Unfunded mandates and their policy impacts

Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 was designed to keep the federal government from imposing expensive mandates on states and local governments without paying for them. In part, it requires federal agencies to prepare a written analysis of any especially costly mandates handed down to State, local or tribal governments.

Unfunded mandates or regulatory burdens.

Unfunded mandates are handed down from the federal Government to states. More often than not the mandate is not what the state needs or wants. An example of an unfunded mandate regards a general aviation airport in Morristown, New Jersey. The airport tried to get permission to trim or remove trees, which were blocking the air traffic controller's view of the taxiways and the final approach. Of course, this was impacting safety at the airport.

The State environmental people said the airport was not allowed to trim the trees because the trees were located in a wetland. As hard as that is to believe, that kind of thing goes on. The State's environmental people said the solution was to move the tower, which would have cost several millions of dollars. Finally, after many months of fighting back and forth, the airport was allowed to cut down a few trees, but the whole process went on for over a year and cost the airport thousands of dollars. The airport director was told that rather than trim the treetops perhaps a new control tower should be built. It didn't seem to make much sense to us. In addition to environmental mandates, the Federal Government has imposed a number of security mandates imposed on airports.

This is just an example of the kind of over regulation and the bizarre guidelines that are laid on the airports, and for that matter on the various levels of both government and the private sector through unfunded mandates.

There are additional examples such as compliance with environmental regulations. Compliance costs run millions of dollars a year. For many airports, especially the smaller airports, these costs can be staggering. In addition to the costs airports are oftentimes frustrated by the lack of coordination between various arms of government. This is particularly true when it comes to balancing out safety mandates and environmental mandates. Federal aviation regulation part 77 requires airports to insure that there are no obstructions in the clear zones of a runway approach.

Again, another example, security access. Several years ago in response to an incident where a disgruntled former airline employee was able to gain access to an aircraft with a weapon, the government required that access to commercial aircraft be significantly tightened. The FAA estimated that compliance costs for the industry would be approximately a hundred million dollars, but the industry has already spent over $800 million in complying with that mandate.

Although some airports were able to use AIP funds to help with those installation costs, the yearly operations and maintenance costs of those systems are very expensive and are not eligible for Federal funding. In addition, at many airports AIP funds were committed for other capacity or safety-related items and there were not sufficient funds to allow the airport to utilize AIP money for the installation of this security access system.

Let me conclude with a certification example. In response to the recent commuter aircraft crashes the FAA, as we understand it, is prepared to send Congress legislation to require full part 139 compliance certification for all airports with scheduled air carrier service with 10 or more seats. The current law requires this for airports with carrier service of 30 or more seats.

Most airports in the country fall into this category. This would require some of the smallest airports in the country to purchase additional expensive equipment and add personnel at their airports. This would be extremely costly, particularly the personnel costs which are not eligible for Federal funding. Presumably the acquisition of fire trucks and other related safety equipment would be eligible, but the ongoing operating costs are staggering.

Furthermore, there is no accident or incident evidence to suggest that the recent commuter aircraft problems have had anything to do with the certification status of the airport. Additional mandatory regulations, particularly those without a Federal funding mechanism, are not the answer.

Like IBM's supercomputer playing at chess, American education today is, in William James' vivid phrase, a "tyrannical machine." It is its own boss, answering to no one but its innumerable organizational "stakeholders." It scorns its own customers while tirelessly pursuing its own interests: expansion of its revenues and defense of its monopoly.

Serious challenges to this tyranny are now being made in some states and communities. The spread of charter schools, contract-management of public schools, privately funded voucher programs, even a few examples of the publicly supported sort, attest to the widening revolt in the countryside. Some people actually seem to be waking up to the fact that the system is wasting both their money and their kids.

The current program gives a state more money if it "classifies" more children as disabled -- a genuinely perverse incentive. The new bill shifts to a formula based on population and poverty -- but that new formula doesn't kick in until Congress appropriates almost two billion additional dollars. Supporters claim the bill shrinks the portion of federal special education dollars going to overhead and boosts the part going to classrooms. But that isn't quite true. The increase actually goes for "capacity building," which mostly means teacher training, a.k.a. another fat subsidy for colleges of education. The bill's most controversial provision -- the issue that bogged it down during the last Congress -- deals with disabled kids who bring weapons to school. Can they be expelled like other students? (Indeed, another federal law requires schools to suspend or expelled weapons-bearing students who aren't disabled.) The short answer is no. Under the new "compromise," the school system can never slough off responsibility for educating a disabled youngster, no matter what he does or to whom. It may move him to another school or program, but only temporarily and only after jumping through dozens of procedural hoops. Nor does the measure acknowledge that, in the words of a Georgia educator, "teeth and feet and hands can be weapons just as much as knives can."

More revealing than any changes made by the bill, however, are its silences, the big-government assumptions that it leaves untouched.

Washington's involvement with special education began as a well-intended effort to aid the many disabled youngsters ill-served -- even turned away -- by school systems that couldn't be bothered to deal with the challenges they posed. Congress decreed that they would henceforth have the right to a "free, appropriate" education at public expense, and offered a trickle of federal dollars to wash down the costly medicine that communities were thus forced to swallow.