If North Carolina wants to attract businesses to the state, it doesn’t have to provide special “goodies” to politically-connected businesses. This approach, with its long-history of failure and taking money from citizens and small businesses to help a few big businesses, is also conducive to political corruption.
Instead, North Carolina needs to focus on changing the business environment for all businesses. As I wrote in the Winston-Salem Journal, the legislature needs to fix our regulatory system that imposes significant burdens on all businesses.
Compared to most states (including most of our neighbors) and even the federal government, North Carolina’s regulatory system is outdated and doesn’t have the necessary protections in place to ensure sound regulatory policy.
- North Carolina doesn’t require cost-benefit analysis of regulations (the federal government has been conducting some form of cost-benefit analysis for nearly 40 years)
- North Carolina doesn’t adjust regulations to meet the unique needs of small businesses (35 states do this and the federal government has been doing this for 30 years)
- North Carolina doesn’t periodically review regulations to make sure that regulations on the book are still justified (32 states have periodic review)
- North Carolina doesn’t prohibit agencies from exceeding federal standards without clear legislative approval (a third of the states have some form of what are called “no-more stringent” laws, and North Carolina used to have these laws until environmental pressure groups had them removed)
You can learn more about regulatory reform in North Carolina in my latest report.
