Common Sense Government: Works Better and Costs Less Page: 36
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36 Common Sense Government: Works Better & Costs Less
4. Negotiate, don't dictate. Tell people what you want to accomplish and engage
them in working out how to get there. Seek consensus at the very start.
The agencies didn't do it alone. In the month and a half after President
Clinton's order, they held hundreds of meetings with businesses, individuals, and
state and local government officials all over the country to ask them what needed to
be eliminated or fixed. As you might expect, people had plenty of ideas; they'd just
been waiting for someone to ask.
Progress Report:
Cutting Obsolete Regulations, Pointless Paperwork
It's almost impossible to remember the world before automatic teller machines
came along. If you needed cash, you either had to get to the bank before it closed
in the middle of the afternoon-or go to the supermarket, buy something, and ask
for cash back. Now you can get money from your account virtually anytime, any-
where. You can even get it overseas. It's incredibly convenient.
The government, however, didn't made it very convenient for
banks to set up ATMs. Until this year, the Comptroller of the
Currency, which oversees banking operations, required banks to go
through a complicated, lengthy, and ultimately costly 35-step
application process before they could open up an ATM. Why?
Because it treated ATMs as if they were separate bank branch-
es, not as extensions of existing ones. Maybe it made sense in
e ass the early days, but it certainly doesn't anymore. Now, the 35
(eSte steps are on their way out.
That's just one, very small example of how much sim-
pler life can be with a little common sense. Throughout
/1 , 1995, the major federal regulatory agencies have been cut-
./J,. / ting obsolete regulations and eliminating pointless paper-
99 work on a wholesale basis:
* The Environmental Protection Agency is eliminating 1,400 pages
of obsolete regulations and is revising 9,400 more; that means cuts or
changes to 85 percent of EPA's rules in the Code of Federal Regulations. In
the process, it's also cut paperwork requirements by 25 percent-a savings
for industry of some 20 million hours of labor a year.
* The Department of Education eliminated 30 percent of its regulations.
* The Department of Housing and Urban Development is cutting 2,800
pages-65 percent of all its regulations.
* The U.S. Department of Agriculture dropped 3 million pages of govern-
ment forms that America's farmers filled out each year.
* The Small Business Administration will have eliminated 50 percent of its
regulations by the end of the year and will have revised the rest.
What does this mean on the street? Here's just one example: 15 years ago,
when Mamma Jo's and Zeno's Pizza opened in Wichita Falls, Texas, the owners used
an SBA loan to get started. They were grateful for the help, but it didn't come easy;
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Gore, Albert. Common Sense Government: Works Better and Costs Less, book, 1995; Washington, D.C.. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc123531/m1/42/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.