Little BIG Governments

By Tito Munoz

Most conservatives spend their big government efforts on federal issues, talking about federal big government, excessive regulation and especially the vast number of mandates.

What I have discovered is that we have an even bigger problem at the local level, in towns, cities, counties and municipalities.

Many years of witnessing big local government in the construction business, before as an employee and now as an owner, I see that this is a greater threat to liberty and economic freedom. Never underestimate the threat from the federal government. But locally, we may have an even greater problem.

Let me say that I have confronted elected officials about the little big government encroachment and the danger it poses to economic development. The majority of officials hear the arguments and they tend to agree. But at the end of the day, they do nothing.

The Virginia Energy Conservation Construction Code is an example of something I wanted to remove from the Construction Code Regulations. But I could not get any political support. At the Board of Housing and Community Development, I was one of the most vocal voices to remove it.

Construction Codes were created to protect life and property. Yet this code is not based on safety, but rather on energy conservation, and it is used to mandate the conservation of energy through a regulatory Construction Code.

In Fairfax County, they have the Super Silt Regulation Plate 7-11. For those in the excavation business like me, this regulation does not make any sense. Yet they mandate contractors to build a 3 by 3 inch trench to bury the filter fabric below the ground. I guess they forgot to analyze that commercial trenches CANNOT make a 3-inch wide trench as the minimal blade is 4 inches. These county people draw a picture and expect that the real site conditions are as perfect as the picture and they demand the requirements mandated on the drawing should be met exactly.

Another issue is the lack of flexibility on the application of any regulation. An example is inlet protections that could also be a trip hazard to pedestrians. In Fairfax, I was mandated to install, as per plate, creating a trip hazard to children at a school project. However, while in Prince William on a school project, I was able to reason with the inspector (he agreed with me) to modify the requirement and use another method that removed the trip hazard to pedestrians (children). Lack of common sense is a huge Little Big Government problem.

Then I went to Herndon, where we had a set of plans to do a job and the county inspector made changes to every party of the project at their own convenience and their own advantage. This was basically a waste of money. Why did they pay costly engineers and architects to have a set of plans? Just build it as we go along…

Then on to Leesburg, where they required tracing wire that is no longer sold commercially for the purpose of the application required. Their requirement is 20 years old. Most commercial supply vendors do not sell the product they are requiring. We spent a full day looking for the mandated product and we found something similar — but it did not meet the criteria of the requirement. They accepted, but we lost a day of production and still the product found is of inferior quality to the one used by most counties now for tracing wire.

Then we have a safety fence requirement on construction projects to protect people from the hazards created by construction. Although this is mandated in every contract performed in a particular county (we’ll call it County X as I prefer not to name it), the county’s on-site safety supervisor ignores the fact the construction is not protected from the public. The “public” on this project is particularly vulnerable as they are primarily children. Sometimes these people are more concerned about tree protection, than kid (people) protection. Yet the liability of anyone getting hurt is still on the contractor (me) executing the job.

I have many more examples, but to finish let me say that every time the local BIG government mandates or requires something, the result is a bureaucratic nightmare for the most part, because the people imposing these regulations do not have any real experience in the application, installation or methods to do the requirement.

Unfortunately, I do not see a better future, with fewer regulations and mandates in local governments, because for many people these excesses are better for business. I feel I have a duty every time to PROTECT the spending of taxpayers’ money when I am hired as a contractor on a public project, just as if I would protect a private owner’s cost on a private sector job. I have the same duty.

Tito “The Builder” Munoz is a Republican activist and former State Senate candidate from Prince William County