Regulatory reform is making bipartisan waves across the country as states cut back the red tape that advocates say has curtailed business for too long.
Louisiana has heard its own calls for scaling back regulations, while others say the state doesn’t regulate enough—or enforce the regulations that already exist.
When Virginia was applauded last year by CNBC and ranked the No.1 state for business, in part because of its red-tape-reduction pilot program, Louisiana was ranked 46th and given a “D” for business friendliness.
In Rhode Island, the state recently put it’s regulatory code online, in a searchable database, that ended up removing more than 8,000 regulations.
Louisiana is taking similar steps to put small business regulations online through the Secretary of State’s office. The department launched the online portal earlier this month as part of the Small Business Protection Act, which requires the office to post proposed regulations, although current regulations are also expected to be posted to the database.
Attorney General Jeff Landry has joined calls to reduce both state and federal regulations. In 2017, he signed onto a multistate letter urging Congress to “take back ownership of the regulatory state.”
But on the other side of the aisle, environmental groups like the Louisiana Bucket Brigade—who recently filed a lawsuit against the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality over Formosa Plastics’ air quality permit for its new plant—say the state does too little to regulate industry.
Last year, Landry applauded President Donald Trump for removing “unnecessary regulatory burdens” under the Well Control Rule that were put in place after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The move was condemned by environmental groups—including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Natural Resource Defense Council—and led to a California-based lawsuit that is still ongoing.
Last year, George Mason University’s Mercatus Center looked at Louisiana’s regulations and broke them down by industry. The top three industries “targeted” by state regulations, according to the report, are administrative and support services, educational services, and petroleum and coal manufacturing.
The three least-regulated sectors are crop production, paper manufacturing, and food and beverage stores. Most of the regulations are tied to environmental quality, totaling just under 25,000. Insurance is ranked at the bottom, with about 5,500 regulations.
The Pelican Institute, a conservative policy group, has pushed for regulatory reforms as a way to open up the state’s business climate, citing the state’s outlying occupational licensing laws for florists, interior designers, hair braiders, and others “that pose no risk to public health and safety.”
The Institute for Justice, a national law firm advocating for limited government, has been a strong advocate against states’ licensing for hair braiders. The group is currently suing the state Board of Cosmetology over the issue in the 19th Judicial District Court. A hearing had been scheduled for Dec. 12, but was delayed indefinitely.
It’s unclear whether the Legislature will take any steps one way or the other on regulatory reform in the session that begins next month.
