Imagine taking a test and earning an “A” — but receiving a failing mark because you didn’t follow the irrelevant instruction to use a No. 2 pencil. That is the manner in which the federal regulatory behemoth often operates. Even when no harm is done or the mistake is unintentional, the government levies Draconian penalties for disobeying arbitrary edicts.
Last week’s debacle with American Airlines is a case in point. The Federal Aviation Administration forced the airline to ground a fleet of planes – canceling thousands of flights and stranding a quarter of a million passengers – because not all the wire bundles in the planes’ wheel wells had been clamped exactly one inch apart.
Aviation experts say this is a technical violation, not one that compromised safety. Planes don’t fall out of the sky because some clamps are three-fourths of an inch apart and others are separated by an inch and a quarter. Clearly, the FAA knew that; otherwise, it would not have given the airline 18 months to comply after issuing the directive in 2006.
The agency’s crackdown on an arcane regulation was a transparent response to criticism from some in Congress that the FAA had become too “cozy” with the airlines. But it is a mistake to assume that regulators must have an adversarial relationship with those they regulate. To the contrary, because businesses know their operations better than an outside regulator ever could, they often know more efficient ways to achieve the required goal. Whether the mission is to ensure safety or environmental protection, collaboration can result in greater effectiveness that benefits everyone.
Unfortunately, it is more common for regulatory agencies to see themselves as hammers and businesses as nails. Perhaps such a mindset is inevitable given the unbridled power regulators are afforded. Although it is the role of Congress to make laws, for the past 30 years democracy has been superseded by the regulatory state. Congress makes broad laws — e.g., airline travel must be safe — and then hands off rule-making authority to bureaucrats who are unelected, unaccountable, and unconcerned about the consequences of their decisions.
Forcing American Airlines to lose tens of millions of dollars last week didn’t punish a culpable individual (if there is one). It punished the company’s innocent employees and stockholders. More significantly, it penalized a quarter of a million blameless travelers who missed specific events: the business deal that wasn’t made, the spring break vacation ruined, weddings and other once-in-a-lifetime occasions forever lost.
While it gets more attention when the feds target big corporations such as American Airlines, the overweening regulatory state is even more devastating on small businesses. One such case occurred close to home a few years ago when regulators descended on a mom-and-pop operation in Linden, Va., charging the 73-year-old owner, Ben Lacy, with violations of the Clean Water Act.
As Bart Hinkle of the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported at the time: Lacy is the son of a former president of Union Theological Seminary. He also is a Sunday school teacher and a fellow who sometimes let the county park its buses on his property. And he runs Linden Beverage Company. A 25-employee operation, Linden Beverage makes Alpenglow, a sparkling apple beverage (no alcohol, no additives, no preservatives) in a shed behind a country store selling fresh-baked pies, coonskin caps, and American flags.
Excess apple juice is rinsed off the bottles with water (no detergent); the rinse goes through three sedimentation tanks, joins some treated wastewater from two bathrooms, and then empties from a four-inch plastic pipe into a creek called Manassas Run. The government said the apple juice was pollution. It also said that on several lines of several discharge monitoring reports over several years, Lacy intentionally had recorded false figures or neglected to record the correct ones.
For this, Lacy faced 24 years in prison and $2 million in fines.
After harassing him for years and costing him untold legal expenses, the feds had to settle for wringing a $2,500 fine from Lacy and ordering him to write a public apology for the local newspaper — the sort of punishment one would expect to be dished out by seventh graders on a school honor council.
The rightful role of government is to be our servant, not our master; but the modern regulatory state turns that notion on its head. If some Americans are bitter, as Barack Obama says, it isn’t always without cause.
Examiner Columnist Melanie Scarborough lives in Alexandria.
