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Then the agency has to make sure another one doesn't want [the building]. Then state and local governments get a crack at it, then nonprofits — and finally, a 2

• mschuster91 13y ago
  It should be made a law that Congress (or for that matter, any law-passing authority, this problem exists not just in the US), should before passing any law evaluate its impact and interference with already existing law. Such thorough checks would also quite likely regularly turn up the "bit rot" equivalent of laws...
  • cmelbye 13y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_Office http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_Office ?
    • mschuster91 13y ago
      Looking at the crap we Europeans see happening in the US, I seriously doubt the efficiency of this agency. A good example is that story about the old lady on HN who had rented an illegal building. One agency demanded that she be evicted, yet another law forbid the eviction, or such.
      • crusso 13y ago
        Not sure about their efficiency, but the CBO is normally way off on their estimates for what various programs are going to cost. Unlike in a lot of life, being wrong in the government has little or no impact upon your ongoing viability.
        • predius 13y ago
          A lot of this isn't actually the CBO's fault... because they're totally non-political, or need to appear to be, they score things according to the letter of the law. The thing is, the letter of the law is never followed, as whenever the painful (cost reduction) parts start to apply, Congress votes to nullify the pain, which makes them more expensive. See the 'doc fix'.
          • crusso 13y ago
            I'm not that interested in fault. I'm interested in its reliability as a source of information. I'm interested in the trust that their information is given when they're wrong so often - for whatever political or non-political reason. CBO numbers are used as a shield by politicians to push their agendas. I wish that they didn't have that shield because voters were more aware of its inaccuracy.
        • jeffdavis 13y ago
          The CBO scores based on the information given to them. It's a "garbage in, garbage out" problem.
      • bennylope 13y ago
        Not sure what an old lady renting a building has to do with the CBO, but I suspect that cmelbye is pointing out not that the CBO is efficient at its job, but that institutionalizing impact measurement (CBO) is insufficient in the face of powerful political incentives. That's how I read it, anyhow.
      • cmelbye 13y ago
        The stuff I see here in the US is nothing compared to what happens in Europe -- people incite revolution, no one seems to know who's in charge, and governments attack their own people in broad daylight! Your generalization is as meaningless as mine is. The USA is roughly the size of your continent and its land can be governed by any number of rules and regulations, depending on where you are. For every Texas, there's a California. For every Germany, there's a [Ukraine|Greece|Spain|...].
        • mschuster91 13y ago
          Neither Turkey nor the Ukraine is in the EU, that point of yours is a bit off. And for our treatment of the African refugee seekers, well I compare that to the US-Mexican border. No side is better in any way than the other. But agreed, how we Germans treat Greece is disgusting. Basically, everyone claims "how bad the Greeks are", but the bailout money does not go to the Greeks but to our own banks. This has never been to "rescue Greece", but to rescue our fucking banks.
          • deleted 13y ago
            [deleted]
  • throwaway_yy2Di 13y ago
    "It should be made a law that Congress (or for that matter, any law-passing authority, this problem exists not just in the US), should before passing any law evaluate its impact and interference with already existing law." Ironically, that law would have so many impacts on so many other laws, it would be impossible to evaluate them all. It's the halting problem for lawyers. :)
    • mitchty 13y ago
      Might get them to repeal some useless laws and trim down the laws they want to pass so they don't impact so much. I don't think it would be that bad overall once they realize the quagmire their current methodology really means.
    • gamblor956 13y ago
      It's already the law...Congress already has several agencies that deal with these sorts of analyses. The most famous are the Congressional Budget Office and the Congressional Research Service. They deal with this silliness all the time, so they're actually quite good at it.
  • msandford 13y ago
    It's a great idea but mandating it won't make it happen. You have to get people in office who actually care about not making bit rot in the law. Most of the folks making laws right now at a Federal level like the bit rot because it gives their donors loopholes to drive their armored cars through. For example a large chunk of what the Federal government is doing right now isn't specifically authorized by the Constitution, but the Congress doesn't care. "Necessary and proper clause" they say, nevermind that running well over half the Federal government on the necessary and proper clause defeats the whole idea of limited enumerated powers. I don't have any good suggestions on how to fix the problem with the officials not really caring to do their jobs, though.
  • dbecker 13y ago
    I don't know if the irony was intended, but this sounds like another level of regulation (likely requiring additional levels of auditing, etc)... potentially yielding the exact opposite what it intends. I briefly worked for the Federal Government, and I recall an immense amount of paperwork being generated by the regulations of the "Paperwork Reduction Act."
    • Loughla 13y ago
      I call bull on this one, fella; I think you're a bit ignorant on this matter. I'm federally funded, and have been for the better part of my career. The paperwork reduction act has nothing to do with physically reducing paperwork, and more in reducing the work burden to the public. It states that every form has to have a justification tied to your guiding principle, and that the public should know how difficult the form will be to fill out. In other words, if the OMB says that form 1014a(1) should only take 15 minutes to complete, it's up to your office to ensure that is the case, if you created that form. As far as physical paperwork - it only adds a couple of lines to document headers, and in the case of enormous institutions, it's listed on their main website or main document to avoid adding it to the rest of the documents. The paperwork reduction act is usually the brunt of office jokes when it pops up on paperwork, because most people have no idea what it is and it sounds funny, and because it may add a line or two. I'm guessing you've seen that disclaimer and went from there.
      • dbecker 13y ago
        I think you're a bit ignorant on this matter. I don't know why you need to turn this into a personal attack, but you are dead wrong in everything you assert about my beliefs and experience. By paperwork, I meant the work burden... and we spent a lot of time getting approvals for small scale data collection efforts. Maybe you have gone through the process. But I have, and it was a headache.
        • Loughla 13y ago
          It's not a personal attack? Being called ignorant just means that you don't know something. Stupid, that's an insult, but ignorant simply means that you don't know. Your comment stated that the paperwork reduction act added paperwork, which you used as an example to the statement "potentially yielding the exact opposite [of] what it intends." The intention of the federal paperwork reduction act isn't to reduce the physical amount of paperwork to you. It is to ensure that all paperwork has a purpose, and a timeframe for completion that isn't overly burdensome. Therefore, your premise that its main goal was to reduce the physical number of pages for federal programs is incorrect, I assumed you were ignorant of what the federal paperwork reduction act was, and I explained it. I have gone through the process of having federal forms cleared with the OMB at the federal level, large scale and small scale data collection, and have worked with them in several capacities. I don't like that I have to have everything relate to my goals and purpose or that I have to conduct studies on the front end for forms, but I see the purpose for it.
  • humanrebar 13y ago
    I'd like every law and regulation to have an expiration date.
    • logfromblammo 13y ago
      Seconded. If every law had to be re-passed every six years or so, that would tend to limit the number of laws that could be in existence at any given time. I don't recall which, but some culture had a tradition whereby the entire body of law had to be read aloud in public before any new business could be conducted. It feels in my memory like it might have been Medieval Iceland. That is an excellent tradition. But I also get the feeling that all we'd get from Washington DC is an act every 6 years to reauthorize the entire US Code in its entirety, which would pass without debate in about 30 seconds.
      • humanrebar 13y ago
        I had a similar thought regarding omnibus renewal of regulations, but it's a technical problem that could be addressed. Perhaps by introducing another reform I would like to see: make it trivial (maybe through a petition?) for U.S. citizens to sue the government to get laws repealed. I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that, which some exceptions, you need to be actually harmed to have standing to challenge laws on constitutional grounds.
    • Loughla 13y ago
      That just allows for new earmarks and stipulations with an increased possibility of corruption and more influence from vocal special interest groups on a regular basis. It's counter-intuitive, but sometimes inefficiency is the safest course of action. Not necessarily the best, but the safest. And not always, I need to stress that again.
      • humanrebar 13y ago
        I don't follow your logic. Why would earmarks be more likely if laws had expiration dates?
• bitJericho 13y ago
  Or you could just add another requirement that if the building is vacant you do something about it lol.
  • jeffdavis 13y ago
    Like hire someone to sit inside it all day?
    • Loughla 13y ago
      That's exactly where this is going next, you watch. We need something to do with all the guys returning from war, correct? Private security on public funds. Perfect.
• jeffdavis 13y ago
  How are those "reasonable"? The purpose of a sale is to find out who wants something. That's the economic system we use. Aimlessly asking around works when you want to know if your cousin wants your old sofa before you craigslist it; but is just ridiculous in any larger context.
  • misterbwong 13y ago
    I'm not saying there's not a better way but why is this ridiculous in a larger context? If the government didn't have these rules in place, we'd be seeing another article about how the government keeps buying and selling buildings, costing taxpayers billions, when they could have transferred buildings at a relatively minimal cost. I suspect that this is why these regulations were enacted in the first place.
    • jeffdavis 13y ago
      Why does buying and selling buildings cost money? First of all, it can take some effort to find a buyer. This effort needs to be expended regardless, and I don't see how it's better to in-source the work to the selling government agency. They are not professional brokers, have little incentive to act quickly or efficiently, and we've already established that they don't have any magical database that makes the buyer obvious. Just let a commercial RE broker handle it like a business would. Second, you need to settle-up the accounting so it's no longer on the seller's books, and is now on the buyer's books. That means you need to agree to a price. You can skip this because "it's all part of the federal government", but that leaves us with the mess we have now: nobody knows what buildings are being used by whom at what cost. Accounting costs are not waste; otherwise large private (not publicly-traded) companies would fire their accountants. So it seems like the best course of action is to do the same negotiation and accounting work that happens as a part of the sale. So the buying/selling costs are not a waste, they are money well-spent. It's possible to make them more efficient in special circumstances -- maybe the costs of due diligence, fraud prevention, title insurance, etc. are little or nothing when buying from the federal government. But those special cases can be handled as special cases and there could be a cheaper, quicker path to sell if those circumstances are met.