North Carolina has over 109,000 regulatory restrictions, making it impossible for the average citizen to navigate the world of red tape caused by bloated bureaucracy. Heightening the stakes, these regulations carry the same authority as law, despite never being brought for a vote by elected officials.
Unelected bureaucrats increasingly have been granted the power of both the legislature and the governor, creating and enforcing laws without oversight or constitutional limits. It is time for North Carolina to rein in government agencies and ensure it is the legislature that is setting policy for the state.
Think about how a law gets passed in our state. A bill must be approved by a majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate and then signed by the governor (or the governor can allow the bill to become law without his signature). At any point along the way, committee chairs, legislative leadership, or even the governor can kill the bill. Making laws is supposed to be difficult. Our constitutional system was designed this way to protect our freedoms. Laws have the power to take away property or even liberty, so they must be thoroughly debated and scrutinized by our elected representatives.
However, when the North Carolina General Assembly passes laws, it’s often impractical to include every single detail necessary for making the law workable. That’s where state agencies come in. They are tasked with filling in the gaps by promulgating regulations. These regulations, intended to add necessary details, have the same force and effect as the law itself.
But here’s where things go wrong. Over time, the combination of vague laws enabling agencies to make regulations and courts deferring to agencies’ interpretations has led to a troubling shift. Agencies are no longer just filling in the details — they are creating policies and effectively making laws. Unelected agency employees now have the power to make decisions that can take away your property or your freedom, all without any vote from your elected representatives in Raleigh.
Luckily, in North Carolina, the legislature has at least some oversight of regulations, but disapproving a rule requires the legislature to pass a bill. A midlevel bureaucrat, whom no one elected, can alter state policy with the stroke of a pen unless the legislature steps in and passes a law rejecting the regulation — and as we mentioned above, passing a law through the legislature is no easy feat.
Thankfully, state legislatures are starting to take action. They are reclaiming their constitutional authority by adopting REINS (Regulations from the Executive In Need of Scrutiny) Acts. The REINS Act is a simple, yet powerful reform: It requires that any regulation with a significant economic impact (major rules) — above a threshold set by the legislature — must be approved by the legislature. Florida and Wisconsin have had REINS Acts for years, and in 2024, Indiana and Kansas joined them by passing their own REINS Act reforms.
A REINS Act would flip the burden from the legislature to disapprove major rules to requiring them to approve major rules before they’re enacted. If a rule is important enough to impose a significant burden on the economy, it’s important enough for the legislature to vote on it.
The REINS Act strikes the perfect balance between flexibility and accountability. It allows agencies to continue making regulations that fill in the necessary details, ensuring that laws are practical and enforceable. But it also ensures that any regulation with significant economic consequences is approved by the people’s representatives — those who were elected to make policy decisions.
For North Carolina legislators to decide whether to support regulations that trigger the REINS Act, they need accurate and unbiased information. Unfortunately, in many states, the agency proposing a regulation is incentivized to provide one-sided information that supports its position. This is why independent analysis is crucial — at the very least, someone needs to verify the agency’s claims. North Carolina should include this independent analysis in its REINS Act.
To fix this, the North Carolina General Assembly should establish its own economic analysis unit. This unit would independently review agency analyses to ensure the REINS Act is applied properly. First, it would determine whether the economic impact is significant enough to trigger legislative review. Second, it would provide lawmakers with the information necessary to make informed decisions when a regulation requires their approval.
The rise of the administrative state is not an insurmountable problem — but it does require action. The North Carolina General Assembly must take back its policymaking power from unelected bureaucrats if it is to fulfill its constitutional role. The REINS Act and independent economic analysis are practical, common-sense steps to ensure that laws, and subsequent regulations, are truly representative of the people’s will. Laws should be made by elected representatives, not by midlevel agency staff — and it’s time for North Carolina to take that principle seriously.
It’s time to reclaim the power of the people’s voice in policymaking in North Carolina. Let’s ensure that our laws are created by those we elect, not by bureaucrats behind closed doors.
Dew and Balfour wrote the above piece. Daniel Dew is the legal policy director at Pacific Legal Foundation. Brian Balfour is the John Locke Foundation's senior vice president of research.
