Study: Washington state ranks No. 8 in the nation for red tape

(The Center Square) – Washington is the eighth most regulated state in the nation, according to a new study by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Arlington, Va.

The study found that as of 2023, the Washington Administrative Code, or WAC, contains 201,634 restrictions and more than 18.3 million words.

The Mercatus Center’s rankings are based on each state’s number of regulatory restrictions. The study notes that full data is not available for Arkansas, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia.

“Washington is the eighth most regulated state in the country, for the second year in a row,” explained one of the study’s authors, Dr. Patrick McLaughlin, director of policy analytics and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center.

Per the study, the three most regulated industries in Washington are animal production, ambulatory health care, and petroleum and coal products manufacturing.

Washington has 11,450 animal production regulations, compared to the average across all states of 4,800. There are 7,079 ambulatory health care regulations in Washington, while the average is 4,673 in that industry. Washington has 6,328 petroleum and coal product manufacturing regulations, which is less than the average of 7,292.

Utilities, waste management and remediation services, crop production, food and beverage stores, educational services, support activities for transportation, and chemical manufacturing round out the 10 most regulated industries in Washington.

“Being a heavily regulated state comes with a substantial set of hidden consequences: slower economic growth compared to less regulated states, more barriers to economic mobility, and higher prices, just to name a few,” McLaughlin said.

He pointed to another Pacific Northwest state and a nearby Canadian province to make his point.

“If you cross the border into the least-regulated state in the country, Idaho, or just drive north to British Columbia, do you see a difference in outcomes that regulations seek to achieve, such as workplace safety or environmental quality?” he asked. “Washington has roughly five times as much regulation as Idaho. I can assure you that it is not five times as safe or five times as clean.”

The study ranked Idaho , Washington’s neighboring state to the east, at No. 48, with a total of 31,497 regulator restrictions.

The Mercatus Center claims the Canadian province of British Columbia has been a pioneer in reducing red tape and claims its economic growth rate increased by one percentage point because it cut regulations by nearly 40%.

This year’s Red Tape Report Card by the Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses gave British Columbia a B+ for its performance regarding regulatory accountability, regulatory burden and political priority.

That is not the case in Washington, according to McLaughlin.

“Like most states, Washington seems to have its regulatory system on autopilot,” he noted. “Regulators consistently add more rules to the stockpile of existing regulations, but seldom, if ever, look back at old rules to see if they are actually achieving their goals.”

Still, McLaughlin retained some optimism about the possibility of reducing the regulatory burden in the Evergreen State.

“Because Washington has so many rules on the books that have accumulated for decades, the state has a great opportunity to cut unnecessary red tape and reap the economic benefits of doing so,” he said.

The five states with the most regulatory restrictions are California, New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Texas. The least regulated states are Idaho, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana and Alaska.