Blog - Page 30 of 191 - Mississippi Center for Public Policy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Jackson, MS): The Mississippi Center for Public Policy is working directly with the Mississippi Secretary of State's Office and other partner organizations to cut red tape entangling business, innovation, and progress in the Magnolia State.

The 29 by '29 Plan reviews regulations in categories and stages, looking at regulatory boards and agencies as the paradigm for analysis, this, in light of free market principles and empirical data.

"Mississippi has been held back by too much regulation and red tape," said President & CEO Douglas Carswell. "Our state is one of the most overregulated in America, and this explains why we have not grown. Reducing red tape will allow our state to prosper, and this is a vital new initiative to make our state competitive"

Nearly 25% of U.S. workers are impacted by occupational regulation. These regulations, especially licensing that requires workers to get government approval before they can earn a living, restrict opportunity, raise costs for consumers, and provide negligible safety benefits.

Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson recognizes the harmful effects of many of the regulations and aims to streamline the regulatory process. He plans to review all 29 of the state’s licensing boards and commissions by 2029 to modify or eliminate unnecessary regulations that do more harm than good.

Tech Policy Analyst Matthew Nicaud said, "The state's administrative code has over 117,000 regulatory restrictions, and we're proud to take part in this initiative to reduce these work-related burdens."

MCPP looks forward to working on a reduction in burdensome regulations, with the anticipation that reducing the heavy hand of government leads to greater prosperity.

For media inquiries, please reach out to Stone Clanton, [email protected].

The United States has seen a notable increase in home-based businesses in recent years. However, despite their potential to grow incomes and expand opportunities, many local regulations have hamstrung these businesses. The Mississippi House has a bill introduced to address these issues, thanks to the initiative of Representative Jansen Owen.

House Bill 917, the Home-based Opportunity Freedom Act, passed in the House of Representatives yesterday. The bill would both explicitly establish that arbitrary regulations and fees cannot single out home-based businesses.

As people harness the power of new technologies and leverage opportunities for growth, small business owners have been able to build home businesses that can provide supplemental or even primary income. In many cases, home businesses eventually expand and grow to full-scale operations with offices, warehouses, and dozens of employees.

In addition to the immediate benefits for small businesses, many of these small businesses eventually become mid-sized companies or even multi-billion dollar corporations. For example, Amazon, Hobby Lobby, Microsoft, Google, Dell, Disney, and a host of other large companies, started small in garages, houses, apartments, and dorm rooms.

Many local governments often wax eloquent about the need for economic growth and business expansion. Yet, those same governments often impose regulations that are a direct barrier to business even starting in the first place. The need for a friendly regulatory environment is stronger than ever before.

A study conducted by the Center for Growth and Opportunity at the Utah State University found that many cities and local governments have zoning laws, permit fees, and a tangle of other regulations that make launching a home-based startup all the more difficult. According to another report on the issue from the Cato Institute, 18 states have passed laws reducing such burdens on home-based businesses. Such laws have helped home-based business models ranging from music lessons to cottage food sales.

Mississippi does not have a law protecting home businesses, and the effects have shown. For instance, the City of Jackson prohibits any increase in traffic due to a business being in the home. Thus, an increase in traffic caused by customers picking up cottage food could be viewed as a violation of the rules. The city also prohibits a home business from having any employees other than family members. Could this prohibit an attorney working from home from hiring a paralegal or a real estate broker to hire a secretary? A plain reading of the rules would conclude that both scenarios have a prohibition as well.

But Jackson does not stand alone with burdensome regulations. The City of Ridgeland has a rule that a home business may not occupy more than 25 percent of the total floor area of a home. This begs the question of why the arbitrary 25 percent number was the standard (as opposed to 20 percent or 30 percent). In the City of Nettleton, home businesses are not permitted to have more than five customers per day. In the City of Tupelo, there is an explicit prohibition on any mechanical work from home, such as small engine repair. The City of Cleveland states that "the dwelling floor plan shall remain unaltered from that appropriate with a household." However, the city has no specific definition of what would be "appropriate with a household," which makes enforcement arbitrary. In addition to these specific regulations, many cities also have an extensive application and permit process for home-based businesses.

The time has come for Mississippi to remove such arbitrary restrictions. According to 2016 pre-pandemic data from the Small Business Administration, approximately 50 percent of all small businesses were already home-based. In the wake of greater familiarity with working from home brought on by the pandemic, in conjunction with many starting their own businesses, the evidence suggests that these numbers have only increased since the pandemic. It's time for Mississippi to step up to the plate and enact policies to protect home-based businesses from excessive local regulations. It should not be a crime or a privilege to practice entrepreneurship in your home. This legislation would ensure that Mississippians are protected from government intrusion as they pursue opportunities through home-based businesses.

When our clients' constitutional rights are being violated and the political branches of government refuse to act, we take their fight to the courts. And we come to win.

That’s what state regulators are learning right now in our lawsuit challenging Mississippi’s Certificate of Need (CON) laws and home health ban.

Our client is Butch Slaughter, a physical therapist who owns a clinic in south Jackson. When COVID arrived, many of his patients stopped coming in. Even today, many are reluctant to come and cancellations are routine. He also knows that elderly patients need physical therapy now more than ever, as many seek to delay or prevent the need to receive care in nursing homes, which have been prone to outbreaks.

So, Butch had a simple idea: he would open a home health agency so that he could provide care to patients in the comfort and privacy of their own homes.

But it wasn’t so simple. It turns out that opening a home health agency in Mississippi is illegal, and has been for 40 years. Not because they are unsafe – several other home health agencies are operating in the state. Rather, they are illegal because the state government says more aren’t “needed.”

Translation: the government is shielding existing home health businesses from competition. This, despite the fact that the demand for home health services has at least tripled since the state decided there was no more “need.”

Even if this ban were lifted, Butch would still have to apply for CON before he could open. His competitors would then get to drag him into court and make him spend tens of thousands of dollars to try to prove his business was “needed.”

Imagine if we had told Netflix they weren’t “needed” because we already had Blockbuster.

This racket doesn’t just affect Butch. It hurts all of us. If you have ever had to travel to find quality care or paid exorbitant prices for mediocre care: it’s likely that health care CON laws were to blame.

Multiple bills have been introduced to remove the home health ban and CON requirement, but the state legislature has taken no action. So Butch teamed up with the Mississippi Justice Institute, and we sued.

In response to our claims that these laws violate Butch’s constitutional rights, the government argued that our lawsuit should be dismissed out of hand because our claims weren’t even plausible. But recently, the federal judge overseeing the case disagreed and allowed the lawsuit to proceed.

In his order denying the motion to dismiss, the judge notes that “It is no secret that significant financial interests are at stake when it comes to CON laws.” He explained that “Rent-seeking businesses make a sort-of ‘extra-legal’ contract with politicians: money and votes for the politicians, regulations that ensure a monopoly for the interest group. Meanwhile, consumers lose out. Without the market competition that normally regulates businesses’ behavior, the monopoly can charge otherwise unsustainably high prices for otherwise unsustainably mediocre products.”

In other words: pure cronyism.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that Butch will succeed in having the laws struck down. But it does mean the government will actually have to defend the laws in court. At the Mississippi Justice Institute, we are looking forward to that fight.

In Liberty,

Aaron Rice
Director, Mississippi justice Institute

One of the most irritating problems in Mississippi’s healthcare sector is the Certificate of Need (CON). A CON is a legal document required before proposed acquisitions, expansions, or creations of healthcare facilities are allowed. They can be issued by a government regulatory agency with authority over an area to affirm that the plan is “required to fulfill the needs of a community.” If it doesn’t, then the entity applying will not be allowed to continue their business. Does that not sound like central planning (i.e., the Soviet Union)?

While socialism is not equivalent to a planned economy, a key aspect of the ideology involves the replacement of a market system with some form of central planning in order to achieve coordination of the economy. The goal of such a system would be to achieve conscious control over the economy to prevent surplus, inflation, rising prices, etc. While this sounds like a nice idea, of course, we know this doesn’t work. The same can be said for CON laws.

Several factors spurred the U.S. Government (which later backtracked and got out of the CON business, as they saw it didn’t work) and states to require CONs in the healthcare industry. Chief among these was the concern that the excessive establishment of healthcare facilities would cause competitors in an oversaturated field to cover the costs of a diluted patient pool by unnecessarily diagnosing procedures and hospital stays, thereby overcharging. The problem is that you cannot – just like an economy – predict markets for goods and services. People should be free to operate a healthcare facility (and any other business, for that matter) and people should be able to freely choose if they want to use that healthcare facility, or not. It's just that simple and just that moral.

Numerous studies have shown that CON laws do not live up to their original goals, but instead – just as Soviet planning led to low-quality products and other negative outcomes – decrease access to healthcare, increase costs for consumers, and limit competition.

In 2016, the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice issued a joint statement, concluding, “CON laws, when first enacted, had the laudable goals of reducing healthcare costs and improving access to care. However, after considerable experience, it is now apparent that CON laws can prevent the efficient functioning of healthcare markets in several ways that may undermine those goals. First, CON laws create barriers to entry and expansion, limit consumer choice, and stifle innovation. Second, incumbent firms seeking to thwart or delay entry or expansion by new or existing competitors may use CON laws to achieve that end. Third, CON laws can deny consumers the benefit of an effective remedy following the consummation of an anticompetitive merger. Finally, the evidence to date does not suggest that CON laws have generally succeeded in controlling costs or improving quality.”

At the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, we are fighting against this socialist-like mandate by advocating for the repeal of the state's Certificate of Need law, as well as the 40-year-old moratorium set on the issuance of new certificates for home health agencies, which the Mississippi Justice Institute has recently made great progress on. Especially, at a time when we need more healthcare providers than ever, we should make it easier for them to operate and easier for patients to receive care.

As the 2022 Mississippi Legislative Session continues, you can keep up with measures to expand healthcare in a truly free market way by watching our Legislative Tracker.

The United States has seen a notable increase in home-based businesses in recent years. However, despite their potential to grow incomes and expand opportunities, many local regulations have hamstrung these businesses. The Mississippi Senate and House both have bills introduced to address these issues, thanks to the initiative of Senator Daniel Sparks and Representative Jansen Owen.

According to 2016 pre-pandemic data from the Small Business Administration, approximately 50 percent of all small businesses are home-based. In the wake of greater familiarity with working from home brought on by the pandemic, in conjunction with many starting their own businesses, the evidence suggests that these numbers have only increased.

In addition to the immediate benefits for small businesses, many of these small businesses eventually become mid-sized companies or even multi-billion dollar corporations. Amazon, Hobby Lobby, Microsoft, Google, Dell, Disney, and a host of other companies started out small in garages, houses, apartments, and dorm rooms.

Despite all of the potential behind home-based businesses, the need for a friendly regulatory environment is stronger than ever before. A study conducted by the Center for Growth and Opportunity at the Utah State University found that many cities and local governments have zoning laws, permit fees, and a tangle of other regulations that make launching a home-based startup all the more difficult.

Such regulations have included local ordinances against home-based businesses having employees, bans on customers coming to the home, and commercial building requirements. According to another report on the issue from the Cato Institute, 18 states have passed laws reducing such burdens on home-based businesses. Such laws have helped home-based business models ranging from music lessons to cottage food sales.

The bills in the legislature would accomplish such protections in Mississippi. Senator Daniel Sparks' Home Business Relief Act and Representative Jansen Owen's Home-based Opportunity Freedom Act would both explicitly establish that arbitrary fees and regulations cannot single out home-based businesses.

It's time for Mississippi to step up to the plate and enact policies to protect home-based businesses from excessive local regulations. It should not be a crime or a privilege to practice entrepreneurship in your home. This legislation would ensure that Mississippians are protected from government intrusion as they pursue opportunities through home-based businesses.

The Mississippi Center for Public Policy approves of this legislation and will continue to update you as the 2022 Mississippi Legislative Session continues, and you can keep up with measures by watching our Legislative Tracker.

It would be an understatement to say that the number of regulations in Mississippi is immensely high. But Senator Kevin Blackwell has introduced legislation to proactively lower that number. Senate Bill 2162 would require several state agencies to repeal two regulations for every new regulation.

While many regulatory reforms have addressed regulatory burdens in certain areas, policies have seen success in other states due to the numerical nature of the reform. While certain reforms that single out specific regulations are laudable, this legislation is unique in that it addresses the bigger picture behind regulatory burdens as a whole.

A study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University found that there are “117,558 restrictions and 9.3 million words. It would take an individual about 518 hours—or almost 13 weeks—to read.” Such regulations have been brought about over several decades, with some dating back to the 1950s.

While such a gargantuan number of regulations can seem daunting, regulatory excesses have been tackled before using policies similar to SB2162. In 2017, the Trump Administration incorporated a similar “one-in-two-out” policy and other reforms with the aim to reduce federal regulations. According to a report from the Heritage Foundation, these reforms led to reduced regulatory burdens and saved the American economy billions of dollars in regulatory costs.

The same is true on a state level. While individual repeals of such regulations can be extremely helpful in many cases, Mississippi needs an overhaul of its entire regulatory system that is based upon empirical data and facts. As the state of Mississippi turns the page into the 2020s, it is time for any new regulations to start clearing away old regulations. In addition, Blackwell’s legislation does not just replace old regulations with new ones. There is a 1:2 ratio for the number of new regulations versus the reduction in existing regulations. The time has come for Mississippi to do some regulatory clean-up and clear away the tangle of regulations that have built up over the years and threaten to clog economic growth. Senator Blackwell is to be commended for introducing this legislation that could serve as a real catalyst for regulatory reduction and economic prosperity.

Too many Mississippi kids are missing out on a good education. Our state has some of the worst outcomes in primary and secondary education in America.

Despite certain counter claims by those within the education bureaucracy that the outlook has been improving, if you measure the academic performance of Mississippi students in terms of ACT scores, things have not been getting better. In fact, the Covid crisis is likely to have made things even worse.

So, what can we do about it? Quite a lot, actually.

Our new report out this week, Transforming Mississippi Public Education, proposes a series of key reforms that are needed if we are to give Mississippi students a better standard of education.

We all know that many Mississippi school districts have been underperforming for years. But until now, every time that this gets pointed out, the conversation moves on to money. If only there was more funding, we are constantly told, things would be better.

Our report shows that the problem is not a lack of funds. Over the past twenty years, real spending per student has increased by a quarter, and over the past thirty years, per student spending has risen about 60 percent. The trouble is that there has been nothing like a 60 percent improvement in standards.

The problem is not a lack of funding, but rather what the education system does with the money they have.

The graph above shows that while per student spending rose, teacher pay actually fell. In other words, money is not being spent in the classroom.

To be clear, some school districts in our state are good at using the resources they have to provide excellent education for children. Many are mediocre. One or two are truly terrible.

We need reforms that ensure that the poorly performing school districts run their schools the way that the good performers. Our paper proposes three key changes that would help us do that.

**1. Cap administration costs:** It is easy to assume that some school districts do well because they have the local property taxes that generate the revenue they need. It would also be wrong. The problem is not a lack of money, but what certain boards do with it. Too many boards spend enormous amounts on school superintendent salaries and other administration costs. We propose capping these so that more money ends up in the classroom, not as a giant job creation scheme for officials.

**2. More charter schools:** Evidence from across the USA is overwhelming. Having more Charter schools drives up standards. Charter schools don’t only improve outcomes for those that attend them. Having them encourages non Charter Schools to raise their game.

With less than half of one percent of Mississippi students enrolled at a Charter School, we are missing out.

We propose creating multiple Charter School authorizer boards to overcome official inertia that has thus far prevented the establishment of more than a handful of such schools. If a public sector monopoly won’t act in the public interest, it should no longer be a monopoly.

**3. Open enrollment:** At the moment, kids in our state are allocated a place at a public school based on their zip code. Automatically allocating your child to a certain school means that schools have little incentive the improve. Our report suggests that this is the root cause of the problem in our public school system – and we need to fix it.

Giving every family in our state a new legal right to choose where to enroll their child would mean that schools in poorly performing districts would risk losing students – and so might have to up their game.

These are practical steps that policy makers could implement right away. They would not cost more money, and we would not have to wait approval from a federal official in DC.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

(Jackson, MS): Today the Mississippi Center for Public Policy released a report on the state's K-12 Public Education System, identifying issues and offering solutions.

The report reveals that:

Academic standards among Mississippi public schools are poor, and no significant improvement has been documented with validity.
The problem in K-12 education is structural, not merely a lack of money.

The report then goes on to set out a roadmap to address some of the systemic obstacles to improving public education in the Magnolia State. The report calls for:

Capping administration costs: Some school board districts spend too much money on bureaucracy. Today’s report shows the steps that are needed to ensure money goes into the classroom instead.
Open enrollment: Instead of automatically enrolling children in schools, the report shows how Mississippi families could be given a new right to choose a school for their child.
Multiple charter school authorizer boards: Today’s report reveals that less than half of one percent of Mississippi students attend a charter school.

“Today’s report shows what we need to do to address Mississippi’s historic education underperformance,” said Douglas Carswell, President & CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy. “The great news is that right now there are a number of bills in the state legislature that would give us the three key reforms we need to transform Mississippi education.”

Carswell continued saying, “HB 874, the Mississippi Scholarship Act, would ensure that every parent had a choice to get the best for their child. HB 1349 and SB 2177 would achieve open enrollment. There are also two bills in the Senate that would begin to cap administration costs, and I am excited to see HB 1194, which would establish multiple authorizer boards to ensure that we get more Charter Schools across the state.”

For media inquiries, please reach out to Stone Clanton, [email protected].

Agricultural regulations can be among the most burdensome regulations in the entire economy. This is especially true for innovative agricultural technologies and business models. Thankfully, Mississippi legislators are leading the charge for a reduction in red tape. Representatives Jansen Owen and Kent McCarty introduced House Bill 1055 to create a pathway for innovators to be exempt from onerous regulations.

It’s no secret that removing regulatory burdens is a catalyst for economic growth, and this bill seeks to accomplish just that in the agricultural sector. In an interview with Mississippi Center for Public Policy, Representative Owen noted: “Reducing regulatory burdens is key to growing our economy. This legislation will make it easier for farmers across Mississippi to earn their living, feed their families, and feed Mississippi’s families.”

According to the Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce (MDAC), the agriculture sector directly or indirectly employs approximately 17 percent of the state workforce. Thousands of agricultural businesses have seen great success in the Magnolia State. Yet, many of the regulations in the state were written in the 1970s and 1980s and do not quite account for the innovative agricultural technologies and business models of the 2020s.

To address this problem, House Bill 1055 gives agricultural innovators the option to be exempt from certain regulations that do not have an effect on health or safety. Known as a “regulatory sandbox,” this regulatory relief model that exempts innovators from unapplicable regulations has seen success in several states and sectors, including financial technology, insurance, blockchain, property technology, and others.

While the complexity of agricultural regulations is immense, the bill establishes a straightforward and business-friendly program within the MDAC for innovators to test their products in the open market. If an individual encounters an agricultural regulation that is not tied to health or safety, they could apply to the innovation program and request an exemption. If the exemption request is not found to be a threat to public health or safety, the innovator’s request would be granted, and they would be permitted to operate under the exemption.

The agricultural innovations that could benefit from such a program are numerous, but these innovations can be easily summarized into two categories: innovative business models and innovative ag-tech. On the one hand, there are innovative business models that don’t quite fit into the current regulatory structure, such as urban agriculture and direct farm-to-consumer sales.

Agricultural technology also carries promise for the use of an agricultural regulatory exemption program. For instance, under current regulation in the state, a pilot’s license would be required in order for a drone operator to use a drone to distribute pesticides on fields. This is because of an outdated provision implemented in the days when planes were the only way to distribute substances via the air. Mississippi has a chance to show that it is open for business, and become a destination for agricultural innovators. Thanks to the forward-thinking of Representatives Owen and McCarty, the state could see the fruits of agricultural innovation grow and expand, without the impediment of excessive government regulations.