Balancing Act Selects Utah to Start Regulatory Reform – Deseret News

Members of Utah’s House of Representatives congressional delegation brought their colleagues to a panel Thursday before a meeting of Utah business leaders.

Four federal lawmakers said that for decades members of Congress have abdicated the people’s power over industry, land and commerce and ceded it to a sprawling bureaucracy.

But a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this summer could force the nation’s highest governing body to reclaim its mantle and lawmaking responsibility, they say.

“Let’s be honest about where the blame lies,” Rep. Celeste Maloy, D-Utah’s 2nd Congressional District, told a group of Utah elites gathered on the top floor of the Zions Bank building in downtown Salt Lake City. “These agencies have authority delegated to the executive by the Legislature, and we have always had the authority to take it away. We didn’t do it.”

What is the draft balancing act?

Maloy and fellow Utah House Republicans Blake Moore, John Curtis and Burgess Owens headlined an event hosted by the Balancing Act Project, a new national lobbying organization that has selected Utah as the location to launch efforts to transform the nation’s regulatory environment .

“We chose Utah because Utah has a tradition of challenging Washington’s one-size-fits-all approach,” said Balancing Act Project founder Keith Nahigian.

The nonpartisan, nonprofit organization says it was created to prepare Congress for the power vacuum that would be created if it repeals a 1984 decision that gave broad policy-making powers to unelected federal officials.

Close observers say the nation’s highest court is likely to overturn a 40-year-old precedent known as the “Chevron deference” doctrine, which requires judges to task federal government agencies with interpreting the laws they enforce unless Congress issues specific guidance.

According to Nahigian, legislative discretion granted to agencies without accountability has created an burdensome set of regulations that hurt small businesses, thwart important projects and worsen inflation for working Americans.

Is deference to Chevron bad for Utah?

The message from the state’s members of Congress, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who joined via video call, and the state’s top industry officials was that Congress must step up and create legislation that will do the hard work of detailing how policies will be implemented across the country , rather than leaving it to federal agencies that change hands every four to eight years.

“The rule of deferring a federal agency’s interpretation of a federal statute, so long as such interpretation is reasonable, has for the past 40 years empowered federal agencies to advance their missions and expand their authority in ways that are consistently bad for state power, bad for economic growth, and bad for liberty. individual and human flourishing,” Cox said.

Removing that deference will make federal agencies much more dependent on Congress for guidance, something Maloy said Congress has often avoided, preferring instead to pass vague regulations and blame agencies for poor outcomes.

“We’re going to have to do a much better job if Chevron is taken down,” Maloy said. “We will have to bill better. … We’ll have to be ready.”

But Moore, who represents Utah’s 1st District, isn’t sure Congress is up to the task.

“Will Congress actually do its job?” he asked Moore. “If we’re not willing to do our job as members of Congress and actually find a workable solution to all of these problems, it’s going to be a moot point.”

As for Congress’s job, Moore said lawmakers should do everything they can to create an environment where businesses, workers and the American Dream can thrive. Moore’s constituents tell him the biggest obstacle to that are intrusive and out-of-touch federal agencies, he said.

Curtis, who represents Utah’s 3rd District, which is 90% federally owned except for a small area along the Wasatch Front, said the Biden administration’s recent policy allowing the Bureau of Land Management to lease land for conservation purposes and to prevent other uses of the area is a good example how Chevron’s respectability emboldened the agencies to take on a powerful role in shaping the way Americans live, Curtis said.

“When we do this, we are essentially enabling people living 3,000 km away to make decisions about land that impact the local economy, energy and agriculture,” Curtis said.

Owens, representing the 4th Circuit, said that if the U.S. Supreme Court follows the example of the Utah Supreme Court, which eliminated judges’ deference to agency interpretations of statutes, more business owners in the country will succeed and the middle class will grow.

“This will allow us to get back to a place where we, the people, can stand up for the values ​​we hold nationally against the bureaucrats who become oppressors in Washington,” Owens said.

Business leaders praise Utah’s federal lawmakers

Business leaders, including heads of trade associations representing banking, food production, mining, petroleum and manufacturing, lamented unpredictable and unreasonable federal regulations and praised Utah’s House of Representatives delegation as the most accessible and business-friendly in the country.

Utah was recently named the best state to start a business, the best state to find a job and the best state overall, noted Derek Miller, CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber.

“Utah has built an economy that is the envy of the nation,” Miller said. “The cornerstone of our economy is a business-friendly environment. We are grateful to our congressional delegation – the best congressional delegation in the country – because they recognize the role government plays in supporting, accelerating and unleashing the power of free enterprise.”

But in a post-Chevron world, Maloy said, there will still be a lot of work to be done to recreate “the Utah way” on a national level.

“If we can no longer simply rely on agencies, then we need to dig deep and examine existing regulations,” Maloy said. “So we’re going to have to adopt the mindset that I think Utah already has, that it takes really good regulations to be better than no new regulations at all.”