Dunleavy fails to define 'burden' in drive to cut 'burdensome' regulations

Two months have passed since Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced plans to eliminate 15 percent of burdensome state regulations by the time his regime ends in late 2026.

No one has bothered to define burdensome.

Dunleavy signed Administrative Order 360 on August 4, triggering an unbudgeted bureaucratic exercise that will guarantee the Dunleavy administration will have time to do nothing of substance in the next 13 months.

I doubt that anyone has thought this through, which is no surprise, given the Dunleavy track record. After he leaves office, he wants the number of repealed requirements to swell to 25 percent.

The 25 percent goal is an arbitrary one, perhaps borrowed from Virginia, where the GOP governor claimed in July that he had cut 26. 8 percent of regulatory requirements.

The Alaska Public Notices website is flooded with requests from state agencies asking for information about technical details and processes that members of the public know nothing about.

The burden is overwhelming.

But rest assured that special interests like the major oil companies have their own ideas about “burdensome regulations” and will be going straight to Dunleavy to relieve them of their burdens as soon as possible. He will do everything he can to comply. There will be no one looking out for those who have different ideas.

In the meantime, there is no telling how much this wasteful exercise of reviewing all regulations and all rules will cost and what services will be delayed as state employees are forced to fill out forms, hold hearings, go to meetings and get on board the DOGE-like Dunleavy bandwagon until he is gone.

I sent the following email Wednesday to Tyson Gallagher, Dunleavy’s longtime chief of staff. The burden of carrying out this questionable enterprise falls to Gallagher, who needs to explain himself.

Gallagher has not replied.

Gallagher should start by publishing on the state website the documents that show what companies have contacted the governor’s office and the details of their requests to make life less burdensome for themselves.

Tyson:

Please send me the detailed planning document that explains how and why state agencies are going to reduce 15 percent of regulations by the end of 2026. 

If the executive order is to be believed, this may be the most expensive and time-consuming effort in the history of our state government.

Who is paying for this work as it is not in the budget?

This is a multi-million-dollar effort, from the looks of it. What is your estimate?

It appears that Administrative Order 358, banning the hiring of new employees, is still in effect. Is that correct?

Administrative Order 360 quotes the governor as saying, "I am also directing that all current guidance documents be published on the Alaska Online Public Notice System to ensure transparency and accountability."

What guidance documents? Are there any?

I see various numbers quoted that there are 50,000 or 60,000 regulations in the Alaska Administrative Code. If it's 60,000, that means you need to eliminate 9,000 regulations in the next 13 months. If it's 50,000, you need to eliminate 7,500.

What is the correct number?

Let's say the target is 7,500 regulations in the next 13 months.

Who did the analysis to show that cutting 15 percent of the regulations of every department, regardless of size, is defensible? 

All in all, it appears the governor's office and the Department of Law will have little time to do anything else until there is a new governor. 

All of these regulation changes would be subject to public hearings and 30-day comment periods.

A fiscal note is required on all the regulation packages. Who is going to do that work?

The order says that every part of state government will "Document and publish stakeholder and public feedback and agency responses."

I would like to see the guidance document from your office that outlines how the so-called "burdens" on citizens and businesses are defined and what burdens are to be eliminated.

For instance, the flood of new public notices from the Dunleavy administration includes one asking for public input on water.

Is the burden of requiring clean water too much to ask? What is a burden in that context?

How is it calculated? 

What artificial intelligence tools are being used to define burdens and what steps have been taken to make sure that all agencies are using the same guidelines? Where are those guidelines? Those should be published, for purposes of transparency.

The way you ask a question of AI changes the answer. One man's burden is another man's assurance that the public health will be protected.

Every department is supposed to name one or more "Agency Regulatory Liaisons" by now.

Please send me the list of these liaisons, all of whom have state jobs in which they are required to do other chores. 

What work is the Dunleavy administration going to abandon to allow this effort to go forward?

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