Governor Glenn Youngkin has released a list of more than 300 regulatory changes his administration plans to implement by July 2023. Also, a manual for agencies on how to comply with the governor’s June Executive Order (EO) 19 focused on improving Virginia’s regulatory process and ordering a 25 percent reduction in total regulations.
“Our new Office of Regulatory Management is transforming how Virginians can access regulatory materials,” Youngkin said in a Tuesday announcement. “Our goal is to provide more transparency to the citizens of Virginia. By publishing a comprehensive list of all upcoming regulations, and the tools we are going to use to evaluate the economic impacts, private citizens, companies and interest groups will be able to participate in the regulatory process in a more meaningful way.”
The regulations changes range across Virginia’s agencies, including changes to menhaden fishing regulations, changes to reduce regulatory burdens on behavioral health officials, and repealing Virginia’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.
“The new Regulatory Management Office has made the review of regulations more efficient,” Director of Regulatory Management Andrew Wheeler said. “Historically it took over 200 days for a regulation to be reviewed by the Governor’s office, we now have that review period down to less than two weeks.”
The manual for agency heads notes that agencies are sometimes required to add new regulations and sometimes are granted the authority to introduce new regulations. It asks reviewers of regulation to perform an economic analysis to consider what problems the regulation will solve, the costs and benefits of different approaches, and how those approaches will impact local partners, families, and small businesses.
EO 19 requires the economic analysis package to be published on the state regulatory website.
In an introductory letter to the manual, Youngkin acknowledged that regulations are necessary but added, “However, our regulatory requirements have expanded to encompass almost every facet of our daily lives. Oftentimes these requirements are layered upon the citizens of the Commonwealth without regard to the existing regulatory burdens imposed by prior regulations from the issuing agency or other agencies.”
“Please remember, our goal is to provide more transparency in our regulations to the citizens of Virginia, and in order to accomplish this goal we must all use the same processes and definitions in analyzing the economic impacts of our regulatory decisions,” Youngkin told the agency heads in the letter.
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Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. This article originally appeared in The Virginia Star. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of The Republican Standard. Republished with permission.