Rules 'reform' may be a health hazard

Published July 31, 2013

Editorial, Fayetteville Observer, July 30, 2013.

The General Assembly has left Gov. Pat McCrory a Gordian Knot of deregulation "reform" that he's not likely to untie before its effects begin to make themselves felt.

The legislature's attempt to "improve and streamline the regulatory process" covers an incredible amount of territory, from livestock operations to billboards to fraternity and sorority members appearing before student honor courts.

Larger targets include the Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the Environmental Management Commission, the Coastal Resources Commission, the Marine Fisheries Commission, the Wildlife Resources Commission, the Commission for Public Health, the Sedimentation Control Commission, the Mining and Energy Commission and the Pesticide Board.

The "streamlining" of the Environmental Management Commission is of special interest because the commission says yea or nay to proposals for regulating a wide range of activities - stormwater runoff, wetlands development, animal waste sprayfields, air quality, drinking water quality and more. The commission is to be streamlined as follows: (1) Its members are fired, effective tomorrow, and McCrory and the legislative leadership will decide who the deciders - all of them - are to be; (2) The commission's size will be reduced.

The Coastal Resources Commission gets comparable treatment.

Nowhere in this tome did lawmakers tell industry to grab while the grabbing's good. Nowhere does it say all rules are evil. In fact, it imposes some new ones and refines others. It tells regulators how to distinguish between good regulations and bad ones. And maybe foxes really do make the best henhouse guards. But watch, because no one's life is likely to be untouched by this sweeping overhaul.

It begins with several assumptions:

A regulation's cost - to the public and the regulated industry - is more important than the purpose for which it is proposed.

Reform means requiring that each new regulation be filtered through panels and agencies unrelated to the environment before being considered on its merits.

Regulators are to devote much of their time to paperwork justifying what's in place and scouring the books for anything that might be purged or made to sunset.

There are rules that should be revised and others that should be rescinded. But the prejudice that our regulatory network is the work of thoughtless people bent on unduly burdening business is foolish.

These agencies have work to do, and constantly second-guessing what's already working should not be their first priority.