Laws, rules and regulations, like barnacles, can accumulate and grow heavy enough to slow the wheels of commerce and the ship of state.
Reducing them, particularly when they apply to business, always appears high on the Republican agenda. So it was no surprise when New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, as one of his first acts, called for a freeze on all new state regulations.
Sununu also told the commissioners of the state’s agencies to renew each of their hundreds or thousands of administrative rules and regulations and prepare a report justifying each one by March 31. He then asked agencies to repeal or suspend every proposed or existing regulation whose existence cannot be justified.
There are two big problems with Sununu’s proposal.
As Sen. John Reagan, the Republican head of the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules, told Sununu, no governor has the authority to suspend rules by fiat. Second, Sununu’s request, unless carried out in the most cursory manner, is impossible to complete, particularly since many agencies are short-handed and all are preparing budget proposals.
Sununu should have made a reasonable request. Ask each agency to submit a list of a given number of rules or laws – five, 10, 20 – that haven’t been enforced in years or have otherwise become unnecessary. Then they could be reviewed and potentially given the ax. There are probably fewer of them than the governor thinks.
Unlike some states, New Hampshire’s rules must be reauthorized every decade. Those that aren’t reauthorized expire automatically.
Every government entity, and probably every organization, should review its rules periodically and seek to eliminate those that have outlived their usefulness.
Does the city of Concord really need a Moral Conduct category of ordinances that forbids public dancing, horse racing, prize fighting and billiards on Sundays? Is there a legitimate need to charge a cocktail lounge $195 per year for a license to allow people to dance? And why, if a theater or concert hall that seats more than 1,000 has to pay $430 for an annual license, is the license to run a pool hall $692 plus another $15 per table?
The state does have laws and rules that should probably go.
RSA 307:20 allows the proprietors of places of public worship to charge a pew tax. Why is the state involved at all? Why is it necessary to get local license to charge for a puppet show? Is allowing a ram to run loose between Aug. 1 and Dec. 1 so big a problem that it needs to be addressed with a fine?
Laws that are useful or well-intended, but never funded or enforced, should also go.
State law 275-D, the displaced homeowner act, requires the Department of Labor to assist spouses later in life who, by dint of the death of a partner or dissolution of the marriage has, thanks to years as a homemaker, few marketable skills. The agencies charged with assisting such persons are supposed to file an annual report on what, by way of education, training, etc., they’ve done to help the displaced homeowners enter the labor market. No such reports exist, nor does any program overseen by the Department of Labor, and no state funds were ever allotted.
Displaced homemakers, along with other senior citizens, are now given assistance through local community action programs. That law should be repealed.
Lest we end up with a rule banning unreasonable demands by chief executives, the governor should reconsider his request and make it narrow enough that agencies can meet it without undue burden.