Drive for red tape transparency leaves some blind spots - Updated

Legislative Republicans want more transparency and accountability in the state's rulemaking and regulatory process.

From a morning news release:

Senate and House Republicans Sept. 13 announced an initial round of rule and regulation reforms aimed at re-opening Iowa for business, growing the state's economy and creating more private sector jobs.

These initial reforms came about as a result of their highly successful and very well attended 11-city tour this spring. More than 1,000 Iowans attended, nearly 175 individuals testified and approximately 300 public comment forms were collected.

“We launched this initiative in January and what we are doing in Iowa is spreading throughout the country, said Senator Merlin Bartz, R-Grafton, a member of the Administrative Rules Review Committee. “From the presidential campaign to Congress and now finally even the White House is beginning to talk about the serious impact rules and regulations have on small businesses, entrepreneurs and job creators.”

These nine recommendations stem directly from listening to Iowans and receiving their input. By fundamentally changing the process that rules and regulations are created and implemented, those that are affected will have more input and the process will be more transparent.

Republicans intend to push these initiatives and recommendations among others during the upcoming 2012 legislative session:

•All state departments and agencies have a searchable and user-friendly rules database on their websites.

•Amend the Iowa Code to require a five year rolling review of all administrative rules.

•Institute negotiated rule-making in Iowa as is the case at the federal level.

•Public hearings for rules and regulations must be held at locations and times that are convenient for those impacted by the rules.

•Require regulatory analysis of all administrative rules for their impact on the private sector and job creation.

•Require state agencies to accept public comments on proposed rulemaking in an electronic format.

•Require that no state agency or Iowa rule making authority may create rules and regulations that exceed rules and regulations promulgated by a federal agency unless specifically authorized by the Iowa General Assembly.

•A full-time effort is consistently applied toward making Iowa's rule and regulatory climate more hospitable.

•An extensive study is commissioned by the Iowa Legislature detailing what the projected financial effects of current and proposed EPA and DNR rules and regulations on Iowa cities over a ten year period.

“Government should not be punishing the very people we need to grow this state and create jobs,” said Representative Dawn Pettengill, R-Mount Auburn, of the Administrative Rules Review Committee. “We need to have reasonable and responsible levels of rules and regulations that protect the public interest without placing an undue burden on our job creators, cities and taxpayers and these common sense reforms will begin to make real changes.”

Legislative Republicans will be announcing further recommendations on specific rules at a later date.

They all seem like swell ideas. I'm all for transparency and input. Although I am a little surprised Republicans would defer so much to the wisdom of the big bad federal government. You can read the report that yielded the above release here.

Really, my only problem is with the last line. We have all these ideas for improving transparency and encouraging citizen input, but these lawmakers won't clue us in on what actual rules and regs they want to change until "a later date." Telling us today would give Iowans a good four months to weigh in before lawmakers return to Des Moines.

It's been months since Republicans held their town halls. Surely they have ideas for what regs they want to kill or curtail that could be shared now. Perhaps they could could post them on a searchable database, or announce them at convenient locations to receive input from those affected by the changes. 

I'm being a tiny bit snarky, but I'm also serious. If they have specific regulatory changes they plan to propose and pursue, I think they need to announce them sooner than later. I applaud greater future transparency, but the real debate Iowans care about will be a fight over existing regulations and what truly constitutes "reasonable and responsible." Folks will beg to differ, I suspect.

I think it's also worth noting that lawmakers already have considerable power over the rulemaking process. For starters, they can prescribe specific paramaters for new rules and regs in the legislation they pass. Second, the Legislature's Administrative Rules Review Committee has the power to halt rules and regulations for further review by the full General Assembly, as it did recently with a rule banning the use of lead shot by dove hunters.

So all those undue burdens that defy common sense were likely Ok'd by our elected lawmakers and reviewed by a legislative committee also made up of our elected lawmakers. So we can enact good ideas to tweak the process, like the ones above, but good regulations are really the result of good lawmaking. 

A big part of that depends on who we elect. Funny how responsibility for this democracy thing always comes back to us.

And part of it comes down to who they listen to most, a.k.a., who finances their campaigns. And that's one sizable gap I see in this list of reforms --  improvements in campaign finance disclosure system that make it a lot easier for Iowans to see who is donating and what ties those donors have to groups lobbying on specific issues. I'd require weekly electronic disclosure, at least.

The data is out there. It just needs to be tied together and presented to Iowans at the speed of politics. Shine a bright light on both the bureaucratic process and the politicians who shape it. Now that would be real transparency.

Update -- Iowa CCI joins the transparency-fest with its own news release. An excerpt:

Iowa Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley's deregulation report released today is not credible because it ignores the testimony of more than 175 CCI members who attended McKinley's public hearings across the state earlier this year and testified for the need for stronger and more effective public oversight over factory farm polluters and other big-moneyed corporations.

 Iowa CCI members say the report is seriously flawed and called on McKinley's office to release all written and oral testimony from the hearings immediately to the public. The grassroots community organization posted a PDF file of press releases CCI members sent out after each hearing here, and press clippings here and here.

 “McKinley's report is not credible because it ignores the testimony of at least 175 local-area CCI members who attended every single one of McKinley's hearings across the state to demand stronger and more effective public oversight over factory farm polluters and other big-moneyed corporations,” said Garry Klicker, a CCI member, independent family farmer and small business owner from Bloomfield who attended McKinley's hearings in Oskaloosa and Burlington.

“McKinley's office claims they received more than 175 oral testimonies and 300 written testimonies. We believe that CCI members accounted for at least half of that total and we call on McKinley to immediately release all oral and written testimony to the public.”