Opinion | Idaho cut its rule book in half. Washington should follow suit.
- Idaho sliced its bureaucratic rulebook by a staggering 49% by flipping the default: now rules must justify their existence instead of crime-scene-taping themselves forever. The trigger was a simple 'keep it or kill it' five-year review, which turned bureaucratic inertia into a clearance rack.
- The federal Administration for Children and Families went Marie Kondo on its own closet, ditching a whopping 74% of its sub-regulatory guidance (think 35,781 pages of 'Dear Colleague' letters that no one read). They discovered 61 pages of informal guidance for every single page of formal regulation — a cycle of paper-mache 'expertise'.
- Read the subtext: A pharmacy owner was blocked over a 'solid core door' rule while a bank vault next door was fine with a wet paper bag — proving that red tape doesn't protect people, it just protects the status quo and the guy who wrote the rule in 1972.
- The problem isn't just old rules; it's the one-way ratchet of new ones accumulating with zero sunset provisions. Idaho's 'zero-based' review forced agencies to prove something works before keeping it, a truly revolutionary concept in a town built on inertia.
- The happy ending for the average citizen? If federal agencies adopt this 'justify it or junk it' approach, you might actually save an hour of your life every week not filling out forms in triplicate for a program that doesn't even exist anymore.
Brief Summary
In a world where government buildings are fortresses of soul-crushing paperwork, Idaho has somehow discovered the lost art of 'de-cluttering' the regulatory closet. The state went from regulating the thread count of a deputy vet's uniform to actually asking, 'Wait, why is this here?' After flipping the legal presumption from 'innocent until proven guilty' to 'guilty of redundancy until proven useful,' Idaho's rulebook shrank by nearly half — a 5,000-page purge of dead weight, outdated references to 8-track tape, and a no-doubt vital rule about kickboxing attire for women that somehow survived the 80s.
Why This Matters
This isn't just a ho-hum administrative tweak; it's a full-blown rebellion against the bureaucracy's favorite hobby of hoarding. For the average citizen, this could mean the difference between opening a small business with moderate hassle versus being legally required to install a solid core door that looks like it belongs on a bank vault because some inspector never got the memo about security film. The federal government claims to be adopting this zero-based mindset, but your wallet will believe it only when they actually stop asking you for proof of existence to renew a license for a program that hasn't been funded since the Nixon administration.