At first, that seems to be the message with Gov. Gregoire’s executive order declaring a moratorium on new rules and regulations in order to conserve resources and help small businesses.

Sightline calls it a “big fat nothingburger” and you should check their post on the vagueness of the order. There are so many exceptions which are open to interpretation– maybe even too many for it to be practical. In “Is Gov. Gregoire the new Tim Eyman,” Knute Berger writes about the difficult task at hand for progressive elected officials and what this action means:“…the job is to prune government back as much as possible without killing it. In effect, we're all Republicans now. And all operating (again) under the Tim Eyman plan of needing two-thirds of the legislature to agree on any new taxes….But it is a huge symbolic victory for the Eyman-Tea Party-GOP world view. In fact, Republicans are quickly taking credit for the governor's action, which basically states that new regulations are bad for business, so no new pesky rules or regulations in 2011.” Does this signify less teeth to prevent shoreline development? It's so muddled, one wonders about rules and regulations protecting our aquifer. Or if it will actually benefit small business seeking to redevelop.

















On Monday, a coalition of environmental and labor groups—including the Washington Environmental Council, Washington Conservation Voters, SEIU 775, Transportation Choices Coalition, the AFL-CIO, and the Sierra Club—wrote a letter to Gregoire urging Gregoire not to unplug state agencies:

We are writing to strongly object to the potential issuance of an executive order suspending agency rulemaking. We appreciate the leadership you have shown in these dire economic times, and the challenges your administration faces in maintaining core government services during the ongoing budget crisis. However, a broad suspension of rulemaking is a blunt instrument that would send a damaging political message about the role of government, would do little to limit expenses or create jobs, and would significantly impair your administration’s ability to protect the environment, worker safety, public health and other critical government functions in the coming years.

We ask you to consider rejecting a rulemaking suspension.

Kathleen Drew, a policy adviser to Gregoire, told Publicola that any rules that “involve emergencies like the Four Loko ban or are necessary to carry out federal mandates or state legislation like the toxic toys bill would be exempt from the moratorium.”

According to Drew, the decisions are up to the agency directors themselves. Things such as updating rules like the new regulations of toxics that are part of a longtime process wouldn’t meet exemption requirements. She also said the protest letter from the unions and environmentalists “was sent before they even saw our order,” and told them it was taken into account. Ouch.

In his excellent column, Berger puts its best: This is not the ideology that is going to advance the progressive cause, that's going to buck-up the beleaguered public servants in Olympia, that's going to find a way to protect the people no matter what the fiscal challenges are. It's not the kind of creative solution-finding that's going to lead us to a better place.

It is also a gesture that flies in the face of reality in this sense: that government regulation is seen as hampering business, yet "socialism" is rarely decried when that same government weighs in on the side of business to create laws, loopholes, and programs that benefit and subsidize business. Gregorie is buying into a trap where business gets all the incentives and subsidies we can afford (like building more highways, tax breaks, and foisting the costs of pollution and climate change onto the public) yet is held less and less accountable.

That is a paradigm that is not sustainable.

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