Falmouth Citizen

Introduction
by Former Rep. Helen Chenoweth-Hage (R-Idaho, deceased)
I was elected to Congress on the promise that I would vigorously fight to reduce the excessive power of the federal government. As a resident of a Western state where the government owns most of the land, I was especially determined to roll back the myriad regulations enforced by thousands of bureaucrats, ostensibly to protect the environment but which too often undermine Americans’ constitutionally-protected property rights.

To this end, I have fought to reform environmental policies that have been systematically used by regulators to unfairly harass, intimidate or even deprive individuals of their hard-won property. These increasing incidences of regulatory abuse are the product of the unchecked growth in the size and power of government regulatory agencies over the past 30 years. The staff of the Environmental Protection Agency, for instance, has nearly tripled from fewer than 6,000 employees in 1971 to more than 17,000 today while the number of pages in the Federal Register, which lists all federal regulations, skyrocketed from 2,000 in 1971 to more than 64,549 pages by 1997. It is estimated that the rapidly expanding list of environmental and risk regulations now cost more than $250 billion.

But important as such statistics may be, this is not what the debate over regulation is about. Regulatory abuse is not about agency budgets or the number of bureaucrats. It is not about cold statistics on risks and benefits.

Regulatory abuse is about people – our friends and neighbors.

As a Congressman whose highest duty is to safeguard the constitutional rights of her constituents, I have always empathized the most with those decent people who thought if they just worked hard and played by the rules they would prosper. Instead, they often have to endure unnecessary suffering due to excessive, unreasonable regulations that frequently not only don’t make sense for people, but don’t make sense for the environment either.

Most Americans don’t know about these abuses. Unfortunately, before the abuses can be stopped the American people need to know there’s a problem. They need to know about the very human cost of these regulations.

This includes the story of Peggy Ann Buckley, a single mother in California, who just wanted to build a house for herself and her ailing son but is now millions of dollars in debt because she had to spend a decade fighting state bureaucrats who illegally stopped her from building her home.

And there’s the story of Brent Robson, a county commissioner from my home state of Idaho, who was almost killed on his snowmobile by an unmarked “tank trap” the U.S. Forest Service built in the middle of a forest road to discourage recreational vehicles.

Then there are the especially absurd stories such as the case of Dave Gordon, an enterprising New York businessman, who wanted to manufacture a special pillow designed to help prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. He also wanted to employ disabled workers. But to open the factory, he needed to be inspected by the State Bedding Board. Unfortunately, the board hadn’t met in recent memory, there were apparently no standards upon which to measure compliance, and the state didn’t employ anyone to carry out the required inspections.

What is bitterly ironic is that many of the victims introduced in these pages represent some of society’s more vulnerable citizens, including elderly people who have seen their retirement years shattered by bureaucrats bent on enforcing regulations that often make no sense.

The story of Belva Coblantz is a good example. Nearly blind, this 83-year old lady simply wanted to sell her house she had lived in for 40 years so she could move to California to be near her daughter, who could look after her. But local officials decided that Belva couldn’t sell her property because they ruled that there was a protected wetland on the site. They wouldn’t allow her to sell her land even though they allowed a city councilman who owned land right next to hers to sell his land for a housing development.

These are the faces of the human suffering caused by abusive regulation.

Unpleasant reading though it may be, the stories of these victims must be told. By publicizing these personal tragedies, perhaps we can begin to mobilize the American people to support the broad-based reforms in our regulatory policies that we so desperately need.

-Helen Chenoweth-Hage

Helen Chenoweth-Hage represented the First Congressional District of Idaho. She was killed in a tragic automobile accident on October 2, 2006.