Just a few days after being sworn into office President Trump signed an executive order which required federal agencies to cut two existing regulations for every new regulation they implement. A year later he made a big deal out of repealing 22 regulations for each new rule issued.

Since I don’t spend that much time in Idaho and I live in Washington state, which it is a bigger threat to me, I don’t pay much attention to Idaho politics. But Joel M. was paying attention and sent me an email with nothing but a link to how the Idaho state legislature opted to—in essence—repeal the entire state regulatory code. Wow!

Following a link I learned that even though the Governor is an advocate of reducing regulations he wasn’t a significant force being this regulation reset:

All of those rules expire on July 1 — except the ones Little chooses to keep on a temporary basis until the Legislature can consider them early next year.

“This is an unusual situation,” said Jaclyn Kettler, a Boise State University political scientist. “It does open up a pretty big opportunity for Gov. Little.”

The situation in Idaho contrasts with other states, like Wisconsin, where the GOP-controlled Legislature sought to limit the powers of the Democratic governor.

Little said residents can trust him to be fair.

“I’m not looking at this as an opportunity to do mischief,” Little said during a public appearance Tuesday. “I do not want to exacerbate this thing. This was not our deal. We did not do this.”

Little has made clear his desire to cut regulations in Idaho, issuing an executive order in January requiring state agencies cut two rules for every new one.

A lot of people have said things that amounted to “we can’t vote our way out of big government.” But there is now some evidence that assertion may be in error.

We live in interesting times.

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