County Commission Update

Hi Folks,

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a conference in Helena put on by a group called the United Property Owners of Montana. One of the speakers was an attorney from Wyoming named Harriet Hageman. She talked about Regulation Without Representation.

Harriet pointed out that when Congress passes a law, it is often fairly broad and vague, so the agencies interpret the laws and come up with regulations to enact the laws. In January 2011 President Obama announced an Executive Order to review; regulations already on the books and to remove outdated regulations that stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive. In 2011 there were 75,770 pages of new regulations published in the Federal Register. The regulations resulted in 119.4 million hours of annual paperwork burden. There were no rules repealed in 2011. In the first 27 days of 2012 there were 4,456 pages of new regulations added to the Federal Register, with a $7.7 Billion burden from 25.2 million hours of annual paperwork. Finally on June 22, 2012 one rule was repealed; Spilled milk is no longer consider an “oil spill”.

It costs the Federal Government over $63 Billion per year to administer and police Federal regulations, with over 300,000 employees.

She had a lot more that I may be able to get to some other time. Her talk was a huge eye-opener.

FYI: Thomas Jefferson, “The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so that the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”