A couple of weeks ago, I made a point about the need for a public policy checklist. What I had in mind was something similar to what you see outside the terminal window before you board your airliner to the mainland. There’s the pilot or co-pilot with a clipboard, flashlight and perhaps a small hand tool walking around the outside of the airplane looking, peering, and prodding the airplane and marking a checklist. He is doing that because that is a part of pre-flight procedure before the plane can be released from the gate. And that’s good—better safe than sorry, you know.

But the people who make public policy don’t have a checklist requirement before their laws and rules take flight. Oops, maybe they do. They supposedly must follow the Constitutions of the state and federal levels. Most never mention that, and they sure don’t seem to have it on a clipboard to check off before they vote on laws. The governor sometimes vetos based on the Constitution, so maybe there is a checklist up there on the fourth floor but its use seems haphazard and out of sight.

The reason this concerns me is some laws could kill, maim, bankrupt, etc. thousands of people over many, many years. In other words laws have enormous potential for bad as well as good. Yet many of the individuals at the controls just seem to fly by the seat of their pants without pre-flight, in flight or post-flight evaluation for the public to witness.

My friend Larry Reed, President of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Michigan, gave a speech at the Detroit Economic Club several years ago “Seven Principles of Sound Public Policy”. It would make a fine checklist. Here’s a summary:

• I.                     Free people are not equal, and equal people are not free: Yes, all must be equal before the law.  But all are not equally talented or equally productive; equally tall or equally careful.

• II.                   What belongs to you, you tend to take care of; what belongs to no one or everyone tends to fall into disrepair.

• III.                  Sound policy requires that we consider long-run effects and all people, not simply short-run effects and a few people.

• IV.                If you encourage something, you get more of it; if you discourage something, you get less of it.

• V.                  Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own.

• VI.                Government has nothing to give anybody except what it first takes from somebody, and a government that's big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you've got.

• VII.               Liberty makes all the difference in the world: Slaves cannot pursue happiness.  Poverty and tyranny are joined at the hip.

What if each legislator had to check off each item on that checklist and submit a written statement on how the law he is about to vote on fits each of the seven principles? What if the law could not be voted upon until the checklist of each legislator was complete and available to the public?

That’s the concept. No law leaves the gate until some genuine thinking, checking and looking is accomplished.

What do you think? Your input would be helpful as we use Larry’s excellent ideas to further develop the concept.

We call the project GATEKEEPER.

By the way, you can see Larry Reed’s speech if you click on the following link:

http://www.mackinac.org/article.aspx?ID=3832

If you want a print copy, please advise.

Richard O. Rowland is president of the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. He can be reached via email at: mailto:dick@grassrootinstitute.org.