Idaho’s successful regulatory reform

Over at National Review, my colleague Hayden Stolzenberg and I examine some of Idaho’s recent regulatory reforms, as outlined in a recent CEI paper. The most significant of those reforms is zero-based budgeting.

Under this approach, agencies must periodically justify individual regulations; otherwise, they automatically sunset. This reverses the usual burden of proof, where the status quo is set in stone unless reformers can convince policymakers to make a change.

On June 30, 2019, Idaho’s entire regulatory code expired. Agencies then had to justify the rules they wanted reinstated. As a result, Idaho has trimmed its own regulatory code by 38 percent, which enables agencies to pursue their missions with less regulatory sludge and fewer procedural complications. Other states should consider similar reforms, as should Congress.

There is significant movement in other states such as Virginia, where permitting reform has attracted billions of dollars in investment, and Kentucky, where the legislature is considering a serious regulatory overhaul.

This is welcome news in a national political environment where both parties are hostile to free markets and are expanding government’s footprint in areas such as trade, antitrust, media content regulation, and even outright government ownership or control of private companies such as Intel, U.S. Steel, and MP Materials.

As the federal government becomes more Washington-centric, it is important that the states, America’s 50 laboratories of democracy, are still conducting experiments. Idaho and other states are producing promising findings. Congress should take note.

Read our whole National Review piece here. The full CEI study “The Beauty of Regulatory Sunsets” is available here. For more regulatory reform ideas, see chapter 1 of CEI’s Agenda for Congress.