Comment by cucumber3732842

It's a make work scheme. They don't give a crap. They'll rubber stamp just about anything. It's like $50. They just want to force you to use a licensed trade if applicable.

The trades themselves don't pull permits because it's not about the permissionn, it's about using them. The towns don't care unless you've cut them out so much that they feel slighted in which case they'll send you angry letters about violations, demand a million bucks and you'll hire a $10k lawyer (another licensed trade, lol) who'll get you off for $1k.

Needless to say compliance is pretty low outside of the rich neighborhoods because normal people can't afford to tack $4k of engineering onto a "repave my shitty 2-car driveway" project or a $3k panel upgrade onto a "renovate my 50yo bathroom and add a couple outlets".

It's all shit and should be replaced with a much lower touch system that's cheap enough people can afford to comply with it. But there's so many parties in on the racket that it'll come crashing down before that happens.