Critics: Mississippi's state bureaucracy out of control
Need to do business with the state Massage Therapy Board? You might have to truck all the way out to Morton and, “if you go through the red light you have gone too far,” the state agency’s website instructs.
How about the state office governing chiropractors? It’s in Louisville, about an hour-and-a-half drive from the seat of state government in Jackson. But its board holds its regular meetings at the Residence Inn in Ridgeland.
The state Veteran’s Affairs office is in Pearl. The Mississippi Board of Psychology is in Yazoo City.
The state Athletic Commission is on Davis Road in Terry. It operates rent-free in the Byram Mini Storage building owned by its board chairman. The Auctioneer Commission is on Galaxie Drive in Jackson, where it pays about $600 a month for a 750-square-foot office. The state Board of Funeral Services is in Flowood, where it pays more than $2,300 a month in rent. The Board of Nursing in Ridgeland pays $219,000 a year in rent.
The state Department of Banking and Consumer Finance was in the state-owned Woolfolk government building downtown but recently moved to new digs off I-55 North. It now has to pay nearly $12,000 a month in rent for private office space.
Mississippi’s dozens of small agencies, boards and commissions are in the wind, geographically, politically and fiscally. They operate largely as — and where — they please with little oversight or examination for efficiency or for whether they’re really needed. They are run by appointed boards, mostly members of the industries they regulate. They are funded mostly by fees they charge businesses for their regulation.
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Their ranks have slowly grown over many years, a creeping bureaucratic sprawl that some say is more about protecting existing practitioners from competition than protecting Mississippians with regulations.
“With our state government, we have created what you wouldn’t create if you were running a lemonade stand,” Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann said recently of the state’s 204 agencies, boards and commissions. Until Hosemann compiled a list a couple of years ago at the behest of Gov. Phil Bryant, state leaders were unsure exactly how many of the little state government entities there were. Hosemann said his study also showed, “about 60 cents of every dollar the state spends is controlled by a non-elected agency, board or commission.”
Much of the growth in bureaucracy happened over the last 30 years, after a lawsuit filed by then Attorney General (and later Gov.) Bill Allain put a halt to lawmakers serving in the various roles boards and committees have now. Instead of handing off such regulatory power to the governor or other statewide elected leaders or not doing it, lawmakers have created a bureau, board, agency or commission — and fees to fund it — whenever an issue came up, then left them largely unmonitored.
Many politicians have vowed to evaluate, streamline, consolidate, relocate to downtown Jackson or shutter some of the many small agencies that comprise a huge regulatory bureaucracy. Bryant vowed to do this in his first state-of-the-state address in 2012.
But the little government fiefdoms have been something of a political third rail — best left untouched. They have legislative and political clout. For instance, no elected leader relishes the prospect of thousands of cosmetologists or barbers mad at them over talk of consolidating the two separate boards that oversee them. Bryant’s push for reform gained little traction in the Legislature, and he’s since admitted he underestimated the “political support system” many little agencies have.
But other states have consolidated or streamlined their regulatory bureaucracies. A new effort by Mississippi legislative leaders and Bryant promises to look for savings and reform.
One of the 14 recently announced joint House-Senate working groups will scrutinize state agencies, boards and commissions and recommend measures for savings and reform.
There’s a board for that
Mississippi has a Council of Advisers in Acupuncture; the Advisory Board to the Mississippi Board of Animal Health, not to be confused with the Mississippi Board of Animal Health or any veterinarian boards. There’s the Mississippi Institute for Forest Inventory, not to be confused with the Forestry Commission or various other forestry-related boards.
There are multiple state boards dealing with the Confederacy and Civil War, separate from those that deal with other wars and monuments.
There’s the Mississippi Country and Western Music Commission, another for blues; the Interior Design Advisory Committee, the Mississippi Electronic Recording Commission and separate boards, as previously mentioned, for barbers and cosmetologists.
There are separate boards to promote Mississippi corn, eggs, rice, peanuts, soybeans, plants in general and one to regulate seeds.
Some boards and commissions have gone dormant, haven’t met for years. Others are active and collect fees from those they regulate. Some have miniscule budgets, no salaried staff and work under the auspices and out of the offices of larger agencies. Others spend millions a year, hire many staff members and rent private office space. Many of the board members and staff like to travel and have spent thousands going to conferences in places such as Hawaii or Nova Scotia to hang out with other states’ bureaucrats.
“Is this a key function of government, or is it something the private sector ought to do, or is there a way to do it more efficiently and cheaper?” said Nathan Wells, chief of staff for House Speaker Philip Gunn. “Those are some of the things (the new committee) will be looking at … The bottom line is, everything’s on the table.”
Reeves said: “I absolutely believe there’s money to be saved. When I first got elected lieutenant governor, I would have representatives of these various boards and commissions come into my office and without fail, they would say, ‘This isn’t really taxpayer money, it’s our money.’ My response always is, then if it’s your money, why are you sitting in my office asking permission to spend it?”
Savings and deregulation
Bryant, Reeves and others have surmised that, at the least, there could be large savings in consolidating the “back-office” operations of various boards — having them share accounting, clerical and other services — and sharing office space or equipment.
Other states have done or are considering this. Texas has reported saving millions from merging or eliminating regulatory boards in the 1990s. But in Florida, a consolidation decades ago is said to have nearly doubled the state’s cost of regulation. Washington state recently eliminated or consolidated 140 state boards and commissions and is considering more.
Forest Thigpen, president of the conservative Mississippi Center for Public Policy, said eliminating boards and commissions and-or handing regulatory authority to the private sector would definitely save tax dollars. And, he said, it would get government out of businesses’ hair.
“For most of the boards and commissions we have, there could be a private licensure process that could be recognized as valid for the state,” Thigpen said. “… We have been lulled into thinking that if government doesn’t protect us, then we can’t survive and that’s not true.”
Thigpen notes the state last year began regulating elevators and licensing elevator mechanics and inspectors.
“As far as I know, there were no reports of large numbers of people being injured in elevators,” Thigpen said. “… Sometime between the invention of elevators and last year, we had managed to survive.”
A recent study by the Institute for Justice ranked Mississippi sixth nationally for the number of low-income occupations requiring a state license. State licenses are required for 55 occupations, compared to 24 in Wyoming and 27 in Kentucky. Louisiana was most regulated, with 71.
Thigpen refers to some of Mississippi’s regulatory bureaucracies as “cartels.” He said they “essentially serve the function of protecting the existing businesses and keeping competition out.”
Thigpen points to the recent legislative fight over nurse practitioners in Mississippi and the state Medical Licensure Board that licenses doctors.
“The Medical Licensure Board doesn’t have responsibility for nurse practitioners, but they just created a rule to limit the scope of their practice by saying they could only practice up to 15 miles from a doctor,” Thigpen said. “There’s no requirement in the law for that. They just came up with it. So we have difficulty getting nurse practitioners into rural areas where they are badly needed and underserved.”
But Thigpen points to one victory against “the gradual encroachment of government” his group helped win about a decade back.
“African hair braiders were put under the cosmetology board and were going to be required to go to school for 1,500 hours to learn things they’d never use to be licensed,” Thigpen said. “Then, they’d have to have an additional 1,700 hours to teach. Hair braiders don’t use the chemicals or do other things a cosmetologist does. This was totally unnecessary.”
The Legislature agreed, Thigpen said, and today there are “about a thousand hair braiders, operating legitimate businesses, plus hair braiding academies.”
“That would be a big ribbon cutting if all those jobs were under one roof,” Thigpen said. “It was done without subsidies or taxes, just getting government out of the way of entrepreneurs.”
Thigpen said having a select few board members from an industry setting government policy for that industry adds to the potential for “cartel” behavior. The U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed with this.
In litigation between the North Carolina Board of Dental Examiners and the Federal Trade Commission, the high court ruled that when a controlling number of decision makers on a state licensing board are active in that occupation, the board can’t claim anti-trust immunity unless it is closely supervised by the state. The North Carolina board had attempted to exclude non-dentist teeth whiteners from the market.
Far flung
The state Board of Chiropractic Examiners is in Louisville because “that’s where the executive director lives,” said Executive Director Richard Walker. He deferred further questions to his board’s chairwoman, who could not be reached for comment.
The state Massage Therapy Board is in Morton because — that takes some explaining, said its director, Yvonne Laird, who is neither a state employee nor a masseuse. She’s the owner of a management company in Morton that was hired to run the agency.
Laird said the company has a contract with the massage board to run its operation for $8,000 a month. That includes rent in the building her company owns in downtown Morton. Before she got the contract in 2008, Laird said the board’s office was on the reservoir in Jackson.
Jon Lewis, chairman of the three-member Athletic Commission that oversees boxing, martial arts and “all contact fights” for the state, said the agency has a rent-free office in his mini-storage building in part because he can’t charge rent to the board on which he serves. He checked.
Lewis said that before he took over 12 years ago the agency was paying about $400 a month in rent for an apartment in Biloxi next to the then-chairman’s apartment and “we were just about broke.”
Lewis said that in the past the agency hired a secretary, but there hasn’t been enough boxing business in the state in recent years to warrant the expense.
Lewis said the agency contracts with an accounting firm, in large part so it can comply with state Department of Finance and Administration bookkeeping requirements, which he said are onerous. Oddly, many state agencies and boards hire the same accounting firm, which is run by former state employees.
State Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, has pushed for consolidating state offices in the Capitol Complex in downtown Jackson. The Senate has passed legislation he authored to give the Department of Finance and Administration sole leasing authority for state agencies, but it has failed in the House.
Blount said the state could save money through consolidation and cheap property rent or purchase prices downtown. He said the move would provide more convenient access to government offices to people across the state and would help the capital city.
Agencies that are currently paying rent could be sharing space in a state-owned building,” Blount said. “… They could share a reception area, or a boardroom that they use once or twice a month or a breakroom area … How many copiers do you need? Internet service. There’s all sorts of opportunity for savings. Having things centrally located in Jackson would save money, provide better services and help revitalize Jackson.”
Reeves said: “I’m not personally interested in ensuring more agencies are in Clinton or Flowood or Jackson. I’m interested in minimizing the costs associated with state agencies.”
Lewis said he agrees “there are some ridiculous boards” in state government, not including his. But he has doubts whether consolidation would really save the state money.
“I would place a bet that if we were consolidated with somebody, it would cost more money,” Lewis said. “There would probably be two people in there full time if not three … I’d like to see bottom-up as opposed to top-down looking at changes. They should ask us, ‘What can we do to help you run more efficiently. A little freedom from DFA rules would help.”
Reeves said he knows efforts to streamline the state’s small agencies, boards and commissions will be a battle. He pointed to recent backlash over the Legislature’s move this year to shift larger agencies from special fund operations to the general fund amid budget cuts.
“Any time you try to change the status quo, people come out of the woodwork to complain, and the first place they go is to you (media),” Reeves said. “They say look at this story of what we have to cut and they cite an example that, if it’s even true, is skewed about their favorite and largest program they’re having to cut. They don’t mention any of the irresponsible spending they’ve done.
“We will see similar fighting from various boards and commissions who basically don’t want any oversight or transparency in the spending of taxpayers’ dollars, and who certainly don’t want any consolidation,” Reeves said. “We have proven and I think it’s fair to say I have led the way that we are willing to take on unpopular consolidations in government that lead to cost savings and transparency. As my old basketball coach at Florence High used to say, it takes intestinal fortitude.”
Contact Geoff Pender at 601-961-7266 or gpender@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @GeoffPender on Twitter.