A VOTER'S HANDBOOK

2 PARAGRAPHS 4 LIBERTY: 455

For several years I wrote a weekly column for The Daily Pilot, which was distributed by The Los Angeles Times. And after I finished writing the column I took some of the articles and merged them and published a book with them as the basis. The book was entitled A VOTER’S HANDBOOK: Effective Solutions to America’s Problems (The Forum Press, 2010). So I was glancing back over it a few days ago and thought that, among other things, the chapter entitled “Changing the Direction of Government: Pass Sunset Laws” would be interesting to our 2 Paragraphs Family. So here it is for your thoughts and discussions. 16 years have passed since it was published, are we in better shape now than we were then? I think the answer to that question is painfully obvious. So here is that chapter

The first specific step to take to change the direction of government and government overspending is to pass sunset laws. What does that mean? It means that legislation should be passed requiring every state governmental agency to get an affirmative vote from its legislature every six years or so to authorize its continued existence. This would also have the benefit of virtually mandating its legislature publicly to audit , assess and provide direction for all of the agencies that continue to function.

By analogy to the federal government, are you aware that many of the agencies established by the “New Deal” are still in existence today, if only under a different name? In addition to ingrained institutions like the FDIC, FHA, SEC, National Labor Relations Board and the Social Security Administration, these surviving agencies also include the Rural Electrification Administration, the Farm Security Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, Agricultural Adjustment Administration, Farmer’s Home Administration, National Resources Planning Board, and Federal Trade Zones Board.

Maybe after 70 years in existence they should be re-examined! No private business would allow this situation to continue, but our government not only allows it, it thrives upon it. And this is not to our benefit because, as President Reagan once said. “Government does not solve problems, it subsidizes them.”

We have a similar situation here in California. Simply referring to the state’s website I counted more than 300 different agencies, departments, boards and commissions. They go all the way from “Access for Infants and Mothers” to the “Workforce Investment Board.” Whether these agencies are contributing to the common good or not, their members and staffs are still drawing their paychecks and we are still paying their expensive overhead.

As a practical matter, what would happen if the legislation were to be passed? Every six years each agency would be required to come forward by itself and show what it has accomplished in the last few years and what its goals and plans are for the future. For example, if an agency set forth five main functions, the Legislature could analyze them and see which would likely be productive. Then if, for example, the Legislature found that two of the five were producing positive results, those could be perpetuated and re-funded. But if the other three functions were not giving us enough “bang for our buck,” the Legislature could pare back or restructure the programs so that they would function more efficiently. Some of those functions, or even the entire agency itself, could be combined with or delegated to another entity, and one of them could be abolished entirely.

Going down the list, maybe the California Apprenticeship Council could be combined with the Division of Apprenticeship Standards, or the Office of AIDS could be combined with the Department of Healthcare Services – and so could the Healthy Families Program be combined with the Hearing Aid Dispensers Bureau. It is obviously expensive to pay the overhead of these entities, and it is time to see if they are really necessary and, if they are, why they can’t be merged with other organizations.

Two features of this legislation would be critical for its success. First, each agency would have to be addressed and voted upon individually, because if they were to be addressed collectively any agency could more easily avoid scrutiny. That would also reduce the likelihood that individual members of the Legislature would work out deals that “if you vote not to abolish my favorite agency, I will vote not to abolish yours.”

Second, the legislative analysis and vote for each agency should be held as publicly as possible, with the hearings and votes being televised on C-SPAN or a similar station with “gavel to gavel” coverage. That would also reduce the ability of the members of the Legislature to play politics with the outcomes.

Today to my knowledge there is no provision in the law to actually abolish a state or federal agency – lots of ways to create them, but no way to terminate them. This legislation would not only change that reality, but it would also put the burden on each agency itself publicly to justify its existence. Or, conversely, it would give each agency an opportunity to shine and show publicly all of the outstanding work it has accomplished.

The benefits of this plan would not only be practical, they would also be institutional. Conceptually, we must decide whether our state or federal governments tell us how we are to be governed or regulated, or “We the People” shall control the government. There is no doubt about what Thomas Jefferson’s position was in this matter. Jefferson once wrote that he believed our country would be well served by a revolution every generation to keep our government fresh and responsive to the people’s will.

What Jefferson said can be analogized to the “default” key on today’s computers. After rearranging the paragraphs on a word processor, it is possible to press the “default” key and regain control over our own government. Some people have sometimes declared victory by slowing down the growth of government, but this plan actually should reverse that growth.

(Question for the week: What did one frog say to the other? “Time’s fun when you’re having flies.”)