Government Micromanagement – The Hugh Hewitt Show

The Washington Times carried a piece this week about proposed rules changes at EPA over understanding the Clean Air Act.  It is stultifying and I spent my professional life dealing with those rules among others.

Here is the meat of the matter:

The update would apply to regulations for the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review air-permitting program, a preconstruction permit required for building or significantly modifying factories.

While the main goal is to ensure that factory, boiler and power plant emissions do not hurt air quality, the manufacturers said the current process unnecessarily restricts “noncontroversial activities.”

The proposed revisions include updating the definition of “begin actual construction” and differentiating “between construction of a stationary source and construction of non-emitting components or structures,” according to the summary in the Federal Register.

Lot of terms of art there, but I think most people get the idea.

My father was a C.P.A. and an attorney.  He used to say, “The I.R.S. is not just a tax collector, they are your partner.  They need to know everything.”  I am not here to argue tax policy, but the idea is a valid one.  What is stunning in that environmental regulators have taken things a step further, they are not your partner, they are your dictator, in microscopic detail.

Those rules changes are indeed liberalizing compared to the current state of affairs.  But having dealt with these people my whole life, I look forward to a different, less manufacturing supportive administration and see headache upon headache based on those phrases.  I can foresee a day when inspectors will tell construction crews they have gone too far because while this beam in non–emitting, this beam holds the equipment that is and is therefore considered emitting.  Fines will be levied, hearings will ensue and delays will be increased, not decreased.

The second thing that needs to be noted is that these proposed changes reveal just how ludicrous the entire system is.  No one wants to build a building to house emitting equipment if the equipment is not going to be permitted to operate.  It would be a horrible waste of money.  But that is what is being proposed here, changing the rules so the building can be built while the permitting of the equipment it is to contain is on-going.  Therefore, it presumes the equipment will be permitted and the delays are purely a function of bureaucratic entanglement.  Would it not be a better solution to streamline the permitting process is some fashion – to allow it to happen in a timely manner?

This argument gets seriously esoteric when it comes to smaller operations.  These bureaucratic entanglements can cost millions and add years to a major projects like a power plant, but those are also well capitalized projects and the delays mostly foreseeable. Imagine a small manufacturer, doing $20-30M a year.  They want to add a new machine costing $1.5M that promises to double their production capacity.  They borrow the money, they purchase the equipment and then it sits in its crate for months, maybe years until the permit arrives.  During those months, maybe years, they are paying on that loan without benefit of the production the machine was intended to create.  If the delays go on too long the books stop balancing and the loan gets called.  I’ve seen it happen more than once – hundreds of jobs lost because it just took some engineer at some agency too long to process a permit application.  The agony created when the permit arrives three months after the plant has shuttered is excruciating.

There has got to be a better way than this micromanagement.