The regulatory apparatus has been employed many times to restrain economic development in this state. Critics of the system maintain that it is capricious, heavy-handed, and subject to political manipulation. That Vermont is punishing itself, economically, by inflexibly enforcing, for example, Act 250. Supporters respond that this is merely sour grapes, the law-is-the-law and were it not for stringent regulation, the state would look like New Jersey.
Recently, the regulators have turned their fire on two composting operations and while the arguments sound the same, some of the people making them seem to have switched sides. It is one of those little "gotcha" moments in politics that satisfies the small-minded and petty side in all of us.
Regulatory relief for composters make sense. Regulatory relief in general makes sense. Vermont needs to embrace common sense and flexibility in pursuit of economic growth and drop the regulatory inquisitions. We need people with jobs to buy food from farmers and then create garbage. We need composting operations to make the garbage into fertilizer. We need farmers to use the fertilizer to grow food which people with jobs can buy and then turn back into garbage ...
And we can even afford a few hack journalists and bloggers to find something wrong with the system.
We may even find a use for the regulators.
What a fascinating idea. Regulators as compost. Hmm! I wonder if they would sour the compost as they have the process of regulating.
Posted by: Karen Kerin | July 22, 2008 at 03:17 PM