Rep. Jeff Bradley’s Plan to Cut Regulations and Help Small Businesses Thrive

is California where we have 83,000 doves and doves. California has something like 412,000 doves and doves. Do you guys are interested? Could you as a small business owner, could you have or even a large business owner, even if you have a cashier of attorneys on staff to sort their way through that, that's almost

a phenomenal, I mean, an unbearable number of regulations. Let me tell you, that reminds me, let me tell you something that we are trying to do in South Carolina.

We are working with Google to try and create a large language model with the 10 million words

that our code of regulations represent and working to determine where there are duplicative regulations and try to zero in on those and try and get rid of those first. We speak to the houses if we need a directive of removing 25% of our regulations. Americans are capable of achieving extraordinary things when they have the freedom and opportunity to do so.

This is American Potential. Hey everyone, welcome to the American Potential Podcast. I'm your host, David from Hey engineer Matt, you know, you know, I know you want to small business in Colorado and I'm sure you're in touch with a lot of other business owners and entrepreneurs, you know, just your daily life.

“How do you guys interact with the regulations that, you know, really impact almost everybody?”

Like how does that influence the folks that you talk to, they're in Colorado?

Yeah, David, I mean, fortunately for me, my business stays fairly untouched with regulations, but I've got friends who have to deal with all sorts of permitting issues, different types of certifications. I mean, look at anything in the restaurant industry, for example, that's one step after another after another and sometimes these small business owners feel choked by some of the

regulations, you know, you think that sometimes, well, okay, I can understand some of these rules, but when they become overbearing, you can absolutely tell. I mean, look at anyone who's, we've had some great examples of this on the show with people who've run food trucks, having to get permits in every single location, you know, like part of a state that they want to operate their food truck in, a hair salon, the crazy permitting

requirements for that.

We've seen a lot of that on this show.

Yeah, I'm glad you're paying attention, man. I know, I am listening, I'm kind of, I'm trying to popular belief. I am paying attention.

“Yeah, no, we have, I think we've talked a lot of people where regulation has a real impact,”

and then maybe even stopping them from achieving their dream of starting a business and achieving more or shutting them down. So I'm pleased to have this conversation today about a leader in the state, in this case, South Carolina who's really pushing some great legislation that hopefully help relieve that for South Carolinians.

So, you know, the founding father's idea of a free society is based on the fact that the people who are elected are the ones who make the laws, not on elected bureaucrats. What they can trace is back to political philosophers like John Locke, who believe in government by consent, not by decree. But the idea of an administrative state started under Woodrow Wilson and became a reality

under FDR's New Deal. And over time, rules and regulations which carry the way of law have come from unelected agencies and set of legislators who are accountable to the voters. So how do we change that balance? That's the idea behind the Reigns Act, which requires lawmakers to prove major regulations

before they take effect. It's not anti-regulation, it's pro accountability. So some states have already passed some form of the Reigns Act, and now law makers and South Carolina are considering their own version, called the Small Business Regulatory Freedom Act.

So I want to welcome to the podcast. The sponsor of the bill, who is also the chairman of the House Regulations and Administrative Procedures Committee, Jeff Bradley, to talk about this bill. Representative, thank you for joining us. You're welcome.

Good to see you. Our organization, we've all been very excited about kind of pushing back against regulation and restoring accountability at the state and federal level. But before we get into that conversation, our organization manager's prosperity is doing something we call our America's 250 celebrations.

We celebrate America's 250th year of independence this whole year. And we've been talking about how throughout our history, people have taken one small step in order to get involved and to really change their community, their state, their nation, really.

“So I'm curious, in your case, what got you involved in public service and politics?”

This is actually a great question, it's kind of, it's a little bit of a funny story. I was, in my community, I had been involved in educational initiatives, charitable operations.

And a friend of mine who was in the role that I'm in now, as a House member, was plus his heart going through a divorce through on a front page of the newspaper. And it was terrible if you could imagine. And I called him up and, well, actually, what he said is he wasn't going to run again. And I called him up and I said, hey, I'm not going to run if you have any desire to run,

because I don't want to run against you.

“But if you're not going to run again, I think I'm interested in taking this to the next step.”

And he said, no, I'm finished. And so I ran, and I ran on a pose the first time.

And I've been opposed a couple of times since then. And David, I can tell you that having run a posed and run on a posed, on a posed is much better. So that's new keen political insight on this five guests. So, and I've been in the South Carolina House for the last 12 years. So six terms.

So when you decided to take that step and run, what you thought you would be doing, and like how it would be fulfilling to you and how you'd serve your community, is that lined up and held up over the dozen years or is that changed a lot? Well, I'm not, there's only so much time in a day. And the way our system works is we have to go to Columbia for three days a week,

“for 22 weeks a year, most all of the other activity has stopped.”

And so it's just basically focused on the house stuff.

And it has been an interesting ride in the house work. And it also, having been there for a while, it's interesting how one accumulates influence over time in South Carolina. It's pretty much driven by seniority. And so I tell people I can get more done in a half a day now than I could in three months, 12 years ago.

So, well, I mean, it's just, it's just a easier to get stuff done. And I know, I know where the decision makers are, I have their phone numbers in my contact roles. And it's just easier to get stuff done. Well, that's right. Well, so you can get stuff done.

We hope that this next topic and what we're talking about is one of those things that gets done.

So turning to this small business regulatory freedom act, when did you first start to see

“that this was an issue and become interested in it?”

Well, I've been in the Regulations Committee since 2017. And I've been the chairman for the last five or six years. And so I have been watching this whole regulation thing. And I have, I have a bit of a reputation for squeezing our state agencies when they, our system, an agency has to announce that they intend to promulgate a regulation.

And it goes through a very structured process. And I make each one of the agencies that are trying to promulgate a new red coming in and sit down and talk to me. And we, my team sits down and we, we, the trick for us is reading the silly things. Right, it, I think in the past, you were getting a lot of rubber stamps from, the way we did

this prior to 2017 is we would allow the standing committees to address the regulation promulgation. And a lot of times, they were so busy doing other stuff. They just sort of gave it the rubber stamp and just moved on. And that is, what, that is, what has allowed a significant portion of this accretion that

has occurred, just the growth of the administrative state. And so we're trying to, trying to push that back a little bit. That sounds so familiar because so if we talk about regulations, things like the Reins Act, it's really about having the legislature do their job. You know, by reading, you know, really understanding what the regulations that are being

passed and being a check on the administrative state. And so often it is because of, you know, there's so much work to be done. There's just this, you know, avalanche of stuff to read. I'm sure it can consume. So how do you think, maybe take us through like how this, how the, how the small business

regulatory freedom act would work and the benefits that you think could come about from it? Well, I'm going to have to put my glasses on and I might look down at my, my notes here

There's a regulatory sunset.

“There's a limit on the authority to enact regulations.”

There's a regulatory budget that we put in place, an enhanced economic analysis. And then something that we're pretty excited about is the citizen difference in the administrative law proceedings. Now that, that sounds a little complicated, but what had happened in the past is when regulations were challenged in the state, they had to go through our administrative law court.

And the, the statutes were written such that the, the court leaned on the agency as being kind of the, the, the, for lack of a better term, a, know it all of that particular regulation. So there was, different to the, to the agency versus the, the citizen who was bringing the, the issue to court.

And here at this point, we are offering the, the, deference to be in on behalf of the citizen

of the business that's bringing, bringing the issue.

“But I think the real essence of this is in the seven year sunset, where every seven years”

if an agency does not bring forth a good reason to re, reauthorize a regulation. It's sunsets and that's, that is a, that's a pretty big deal. That is. Yeah. And so I can go into more detail, but I don't want your audience to fall asleep at the switch.

Well, I mean, the essence of this is like, yeah, I think that sunsets a pretty pretty transformative, because it's just an automatic speed bump or an automatic check over the regulatory kind of environment that that, you know, and you'd be shocked, David, how they, the agencies are, and the, the vested interests are squealing like pigs, and that they don't want their regulations to go away if it's protecting something that's vitally important

to them.

“So the, the truth of the matter is, we just want to force some element of analysis to”

determine what we're, or not, the agent, I mean, the regulation is truly necessary. We don't necessarily want to get regulations are required to run a government. There's just no question about that. We in South Carolina have 83,372 dosandults, and we are the number 36 state that has the least regulation.

So they're only 14 states that have fewer regulations than South Carolina. But we still have 83,372. So all of those, all of those require somebody to look at it constantly and determine whether or not they're in compliance with the, the regulations that exist in the state of South Carolina.

So we're, our goal is to try and get rid of some of those that are no longer necessary. And then as you could reasonably deduce that will, in effect, cut the cost for small businesses and individuals in the state of South Carolina. Sure. So what are some of the stories that you heard from small business owners, kind of in the lead up

to this, this legislation? I'll give you one example. I had a friend who was the managing partner of a partnership that owned a hotel on the beach. I live on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, which is right on the ocean in South Carolina.

And we should have filmed this on location. We'll do the next one, we'll do the next one that way. We'll do the next one on the back of my boat. Ah, that's great.

We had, so my friend is doing an 11 million dollar upfit on his pool deck.

And he goes through the process of getting a contract, this is an, an, an inordinately ethical human being that was doing this work. And he gets to the point where the state comes in the department of environmental services comes in and they object to, if you, if you, if you look down at the steps going into a pool, David, and there, there's a little stripe near the end.

This stripe was a quarter of an inch off and the regulations folks shut the project down. The guy is attempting to open the, on the 11 million dollar project and reopen his hotel. And, and at the last minute, a, not elected bureaucrat with, I don't know who knows.

We have to stop that sort of stuff.

“That's kind of where we, where we, where we're going.”

So are there any consistencies or any trends that you hear from sports and business undersists of the most burdensome regulation that people are encountering or is it kind of all over the place? David, it's all over the place.

I, yeah, the, the problem is how can a small business owner who doesn't have the resources

or the time stop and go through all the regulations that are required, or, or, or voice that upon his or her business, they just don't. And, and if they don't, and they feel that the need to protect themselves from the regulatory state, then they're going to have to hire an attorney to give them guidance. And, again, that cuts into their profit.

I mean, the lawyers love it, but I don't think small businesses do. I, I could really understand how small business owners, you know, bumping into these regulations all the time, how, how it really affects them. Or, do you say to the, just South Carolina, South Carolinians in general, how will this benefit them?

If we can accomplish, I'm going to answer that by giving you a little background on something that occurred in, of all places, British Columbia in Canada. British Columbia, the turn, the turn of this century was known for its regulatory environment. And it was bad, and it was slowing innovation, entrepreneurship, and growth. And so, they started to implement issues that reduce the regulations.

And over a few years time, they reduced about 36% of their regulations. And as a result of that, they enjoyed a 92% increase in their gross domestic product. Wow. Staggering. Is it not?

Just start doubling, basically, basically, a doubling, they were behind the national average.

They caught up with the national average, and then exceeded that by 1.3%. And these numbers meant, has sound like much, but when you apply them as a percentage of what your GDP growth was before, it's staggering what we could do here. So what this can bring for the citizens of South Carolina is reduce their costs, make their businesses more profitable, free up time to be able to do more business and less government.

This is a win-win, except for those who benefit from the over-regulation of the individual of the business.

“Well, and who those people, I mean, who are the opponents of this legislation?”

Well, there are some individual groups. The environmentalists have come out against this. They have, they love regulations because it stops growth. And so I think that their concern is that regulations that they fought hard to get in place are going to be removed and not reauthorized.

That's one example. There are a group in Charleston who are the harbor pilots for the state, ports authority, and they're concerned that we as a general assembly, if we don't reauthorize appropriately, the small number of regulations that they have, then they won't be able to operate in with South Carolina in rules, and they will revert to the federal rules.

So as everything, as you know, you've been doing this a while.

So you recognize how complex everything is, and there's second and third and fourth order

of magnitude events that occur when you do something in the government. And that's, this is no different, but that's just a couple of examples.

“Has the state agencies, the regulators made their voice shirt on this?”

Yeah, we have an entity that is required to review regulations every five years, and the part of the reason I brought this legislation is that I don't necessarily have control over the agencies and their regulations unless they're trying to promulgate new ones. Then we have total control, but they're supposed to come to us every five years and

That really wasn't happening, and there was a group that's supposed to oversee that.

“In that group, objected to this legislation, because the seven year review of as many as”

50 to 100 regulations means that they don't have enough staff to be able to oversee the work that they're being told to do by this statute, and they objected to it because they didn't think they'd have enough resources. Which is kind of short-sighted because we can change that. We can give more resources to the analysis of these regulations if we see this as a

beneficial thing for growing the state's economy. That's just one example of state agencies.

We've gotten the state agencies to the point now where they are not so sure Chairman Bradley

might not go off on them, so they really don't want to come through my committee. Last year we had 110 proposed regulations this year. We started out at 35. We're right now we have 43 items on which we have to take action, but 10 of them are removing regulations from the book.

“We're down to 33 regulations this year from 110 next year, and I believe some portion”

of that is how difficult my team has made the promulgation of new regulations. We're tough on them, but we think we're fair with them as well. We just make them justify quite literally every word, and sometimes it comes down to a shell, a me, a want, a will, and we tell them all there will be no ambiguity. There's no opportunity for an online elected bureaucrat to make a judgment call on black

letter stuff, so we work hard at that. Well, I mean, to me, you're being the appropriate check in balance on the on the executive bridge. Well, I don't applaud you for doing that. Wow.

Yeah, I think we are. I was not particularly happy when I was assigned to the regulations committee in 2017, but I just put my head down, went to work, and what I've come to really understand David is how much, how much we can change agencies behavior. I hate to use the word power, because it can be misconstrued, but we have a tremendous

amount of control over this process, and I, I'm in a very interesting position now in my role that I had anticipated, and so it's, well, I'm glad you're in it, and it's a chairman. I, I'll tell you, you know, we've talked over the last year, especially since on the federal level, the Loper bright decision. I mean, there's, we've been talking about the administrative state and your reigns at

the state level, regulatory, uh, the regulatory kind of stories run them, run them up on the federal level, and, and we've, we've done a number of episodes on this, and, you

know, I always thought, like, I was always a guy.

I'm on the fight taxes, and, you know, fight for school choice, and stuff like that. And regulations is kind of an I role, and it is such a big deal for America's prosperity, and I think for the American people, because it influences, or it comes into contact with so much of our daily lives, and particularly if you're on Japan, or you're a small business person, it is, it can make a break you, you know, whether you have a business or not.

And, you know, especially when we look at the energy sector, I mean, it's so important to what we're doing as a nation and even our national security, so I've been pleased, you really with, like, the trend on the federal level, but then where the real action's happening is like you on the state level, you know, we see rains and other, you know, sunset provisions passing, uh, in, you know, state by state.

I mean, that's just going to make a real impact on people's lives, and also hopefully, you know, really grow the economy, let people live better lives because they're in a more money and

“having, you know, having more opportunities. Yeah, well, that's, that's what we're looking at.”

Our colleagues and some of the blue states, like the number one regulated state in the country is California, where we have 83,000 doves and doves, California has something like 412,000 doves and doves. Do you have a trip? Could you, is a small business owner? Could you, or even a large

That's almost a phenomenal, I mean, an unbearable number of regulations. Let me tell you,

“that reminds me, let me tell you something that we were trying to do in South Carolina. We were”

working with Google to try and, um, part of my role is also, uh, they have folded in AI into our regulations, AI and cyber security. So that comes under my purview as well. But we're working with

Google to create a large language model with the 10 million words that our code of regulations

represents and working to determine where there are duplicative regulations and try to zero in on those and try and get rid of those first. The speaker of the house is giving me a directive of removing 25% of our regulations. So we have to get rid of, we got some work to do. Well, that's so exciting. No. I mean, I do think AI is just kind of transformative there. I mean, you know, we just had, for instance, state of Illinois where I live is so dysfunctional

in terms of how the legislature operates. I mean, even if you have rules, they just disregard them or pass your wave them. But, you know, it's a classic place where a bill, you know, a massive thousands of pages budget bill gets dropped at three in the morning and you got a vote on it.

And in your past, people will try to rifle through, but they never knew where they're voting

on. Well, with AI, you actually can start to figure out what people are voting on. And, you know, legislatures can figure out what they're voting on. If you kind of drop it into a AI and it spits out

“like what's actually happening. And that's just a simple way to doing it. There's, I think then,”

the applications are endless. Yeah. Hopefully, really for efficiency, it'll be, it could be a great great. I think your concept of the applications are endless. And we're, you're seeing it all over the place right now. I mean, I know that if you are following the stock market at all, you have seen that service, or software is a service, entities are just getting blasted from innovations that are occurring in the AI world. So, yeah, it's going to be fascinating to see where

that, where that goes. I'll give you an example at the Department of Environmental Services that they are, they have implemented an AI on one particular permitting process. It's a water

“permitting process that required engineers to spend 200 of their hours going through the application”

process. Our AI applied to this has reduced that to 75 minutes. Oh, my. I just think about the, the efficiency that that represents now. How can we scale that across government writ large is going to be the, the battle going forward. So, it's all pretty exciting stuff. That is super exciting.

I always said to see what kind of work you guys do. So, as, as we wrap up, the Chairman, I love to

hear, like, what do you, what do you most excited about for South Carolina? Or, or, or concerned about, either way, but like, what, you know, when you look at the future South Carolina, you're a top leader there, what do you excited or concerned about? I know we were talking about regulations, but a significant portion of the work that I do relates to AI. And what I'm most excited about in the state of South Carolina is how we have begun to cross the state, involving state agencies, the university system,

businesses, education, K through 12, and the higher education. We're, we're adding all these people together, and we're working to create a fertile field of AI literate citizens who are able to work with applied AI and how we are probably going to transform our state and allow the efficiencies that you and I were just talking about a minute ago to be implemented across business education, state government, and unleash a certain element of entrepreneurship, and efficiency gains,

productivity gains, and if a lot of, if we have a lot of processes that can be automated and moved off to do the grout work through AI, you're going to have a population of happier employees across the state. And so what we're doing in South Carolina and AI is actually unparalleled in the nation. Nobody else is trying to integrate it the way we are, and I'm super, super excited about that.

the work that you're doing. That's fabulous. And I really applaud the work you're doing here

“and trying to battle the regulation state and the work that you're trying to do passing the”

version the way we go. We just have to get it through the Senate. That's where we are right now.

It's stuck in the Steven Judiciary Committee in a subcommittee over there.

“Well, Chairman Jeff Bradley, from the South Carolina House, we really appreciate you being with us.”

I enjoyed it. Good talk to you. Hey folks, if you like this episode and like to say connected

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Don't take them for granted. Go out there and defend liberty in freedom. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to American Potential. You may listen to more stories from Americans working every day to expand freedom and opportunity in their communities by visiting Americanpotential.com.