A plan to find and cut unnecessary regulations potentially could save Virginians time and money.
Government regulations can be helpful and are often necessary to protect health and safety.
But we all know the nature of bureaucracy: It tends to metastasize. That goes both for government agencies and the regulations they promulgate.
Succumbing to mission creep, regulations become ever more pervasive, growing in detail and in number - and before long, that becomes numbing.
Oppressive regulations are enervating to initiative, to innovation, to enterprise. Designed with the good intention of improving quality of life, they can stifle improvement by imposing unnecessary obstacles to change.
Attorney General Bob McDonnell cites a regulation that requires a college president to file a formal request with the state and pay a $50 fee just to set up an event tent on campus.
It was to bypass such unreasonable rules that the state instituted restructuring of oversight regulations for Virginia colleges.
Meanwhile, the cost of maintaining vast compendiums of regulations can be burdensome even for government.
Every so often, it’s a good idea to look at regulations with a fresh eye and ask: Is this really needed?
Mr. McDonnell has proposed to do just that.
He has appointed a 25-member task force to look for ways to streamline state regulations, plus three working groups to advise the panel on agriculture, small business and health care.
That brings the total number of participants to 62.
A spokeswoman for Gov. Tim Kaine says he supports the program, and that many state agencies already have begun looking at reductions in regulations. The tax department, she noted, has so far found nearly 300 regulations that could be discarded.
Because regulations, unlike laws, are set by the agencies themselves, state agencies would not be obligated to accept task force recommendations.
But Mr. McDonnell says his program will not go the way of so many government studies - a flurry of activity, a spate of recommendations but then no action. He promises results.
We’ll say it again: Regulations aren’t always, or even usually, bad. Many are necessary, many are beneficial.
We would hate to see the task force throw the good out with the bad by becoming overzealous.
The task force’s chairman, former Del. John Rust, pledges “a systematic and careful review” rather than an undue “attack on regulations.”
Given the nature of bureaucracy and the creeping habit of regulations, a deliberate effort to re-evaluate rules and eliminate unneeded ones could prove valuable.
It could improve Virginians’ quality of life and experience with government - which, after all, should be the goal of regulations in the first place.