Catch-all regulatory bill is too convoluted

Published July 18, 2013

From Winston-Salem Journal editorial, July 16, 2013.

It seems like every third bill discussed in Raleigh this year carries “reform” in its title. But the latest so-called reform bill makes the argument that the General Assembly needs to reform the way it reforms.

The House has approved, and sent to the Senate, a bill reforming the state’s regulatory process. But the process in which these reforms, themselves, are being approved, and have been approved for decades, needs its own improvement.

First some background: The legislature passes laws that, by their very nature, cannot include all of the information the government needs to administer them. So, the executive branch writes rules, the legislature has some oversight and then we must all abide by the rules.

The 25-page bill that won House approval last week is part of that process, but it contains such a menagerie of changes that no legislator can seriously be expected to have a grasp on them.

The bill changes the rules, for example, that govern bed-and-breakfast inns, landscaping around billboards, criminal background checks for child-care providers, and legal rights for college students. This is all in one bill.

A legislator who opposes one rule change can, of course, seek to amend the bill, but that rarely succeeds. Seldom do rank-and-file legislators want to anger their leaders by break-ing up these catch-all bills.

The prolonged debate on the bill last week led to rare moments of bipartisanship in the House. Lawyer-legislators from both parties, for example, warned of the problems that a change to the Industrial Commission’s employment rules would have.

Often, reform legislation needs to be wide-ranging to be worthwhile. For example, when we get a tax-reform compromise, we hope it covers the whole effort in one bill and that tax changes are not made piecemeal. Each tax change is related to every other change. But in this case, the single regulatory reform bill meant legislators had to accept many unrelated changes, some they support, some they don’t, simply for political purposes.

This is bad lawmaking and not in the public interest.