Source policy

Source hierarchy

We start with the authority responsible for the permit decision. The strongest source is not always the longest document; it is the source that is official, current, applicable to the stated scope, and authoritative for the claim being made.

Adopted statutes, ordinances, codes, rules, and official local amendments
Official department permit pages, bulletins, interpretations, and published program requirements
Official application portals, forms, fee schedules, checklists, inspection systems, and GIS tools
Official meeting records or notices when they establish an effective change not yet reflected elsewhere
Direct written clarification from the responsible authority when it can be documented appropriately

What makes a source acceptable

A source must be attributable to the responsible public body, accessible through an official government-controlled location or otherwise verifiable as an official publication, and relevant to the precise conclusion it supports.

We also consider effective date, revision date, geographic scope, building or occupancy type, and whether the material is mandatory, explanatory, archived, proposed, or superseded. A search-result snippet or copied document on an unrelated site is not sufficient evidence.

Jurisdiction comes before similarity

A city and the surrounding county may use different portals, adopted codes, zoning rules, fee schedules, and permit exemptions. A postal city name can also describe property outside city limits. We therefore register sources to a specific authority and do not reuse a nearby conclusion merely because the project sounds similar.

State or model-code material may explain a general requirement, but it does not establish that a local jurisdiction has adopted the same edition without amendments. The local adoption and amendment path must be checked separately.

Current versions and effective dates

Forms, fees, portals, and adopted codes change. Where the government publishes a revision or effective date, we record it. Where it does not, we record when the source was checked and use other official indicators to determine whether it remains current.

A newer file name does not automatically mean a newer legal requirement, and a recently updated webpage may still link to an older controlling ordinance. Reviewers compare dates and authority rather than relying on page appearance alone.

Citation requirements

Material claims should link directly to the government page, document, portal, or code location that supports them. Citation summaries describe what the source establishes without presenting a short extract as though it were the complete rule.

A source link is not decoration. Reviewers must be able to use it to reproduce the reasoning behind the conclusion. If one source supports only the exemption and another supports the application process, both should be cited rather than forcing one source to carry claims it does not address.

PDFs, scans, and OCR

Government material is sometimes published as a PDF with no searchable text layer. We may use text extraction or OCR to make that material searchable for internal review. The image of the official page remains the reference when OCR output is unclear.

OCR can misread numbers, symbols, tables, dates, or checkboxes. A fee, threshold, deadline, code section, or exception extracted by OCR must be compared with the source image before it supports a public conclusion. Low-confidence extraction is a review flag, not evidence.

Changed, removed, or broken sources

A broken official link does not prove that a requirement ended. We check whether the agency moved the page, replaced the document, changed the portal, or withdrew the program. Until the effect is understood, affected content may be narrowed, marked for confirmation, or removed from search.

When a new version changes a material requirement, the page returns to review. A crawler or link checker may identify the change, but it cannot decide that the old and new requirements are legally equivalent.

Secondary and third-party sources

A contractor blog, law-firm article, product manufacturer, forum post, search engine answer, or another permit website may help identify a question or locate an official source. It does not control the published permit conclusion.

When an official source is silent, we do not promote a third-party assertion into an official rule. The page instead explains the gap and directs the reader to the responsible authority for confirmation.

Copyright and responsible use

Permit Answers summarizes and links to source material. We do not republish proprietary model codes, handbooks, or other protected works in full. Public access to a government page does not automatically grant permission to reproduce every item on it.

Stored source copies are used for verification, change detection, and audit purposes subject to applicable rights and access restrictions. Public delivery favors the official original link unless a reviewed public copy is necessary and permitted.

What our date labels mean

Last verified means a reviewer checked the source set and conclusion on that date. Source date means the publication, revision, or effective date supplied by the issuer when available. First verified marks the beginning of our tracked record; it is not the date the underlying rule was created.

No date label is a guarantee that an agency has not made an unpublished or same-day change. Readers should open the official source and contact the authority when a project is time-sensitive, unusual, or already under review.