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Friday, December 02, 2005

How Sunsets Fail the Sunshine State

The column stresses that the underlying assumption of the bill is a myth, the "myth of fat government":

But Florida's is not a big, bloated, unresponsive government. The Annual Workforce Report used to run two little lists of the bottom 10 states, in terms of state personnel costs per citizen and ratio of state employees to total population. Florida ranked 48th in one and 50th in the other -- I forget which, because [Gov. Jeb] Bush quit compiling those statistics, which didn't support the Republican credo that government is always bloated.

Of course, even a statistical showing of large government does not necessarily mean the government is too large. As we explained in recent testimony, numbers alone mean nothing without context. The key question isn't whether government is big or even if it is getting bigger; instead, the real question is whether we have the public institutions necessary to meet the public's needs.

Meanwhile, although sunset proponents argue that the looming specter of the sunset process will induce government agencies to produce ever better results, the column stresses the opportunity costs of the sunset process and the potential for political distortion of agency priorities:

But it would also be a bonanza for lobbyists, who could slip little provisos into reauthorization bills. If, say, the homebuilders or insurance agents or beer distributors didn't like some enforcement action taken by agencies, their lobbyists could get legislators to redraw the timetable and re-review those agencies every year.

After two or three near-miss swipes of the abolition ax, the enforcers would get the message and back off.

That poses the danger that, in the sixth or seventh year of its cycle, an agency would focus full time on its own survival. Every fourth year, that might mean doing whatever the leading candidates for governor and Cabinet spots want -- or, conversely, settling back into complacency for six or seven years, once the spotlight passes.