In his campaign for Governor last year, Charlie Baker promised us “a state government that gets out of the way.” And it seems that’s what we are getting.
Right after taking office, Governor Baker announced that one of the ways that state government would be getting out of the way was by not issuing any new regulations for some time. A “regulatory pause” by Executive branch agencies would “enable the administration to implement new guidance that regulations going forward communicate a clear, desired and effective goal.”
This pause was not a surprise. You might say that the notion that regulations are somehow adverse to good government started with Charlie Baker, the Secretary of Administration and Finance as well as the “heart and soul” of the Weld administration. Governor Weld issued the first executive order requiring agencies to pare down their regulations in 1996 (“WHEREAS, the inefficiencies and intrusions resulting from excessive government regulation constitute an unreasonable financial and personal burden on residents of the Commonwealth”). Since then, it has become fashionable in Massachusetts for our governors to begin their terms in office with a similar reproof of the idea that government ought to be in the business of regulating business, as Mitt Romney did in 2003 and Deval Patrick did in 2007.
The right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council offers model legislation for states to trim their inventory of regulations. And our state Legislature got in on the act in 2010, prohibiting agencies from putting out new regulations until they had thoroughly analyzed the potential effect on small business and requiring all agencies to review the need for all of their regulations every 12 years.
Which brings us to Sunday’s Globe article on Baker’s further pursuit of regulatory cutbacks in a new Executive Order. The moratorium on new regulations he announced in January is to continue until further notice. And there’s lots more. Baker has often likened government regulations to the junk that accumulates in your basement and which, in the interests of good housekeeping, you need to clean out every so often (as the Legislature had already concluded in mandating a top-to-bottom review every twelve years). The Executive branch agencies are going to be very busy making sure that every state regulation passes a lengthy series of tests before it may continue to be in effect. The most controversial of these tests is that no regulation may exceed what the federal government requires:
Baker, in a March 31 directive to all state agencies, is requiring a yearlong review of nearly all state regulations, with a mandate that none should exceed federal requirements, which in many cases are far less stringent than the state’s. He wants only regulations that do not “unduly and adversely affect Massachusetts citizens and customers of the Commonwealth.”
This apparently means that if the federal government is not ready to say that the chemical perchlorate, a persistent, inorganic anion found in industrial pollutants that interferes with thyroid function if ingested in significant quantity, is unsafe, then Massachusetts will stop saying it is unsafe and will rescind the current regulation (in place since the Romney administration) capping the amount of perchlorate that safe drinking water may contain. The people of Massachusetts, especially those living in the towns where perchlorate has been found in the drinking water will be on their own, happily unburdened by excessive regulation.
Government regulations are presumptively the enemy, except of course when something goes badly wrong. Then everybody wants to know why government did not prevent the catastrophe from happening — why was nobody minding the store?
Let’s take the example of the New England Compounding Center, the pharmaceutical operation that sold contaminated steroid drugs causing meningitis which led to the deaths of 64 people across the country, caused 750 others to fall ill, and which resulted in second-degree murder charges against an owner and one of the pharmacists.
The Legislature responded to that disaster by recognizing that oversight of the compounding pharmacy industry was inadequate and by passing a law directing the Board of Pharmacy to regulate these pharmacies more strictly. The Board was told, for example, to determine which drug preparations require special training or equipment to prepare in a safe manner, to report adverse drug events in a database available to the public, and to set new penalties for pharmacies that do not comply with the new law.
The legislation passed unanimously, without discussion of whether it might be excessively burdensome or detrimental to the state’s competitiveness. The House Minority leader told the State House News Service that “everybody recognizes the terrible situation that happened and see this bill as progress on that front. I think the bill is an important step forward to bring some accountability and clarity to compounding pharmacies.” In that conversation he apparently did not mention “An Act Reforming the Regulatory Process to Promote Job Growth,” the bill that he files each session that would allow a legislative committee to bottle up any proposed regulation for up to two years in the interests of making Massachusetts a more competitive place to do business. (You may have been unaware that the Legislature has expertise in such matters as acceptable perchloride concentrations in groundwater and the meningitis-free preparation of steroid drugs.)
And so, speaking of the increased regulation and oversight of the compounding pharmacy industry, what’s up with that?
The Herald reported last week that “the state agency that oversees compounding pharmacies is still in disarray two years after a deadly meningitis outbreak, failing to inspect facilities, allowing dirty labs to stay open and rarely publicizing recalls of possibly tainted meds.” Any disarray may have to do with the fact that Board of Registration in Pharmacy has not yet issued any of the regulations that the Legislature ordered. The minutes of the Board meetings show that the regulations received some discussion last year during Governor Patrick’s administration, but progress was slow, in part because of the Legislature’s requirement that no new regulation can take effect until the agency has prepared a “small business impact statement,” which includes, among other things, an estimate of the number of small businesses subject to the proposed regulation, and an analysis of whether the proposed regulation is likely to deter or encourage the formation of new businesses in the commonwealth.
And now with Governor Baker’s new Executive Order in effect, we won’t be seeing those pharmacy regulations anytime soon. We have other, higher priorities, like getting state government out of the way. And that’s going to be keeping our state agencies very busy — cleaning out their basements.
(Cross-posted at hesterprynne.net.)
Which safety concerns are OK to sacrifice in their opinion?
about which regulations are going to survive and which are not (the material quoted is from the Executive Order that’s linked in the post):
plans to do, but it’s all conjecture at this point. There’s always the possibility that things could get better.
that are no longer necessary, redundant, overly restrictive and should be revisited. That is a reasonable exercise for all regulation, that it be reviewed regularly for effectiveness and need. However, this should not be used as an excuse to implement a Pioneer Institute machete to regulations it doesn’t like. I’ve heard their name attached to too many things these past couple of months not to be uneasy.
but whenever someone says there are too many regulations I want to say, “Name one we can live without and why.”
Just off the top of my head.
eom
Worst case scenario: it’s a bunch of states we are looking to as examples, depending on the issue.
When the Republicans they elect govern as Republicans.
I’m not sure our local Democrats are much different from our Republicans, at least when it comes down to what actually happens (as opposed to what gets talked about in sound bites).
The fact that Deval Patrick is now a Managing Director at Bain Capital gives me pause. Given the several regulatory screw-ups that happened on his watch — drownings in uninspected pools, patients dying from toxic medications produced by a local compounding company, thousands of criminal convictions cast in doubt because of fraud in a state drug lab, etc — Bain’s warm embrace of him makes me wonder just how committed he was to enforcing the regulations we already have.
retreat into an alternate reality fantasyland when Massachusetts Democrats govern as Republicans, while saying they are not governing as Republicans.
to every lobbyist and well-capitalized corporation and institution that wants to get away with something at the public’s expense. “Onerous” to whom?
And the guidelines as quoted by hesterprynne above are so broad as to make it nearly impossible to justify anything. Kafka-esque.
Eg, what the hell can this possibly mean?
There is literally nothing that can’t be justified under a “competitive environment” clause. Child labor? Slavery? Bring it on!
This is to be watched like a hawk.
and stressed that everything reviewed would be on a case by case basis.
He made two points. One is that it’s not only businesses but also cities and towns and schools that are affected by regulations.
Secondly (and this point is made a lot in other areas, and I believe it to be true and have made this point myself) is that larger companies sometimes like regulations because they become a barrier to smaller players with less money (and following that, expertise).
The large companies are the ones with the lobbyists so it would also make sense that they can get law changes or subjective enforcement if it truly is onerous.
I agree the process needs to be monitored. I’m sure it will be.
He could simply have describing the procedure in the Executive Order — “on a case by case basis, my administration will review each regulation and decide whether it…adversely affects the competitive environment in Massachusetts.”
His tone at time did suggest some willingness to soften the policy a little. He also tried to be reassuring that he had done this before, in 1996, and things went fine. But Weld’s order in 1996 is pretty tame by comparison with this new one — Weld did not include any test whether a state regulation was more restrictive than a federal one, for example.
I thought Baker’s point that sometimes it’s the biggest business that want regulation of their industries was pretty good. I remember reading something by Michael Pollan to the effect that there were few small meat processing plants because of a federal regulation requiring that each plant include a separate room for (only) the federal USDA inspector to use. That forced the small plants out and increased factory livestock farming.
Anyway, it will be interesting.
Many people here fear the worst in Baker but I don’t see it (partly because I know him, but he’s given no other indication). He’s got an administration that appears almost nonpartisan and a legislature that can look over his shoulder. His goal is to get re-elected and he needs broad support. Using your example above, why would he risk a to-do over some chemical? Business will be with him regardless. He needs the unenrolleds and some Dems to say “I think he did a good job” in November 2018, and gain some accomplishments to run for the WH in 2020 (pure speculation on my part). Concern for the average person aside (which he actually does have) it makes political sense to improve regulations, but side against controversial change.
Note this is a far different situation than when Rick Perry was governor of TX, where he basically “fixed” things for a number of well connected businesses and even whole industries. In that state he could do whatever he wanted though. Not the case here.
is that virtually all of the Commonwealth’s efforts to reduce GHG emissions exceed the federal laws and regs on the subject. That puts RGGI and and the regs associated with the Global Warming Solutions Act right in the crosshairs of this de-reg ideological assault, as one of the standards enunciate by Team Baker is that state regs must not be more stringent than federal rules.
They do note that this review will be done on a “case by case” basis, but why the broad assault when you acknowledge in the same press event that the blanket review is likely a gross overreach? As noted by HP, this is an ALEC-driven assault that attempts to portray all government efforts to improve the lives of people as presumed wrong.