To Eliminate Government Waste, Shine a Light

to the unelected officials – exists only on paper. Ask why something isn’t working sensibly, and the answer is typically this: “The rule made me do it.” Ask why the rules need to be so rigid, and the answer is that, otherwise, “someone will claim a decision violates their rights.”

Better leadership cannot solve this flaw, because new ideas and values sink in the legal quicksand. As paper covers rock, law supplants leadership. The cure is not (mainly) de-regulation, but re-regulation. It’s time to press the reset button. Dense bureaucracies must be replaced by simpler frameworks that focus on goals. Bureaucratic detail must be replaced by clear lines of authority and accountability.

Reboot Washington.

Pruning the red tape jungle, as we’ve learned in the last 50 years, will achieve almost nothing. The paralytic bureaucracies built since the 1960s must be replaced by laws that people can actually understand, implemented by officials whom citizens can identify and hold accountable. Law can provide the goals and framework for decisions, but people on the spot must have the freedom to roll up their sleeves and take responsibility.

Public demand is there. Two-thirds of Americans favor “major structural changes” in government, according to a 2019 University of Chicago poll. What’s missing in the current political debate is a coherent vision for a new public operating system. Filling that vacuum holds the promise of uniting most Americans.

Every segment of society is dragged down by bureaucratic rigidity: - Upwards of 30% of the healthcare dollar goes to administration. That’s a trillion dollars, or $1 million per doctor. Doctors spend two hours on desk work for every one hour with patients. - Schools are choking on a tangle of red tape and legal entitlements. Almost half the states have more noninstructional personnel than teachers, many trying to keep track of bureaucratic requirements. Teachers have lost the authority to maintain order. Principals have lost the authority to manage teachers. - Lengthy environmental reviews often harm the

environment by prolonging polluting bottlenecks. They also more than double the cost of infrastructure projects. The solution is not to get rid of environmental reviews, but do what countries like Germany do — empower officials to make the decisions needed to stick to a one to two year permitting process. - Small business cannot possibly keep track of, much less comply with, thousands of requirements. One report found that an apple farm in New York State was subject to 5,000 rules from 17 different regulatory programs. The solution is not to eliminate protection of, say, clean apples, but to create a simpler oversight mechanism that focuses on public goals. - Revamping police forces is all but impossible. Because of union collective bargaining agreements, the Chief of Police in Minneapolis had no authority to terminate, or even reassign, Derek Chauvin, despite numerous complaints about his abuse of power. The protesters who took to the streets after the killing of George Floyd seem to think that some official is refusing to push the right buttons. But bureaucracy has made officials powerless. Ditto Philip K. Howard for almost all public agencies. Remaking government on a human scale, leaving room for responsibility and Democracy isn’t working accountability, will honor core because bureaucracy is in precepts of good government. charge, not the leaders Law will regain its role of protecting an open field of elected by voters. freedom, not supplanting freedom with detailed dictates of how to make daily decisions. Simpler goal-oriented codes will promote practical solutions and allow officials and citizens to honor, as Friedrich Hayek put it, “the circumstances of time and place.” Instead of dictating rote compliance, codes that focus on outcomes will empower communities to provide services in their own ways. Americans can make a difference again. Americans can innovate again. Rebooting legacy bureaucracies will require overcoming powerful forces of the status quo, however. Instead of broadly attacking government — which guarantees stalemate and polarization — a platform to reboot Washington can focus public demand on three concrete reforms: 1. Create “spring cleaning commissions.” Nonpartisan

commissions, similar to base-closing commissions, should propose simpler codes that leave room for officials and citizens to use their common sense in most situations. No one designed the red tape tangle that stifles teachers, doctors, small business, social service providers, and infrastructure projects. Scrapping the thick rulebooks and replacing them with goal-oriented codes will allow Americans to take responsibility and get things done. The 1956 Interstate Highway Act was 29 pages long, and within a decade 21,000 miles of road had been built. Today, that project is subject to thousands of pages of detailed rules, and it can take a decade just to get a permit. 2. Overhaul civil service to restore democratic accountability. Government today is largely unmanageable because of impregnable legal protections imposed by civil service rules and collective bargaining contracts. There’s zero accountability in government — 99% of federal civil servants get a “fully successful” rating. This is a fatal defect of government since, as Joe Biden once said, “Democracy runs on accountability.”

Accountability reform gets no traction because politicallypowerful unions seem as impregnable as the jobs they protect. The solution is constitutional. Requiring collective bargaining in the federal government is almost certainly an unconstitutional infringement of executive authority under Article II of the Constitution. The stranglehold of union contracts on state and local government suffers a different constitutional flaw. By making governors and mayors largely powerless to run schools and local government, collective bargaining in states may run afoul of the “Guarantee Clause” in Article IV, which guarantees a “republican form of government” in the states. Democracy doesn’t mean much if union contracts have disempowered elected officials from managing schools and public agencies. 3. Put boundaries on legal claims. The land of the free has become a legal minefield. Anything you do or say — even your ancestry — can be claimed to violate someone’s

rights. Instead of a shield to protect freedom, these new rights are a sword against the freedoms of other citizens. The cacophony of people pounding the table to get something for themselves — “Give Me My Rights!” — also puts government in the impossible position of trying to govern by the lowest common denominator. All public choices involve tradeoffs. A new power line can bring power from renewable sources, but requires building towers on pristine landscapes. Officials must have the ability to act for the common good, not satisfy every squeaky wheel. Legal rights are supposed to protect our freedoms. No one should have rights superior to anyone else. America needs a new set of principles defining and limiting legal claims — to affirmatively protect the reasonable freedoms of citizens and the reasonable responsibilities of officials. Instead of bending over backward to accommodate every claimant’s self-interest, courts must be given the mandate to protect everyone’s freedom. Here as well, a (photo credit: Architect of the Capitol) special commission should be charged with proposing a new framework to Two-thirds of Americans favor restore order and

“major structural changes” predictability to legal boundaries. in government … What’s missing Polarization is in the current political debate is tearing at our social a coherent vision for a new fabric. The anger and extremism stem public operating system. in large part from frustration over the unresponsiveness of democracy to citizen goals and values. Broad public support will galvanize around leaders who present a governing vision that will empower democracy and rebuild the framework for a free society. RF Philip K. Howard is the Founder and Chairman of the Board of Common Good, a nonpartisan reform coalition with one basic goal — to restore the freedom of officials and citizens to use common sense. His latest book is “Try Common Sense: Replacing the Failed Ideologies of Right and Left (W.W. Norton & Company, January 2019)”