Lax Regulation and Citizen Opposition

Musings

It seems to be a common event nowadays for citizens in a community to oppose new projects that are proposed or approved. There will always be a group of people opposed to anything new and any change. Its confusing because our communities spend a lot of time and money to attract newprojects. However, I believe there is an  intuitively held reason why there are so many people opposing new projects today. These projects always have a certain amount of complications to them and the developers and owners of the company involved always promise to follow all of the rules and requirements that are imposed on them and to be good citizens. They present nice architectural drawings that show wonderful locations without  hardly any traffic and nicely landscaped. The approving authority be it local, state or federal government almost always has a whole list of requirements that must be completed and regularly followed up on in order to receive the approval. However, once the approval is in the compliance with all of the rules and regulations that are imposed on the development seems to fall apart. The regulatory enforcement is regularly lacking. The citizens have learned this and therefore they are skeptical of any approval of a new project.

 

Contemplations

It is easy to follow this scenario of approval, lack of compliance, lack of oversight by the regulators, failure to correct violations even when identified by the regulators, and in some number of instances accidents or destructive events caused by the lack of compliance.

Just a few of these sequences demonstrate the failure of the regulatory systems. Enbridge Energy had a pipeline that burst and caused  the largest inland spell in the United States at over 800,000 gallons that went into the Kalamazoo river system. Not only did the pipeline break but the employees that were supposed to be monitoring it were very slow to catch the break and react. All of the supposed safety requirements that Enbridge had put in place either failed or were not kept in place and regularly followed.  Enbridge is currently engaged in a multi year effort to have another major pipeline approved in the United States to transport Canadian oil and they promise many safety measures.

In Florida we had the collapse of the 12 story beachfront condominium in Surfside causing the deaths of 98 people. The property had a number of building violations some of which had been identified. Required corrections had not been performed because the condominium owners had opposed the cost of the reforms which were structural and expensive. The end result was the collapse of the building and the 98 deaths. The government which had identified some of the violations had not followed up on compelling corrections due to the controversy of the cost and owner opposition. Florida is full of similar projects of which I presume many have similar defects.

We now have an outbreak of listeria at a Boars Head plant in Virginia that has apparently killed approximately 9 people andleft dozens of others sick from contaminated product produced there. The inspection showed a number of violations of safety codes for over 2 years that have been ongoing and we're not corrected. Boars Head has closed the plant and is now sterilizing it. The Department of Agriculture had not compelled compliance. Reports were filed and communications exchanged, small consolation.

These occurrences reflect the many instances of involvement between our commercial world and the  residential world which require the government to carefully scrutinize a project, to approve all of the necessary constraints and restrictions and then follow up with inspections and enforcement. There usually are enough constraints and restrictions in the approval process. Indeed the developers will say there are  too many regulations and regulators and they are unnecessary. However there is rarely a requirement for the project to produce an annual fee to provide for regular inspections and enforcement. That is considered to bea job for the government, who is always there and has enough money to inspect and enforce. However, as we know the government usually  does not have enough money in its budgetfor compliance or decides that the regulatory enforcement budget is not that important and under funds it. Many, I would say most, projects in the country are not regularly inspected with prompt enforcement to follow an inspection. The only reason there are not more accidents and catastrophes is that most of the companies do follow the necessary requirements.

Unfortunately we have learned that without inspections and enforcement there is a regular number of companies that either try to skip the  regulatory requirement in order to  leave that work for a later day or don't want to spend the money to comply.The capitalistic striving for higher profits is undoubtedly one of the causes of this type of problem. That being an inevitability it is incumbent upon the regulatory authority to be consistently involved in the enforcement process. Unfortunately, there is nothing sexy or enticing about this

aspect of government and hence the politicians when they run for office and get into office don't spend too much time reviewing this aspect of their government as they prefer things that will put them in the news and perhaps draw money to run for office and votes in the next election. That is a sad commentary but that is also the way capitalistic democracies function.

Because of this incongruity many proposed projects that appear to be good for the community in terms of jobs, tax revenues and growth are opposed  because the citizens don't feel they can trust the politicians and regulators to make sure that the project evolves the way it is presented to the community in the approval process.

Two current proposed projects in Michigan demonstrate this dichotomy A major battery manufacturing project close to Big Rapids, Michigan has created a lot of consternation in that  community as some number of the people there do not trust what the project will evolve into and how it will be controlled by the regulatory authorities. Similarly a project in the vicinity of Marshall, Michigan for an extensive battery plant and manufacturing facility has created a lot of opposition in spite of the fact that it would seem to be just what the government is trying to attract with new manufacturing jobs and up-to-date technology. Many of the people there don't trust the government to keep the project under control and regulated so that it is anasset to the community and not a large project which creates undesirable industrial sprawl.

 

Thoughts

We need new projects like that proposed for Big Rapids and Marshall to feed our economy and continue to allow us tomaintain our economic strength. The trouble is the government has failed our communities  as it does not perform its obligations to do the inspections and the regulatory follow up and enforcement that is required. These are not the matters that politicians care about. They are quick to show up at the news coverage once the problem occurs and be sure that their pictureand their comments are in the coverage but they spend little time addressing these issues in the day-to-day operations of passing their laws and ensuring their enforcement. They also do not allocate sufficient funds to ensure that administration bureaucracy that they oversee can perform efficiently. Of course they underfund the bureaucracy because funding the bureaucracy does not draw votes and everyone is happy to complain about too much government and regulation or that the bureaucracy needs to be shrunk and its efforts undercut. That is a regular commentary but it is false. I believe that is exactlybackwards as the administrative bureaucracy is the part of government that actually functions and does things. We should enhance the regulatory activities and reduce the politicians.  We need to discourage this incongruity and improve the functioning of the regulatory part of our government.

 

Obadiah plainman

 

previously posted editions of this blog can be found at:   thoughtscm.com

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