If Gov. Ralph Northam signs a piece of legislation currently awaiting his approval, Virginia’s regulatory burden will soon become lighter.
The measure is House Bill 883, which has wide bipartisan support, passed by chambers of the General Assembly by significant margins, and is expected to be enacted by the governor. Known informally as the Regulatory Reduction Pilot Program, HB 883 will tackle rules issued by state licensing boards and criminal justice regulatory agencies.
HB 883 would set up a two-pronged pilot program to remove burdensome and unnecessary regulatory requirements. The first step is that the Virginia Department of Planning and Budget would tally and track all the regulations and requirements issued by these two agencies.
In an op-ed published in the Daily Progress, Mercatus Center at George Mason University senior research fellow James Broughel wrote: “State laws, rules, and regulations naturally increase with time. This occurs for the simple reason that legislators and regulators generally add more laws than they take away each year. For the average member of the public, complying with every requirement gets harder and harder as the accumulation of laws becomes ever more complex.” And according to the Mercatus Center’s RegData project, Virginia had more than 133,000 regulatory restrictions on the books in 2016.
The next is that the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation and the Department of Criminal Justice Services would be tasked with a goal of reducing regulatory requirements, compliance costs, and overall regulatory burden by 25 percent over the next three years.
These two agencies can do so by using the rulemaking process to eliminate, modify, or streamline current regulations or by flagging regulations that the Legislature can modify by changing the law. They will need to regularly report the efforts to the Department of Planning and Budget as well as hit annual benchmarks. If these goals aren’t met, an audit could commence.
Of particular focus in HB 883 is occupational licensing regulations. In a Washington Post op-ed, Institute for Justice Legislative Analyst Nick Sibilla wrote: “According to a recent study by my organization, the Institute for Justice, Virginia has the seventh most burdensome licensing laws for lower-income occupations. Among those occupations, the state’s licensing requirements, on average, force Virginians to complete 631 days of coursework or experience, pay $291 in fees, and pass an exam.”
HB 883 is good for Virginia—it will ease the regulatory burden for entrepreneurs and small business owners, increase competition, improve economic prospects for job-seekers, and boost job creation.
