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Idea to send: |
| Topic | Economic Impact Analyses of Proposed Legislation |
| Content | Legislation and changes in state rules and regulations may be requested by constituents, lobbyists, agencies, changing philsophy or in response to unfortunate events. Whatever its genesis, there is no question that changing state law will have an impact on someone. Recently in my hometown, the Grand River Dam Authority, an unappropriated agency and utility that manages Grand Lake o' the Cherokees, began the process of drafting a Shoreline Management Plan. They hired out-of-state consultants who had no experience with the Oklahoma economy and who had previously demonstrated hostility towards rural economic development in other SMPs they had prepared, stacked the "stakeholder committees" with anti-economic development members, and created an end product that would have devastated the Grand Lake economy. Although GRDA subsequently rewrote the plan to be more economic development friendly, it has not yet been approved. In the process, GRDA wasted almost a million dollars plus countless hours of volunteer time, squandered enormous amounts of good will in the Grand Lake community, and created such uncertainty about the final product that economic development has significantly slowed down. Had GRDA been required to perform an economic impact study of its proposed rules and regulation changes, much of this would have been avoided because they would have been forced to confront the failed proposal much earlier. And more than likely this is not an isolated event within state government. I, therefore, propose that proposed rules and regulation changes and all legislative actions require an economic impact statement before the matter can advance. The EIS would be prepared by staff and published along with the proposed rules, regs and legislation. Thank you for your consideration of my idea, and best wishes for a successful program.
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