From National Review, South Dakota has won another title – the least regulated state in the nation:
Now Mercatus has completed an analysis of state-level regulation. State RegData 1.0 analyzes the administrative codes of 46 states plus the District of Columbia, and the results are informative. The average state has 131,000 restrictive terms and about 9 million words in its code, which would require roughly twelve work weeks to read at a normal reading pace.
But there is huge variation. The least regulated state is South Dakota, with about 44,000 regulatory restrictions, while the most regulated state is California, with 395,000. All told, the least regulated states are South Dakota, Alaska, Montana, Idaho, and North Dakota, while the most regulated states are California, New York, Illinois, Ohio, and Texas.
I’m not sure I want to crow about there being only 44,000 regulations, versus California’s 395,000.
What do you think – can South Dakota do better?
Absolutely SD can do better, anybody with a regulation they’d like repealed comment below and I’ll take a look at it.
What should the target number be? Genuinely curious.
100
We should have a Trump rule: For every 1 new regulation, 2 old regulations need to be repealed.
Actually Gov DD was very involved with getting rid of old outdated statutes which some surely were regulating business and life in SD.
Remember too that every piece of legislation put into law takes a certain amount of freedom away from someone.
Let me get back ro you after I read the 44,000 we have. Are there some I’ll think we shoukd get rid of? Probably. Will I find out that regulations I think we ought to have, we don’t? Probably. Is focusing on the number instead of the specific content asinine? Absolutely.
How about the ‘regulations’ regarding hemp..?
Those are laws, not regs.
Should regulations be codified as law?
That could easily be cut in half without getting rid of necessary items.
SD is last in a lot of things.
Before anyone gets all lathered up thinking they’re gonna be able to get us into a chaotic wild west anarchy, please remember that administrative rules (“regs”) provide the flesh for the bones that are the Legislature’s statutes. Also remember that your Republikan Governor’s appointed agency heads come up with those regs, and your super majority in the Legislature reviews all new rules they give the agencies authority to promulgate.
My hunch is, regs are the same as most human endeavors and follow the 80/20 ratio, i.e. at any given time, 20 percent causes 80 percent of the results. In retail, that means 20 percent of the customers deliver 80 percent of the profit. In sports, 20 percent of the athletes on a team deliver 80 percent of the wins. And with government, 20 percent of the regs account for 80 percent of activity. Which means the big majority of regs have very little effect. I’ve got no problem with that.