It’s not often that government ineptitude fuels progress. But Idaho can thank its bickering state legislature for providing it with a revolutionary opportunity.
Since the state House and Senate couldn’t pass a bill to renew the 8,200 pages of state regulations, the rules are all set to expire on July 1. Republican Gov. Brad Little can maintain the essential regulations until the legislature returns in January, but the default will now be less regulation rather than more.
According to data from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, it would take nearly seven weeks to read all 5 million words of Idaho’s regulations. The administrator of the Idaho Division of Financial Management, Alex Adams, has less than that seven weeks to decide which rules to keep, so some erroneous regulations may have to be maintained for the sake of simplicity.
It’s still a good start, though, according to James Broughel, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center. He says that in the best case, the state would let obsolete, redundant, and ineffective regulations expire, while renewing only those that serve a public purpose.
“The worse case scenario is they’ll simply just renew everything without really doing much of a review,” Broughel said.
Idahoans shouldn’t worry about the state scrapping important regulations, such as those guarding health and safety or the environment. Administrative agencies in the state still have regulations required by law, Broughel says.
Other states have attempted similar regulatory reform through sunset provisions, which let laws or regulations expire so they have to be reevaluated. Broughel says it can be a useful method, but it’s susceptible to the same problems to which Idaho may fall prey: the regulator who puts a rule back into place without really evaluating it. Starting from scratch, Broughel says, can help.
“Once in a while, you should just have a reset, start over,” he said. “That’s how I think sunsets can be effective. You actually have to let the rule or program expire.”
Regulatory reform has become a movement, not just in Idaho, but in states across the country. Virginia adopted a regulatory reduction pilot program, which is aimed at reducing state regulations by 25%. Such regulation-slashing has been posited as a solution to a sluggish economy.
“One of the reasons why regulatory reform is on everyone’s radar is we’ve seen kind of a slowing of economic growth in the last couple of decades,” Broughel said. “There’s only so much you can cut taxes to try to boost growth, but regulation is really the elephant in the room. There’s a lot of evidence that regulation slows economic growth. This is actually low-hanging fruit.”
Time will tell whether Idaho lives up to its deregulatory potential. The state motto is “Esto Perpetua,” Latin for “Be forever.” That’s a noble appeal for the state itself, but not so much for its regulations.
