Some of the costs associated with government regulatory programs are extremely frivolous and clearly unnecessary from the standpoint of achieving any serious public policy objective. For example:

• A Kansas City bank was ordered by regulators to put a Braille keypad on a drive-through automatic teller machine.

• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined a Boise plumbing company $7,875 (eventually rescinded due to public outrage) because employees didn't take "proper" safety precautions while successfully rescuing a suffocating construction worker from a collapsed trench.

• A Pennsylvania man was fined $202,000 and sentenced to three years in jail for hauling away 7,000 old tires and rusting car parts and placing clean fill on his own property without a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency. Because the junk trapped pools of runoff water in a creek bed, his land was classified as wetland.

Source: Murray Weidenbaum and Melinda Warren, "It's Time to Cut Government Regulations," Contemporary Issues Series 70, February 1995, Center for the Study of American Business, Washington University, Campus Box 1208, One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO 63130, (314) 935-5630.

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