in Bay County, the local government is behaving more like a lover of bureaucrats and red tape.

A great example is the mindless, wasteful, redundant work being done by the Bay County building and safety department. In a clear violation of state law, Bay County officials are blocking owners of new homes from turning on their electricity -- sometimes for weeks -- until the county repeats inspections that have already been conducted by licensed inspectors with the same or more credentials and experience.

That’s right, to assist overworked local building departments and help remove politics from the construction industry, the Florida Legislature passed a law requiring local governments to allow builders and homeowners to utilize private providers in lieu of the government agency for plans reviews and building inspections.

But not Bay County. It insists on the wasteful, redundant, inefficient practice of reinspecting this work, for no apparent reason.

When analyzing Bay County’s policy, one good place to start is: What other panhandle counties or cities are attempting to do what Bay County is doing?

I only know of one – Holmes County.  And guess what: Holmes County’s building official recently moved there from Bay County.

Which leads us to so many questions that it will leave your electric meter spinning:

How much money is this costing Bay County taxpayers?

Is that figure including the lawsuit the county is currently defending? 

What about the prior lawsuit over excessive private provider permit fees that the county ultimately settled by agreeing to reduce the fees as required by state law?

How is this helping the affordable housing crisis?

How has it impacted the real people – the first-time homebuyers -- who are trying to realize the dream of turning the key and walking into a gleaming new house?

That last question is perhaps the most important. I have knowledge of a family, brimming with excitement over moving into their new home, who pulled up to the front door with their belongings in a moving truck.

But they could not move in. 

Despite the private provider having passed the required electrical inspection, the county had not yet approved the power to be turned on. 

And they couldn’t move in the next day. Or the next. Or the next week. Eventually, the entire deal for the house fell through because the county had not allowed the power to be turned on. Red tape choked their American dream of homeownership.

This is not smaller government. This isn’t even good government. 

This is bureaucratic arrogance and self-preservation – Bay County is protecting the cash cow that the building department has become by elevating the importance of government inspectors over the free market. 

And, if that’s not enough, too often this is incompetent government. You see, when Bay County DOES conduct redundant inspections, they are certainly not immune from error and can leave potential contractors or homeowners in dangerous situations.

One of the most egregious examples comes from October 2023, when Bay County inspectors affixed a green “approved” sticker – authorizing electricity to be turned on – when, as you can see from the picture, high voltage “buss bars” were not covered by a panel.

If the electricity were to be connected here, any contact with this exposed surface could have resulted in death.

Photo of panel provided by Al Wilson

These errors are unacceptable, and the responsibility resides solely with county administration and staff. 

At its next meeting, the Bay County commissioners should be asking questions such as: Why are we one of the only counties in the panhandle that do it this way? How much has this cost us? Why are we making it harder for people to move into homes? Why are we making it harder for people to afford homes?

It also begs the question – if Bay County is this wasteful in this area, where else is the bureaucracy running wild and costing taxpayers even more money?

This isn’t conservative local government – it's quite the opposite.

In fact, right now, the only thing “red” about Bay County is all the red tape. 

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