The Virginian-Pilot, August 7, 2006

Attorney General Bob McDonnell stood next to a 24,000-page stack of state regulations last week and warned that excessive government nit-picking is harming Virginia businesses.

To justify the huge commission he's creating to thin them out, McDonnell noted that Virginia's business-friendly ranking has slipped in recent years, citing a study by a San Francisco think tank. Had he divulged that Virginia has dropped from second to third place, the urgency might not have seemed what McDonnell conveyed.

Indeed, the Pacific Research Institute said Virginia now trails only Kansas and Colorado in its economic freedom index.

The free market advocates at the Institute did not seem overly perturbed by Virginia's declining affinity for its corporate citizens. They described the state as a "citadel of economic freedom in the South."

Perhaps Virginia's business climate looks deceptively attractive when viewed from the West Coast. A review of the NFIB's survey of small business owners offers another perspective. The association for small businesses reported in December that Virginia "sales and profits are among the best in the nation." Only 7 percent of the business owners fingered regulations and red tape as their most important business problem. Twice as many said competition from big businesses was their greatest concern.

Well, then. What's to be made of McDonnell's deregulatory frenzy? He's deployed a task force and three working groups with a combined force of 63 business executives and politicians to search out and exterminate obsolete regulations that are smothering this state's economy.

With 24,000 pages of regulations to choose from, it's hard to imagine that 63 people will have trouble finding at least a handful of unnecessary and obsolete government rules. It would have been nice to see at least one consumer advocate included in the group alongside some of McDonnell's more generous campaign donors, including Harrisonburg businessman Walter Curt, the coal company Alpha Natural Resources and Virginia Beach car dealer Scott Rigell.

Because McDonnell doesn't have the authority to eliminate regulations on his own, his recommendations to state agency heads will presumably come with a "pretty please." If that doesn't work, he can ask the legislature to pass a law.

Conveniently, legislators already have their own commission, headed by Beach Sen. Frank Wagner, tasked with abolishing onerous regulations.

The legislative commission has tackled regulations on everything from septic tanks to child care. So far, the group has studiously avoided a hairy controversy over who should regulate equine dentistry.

At a press conference announcing the task force, McDonnell made much of a regulation requiring college presidents to fill out a request and pay $50 before putting up a tent over 900 square feet on campus.

Is that really a job-killer in Virginia?

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