There is always a hurricane of election year rhetoric about cutting taxes and moving the tax burden to those that can afford it, but why doesn’t anybody ever say anything about the unfunded mandates that really cost everybody?

I’m talking about the financial obligations passed by government types who never determine the bigger picture, never establish if there really is a problem, never calculate the cost, never verify their goals are met, but just make sure their tunnel vision (vote capturing?) is satisfied.

Horribly expensive mandates include acts such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, ADA, OSHA, EPA, FCC cell phone GPS compliance, propane tank valves, the list goes on and on, and those are just federal handcuffs. All these mandates are started by well meaning people, but generally wind up as ammunition for lawyers to drive up the cost of everything, return-on-investment for anybody but the bar generally appears highly questionable. I realize the government believes one of its major goals is to legally protect idiots from themselves, but idiots are far too inventive to ever be protected from much of anything, let alone themselves.

I’d like to hear a candidate talk about limiting unfunded mandates, or at least establish a well defined path one must take to get one enacted, a path that addresses all the issues above. Wait, I have an idea……..maybe I’ll propose an unfunded mandate to establish a commission to create a committee to draft a . . .

Rick Kiser

Oak Harbor