A Conversation with the Buckeye Institute’s Greg R. Lawson (Part 2 of 2)

The Ohio state-budget expert and research fellow talks more to Michael E. Hartmann about his recent report on rulemaking nongovernment organizations (NGOs), different types of rulemaking NGOs, their various funding sources, and what can be done to make sure they play an appropriate role in helping to shape state policy implementation and regulation.

---

The Buckeye Institute research fellow Greg R. Lawson is an expert on Ohio’s budget, local government, state and local taxes, and education and education funding, among other things. He serves as Buckeye’s liaison to the state policymakers. Prior to joining Buckeye, he was a government-affairs professional, before which he was a Legislative Service Commission fellow for the Ohio General Assembly.

Last December, Buckeye released a report that Lawson researched and wrote, Beware the Trojan Horse of Rulemaking Nongovernment Organizations. The report describes how nongovernment organizations (NGOs) in Ohio present a unique regulatory threat disguised as an innocuous Trojan gift horse. It follows and expands upon previous, similar work done by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

For state policymakers and those agencies tasked with implementing policy, according to the report, “Rulemaking is no easy task. Enter the well-meaning experts of” NGOs to provide advice and guidance to legislators and administrators

with model legislation and pre-packaged uniform rules ready to adopt. NGOs offer state agencies and lawmakers subject matter expertise, insight into the needs and preferences of regulated parties, and ready-made regulations ready to be signed. … But NGOs also operate opaquely, often with little public scrutiny, and their seemingly benign proposals can plant seeds of bureaucratic overreach and undermine state sovereignty with backdoor plans for default national agendas that bypass state protocols.

In Beware the Trojan Horse of Rulemaking Nongovernment Organizations, Lawson focuses on the role of three industry-specific groups in Ohio. They are the North American Securities Administrators Association, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and the National Fire Protection Association & International Code Council.

The report’s recommendations include: higher levels of transparency on the part of both state regulatory bodies and the NGOs with which they cooperate or on which they rely; enhanced state-policymaker scrutiny of national NGO-inspired model laws and retaining, and exercising, the ability of state policymakers to modify them; and expanded public input to state policymakers about regulatory rules, to balance the NGOs’ national industry perspectives.

Lawson was kind enough to join me for a recorded conversation last month. During the first part of our discussion, which is here, we talk about the report and how rulemaking NGOs can serve good purposes, but should operate transparently and be subject to the scrutiny of democratically elected policymakers.

The just more than 18-minute video below is the second part, in which we discuss different types of rulemaking NGOs, their various funding sources, and what can be done to make sure they play an appropriate role in helping to shape state policy implementation and regulation.

“A lot of this is not that there’s something inherently wrong with what these folks are doing,” Lawson again cautions, “it’s just how they sometimes get things accomplished aren’t being done as openly as it should be, and we need to make sure that’s done.”

Addressing what looks to be a larger reaction against certain activities in the tax-exempt charitable sector and potential reform of its underlying structure, he says, “I think there’s going to be a lot of pushback.” Regarding nonprofit rulemaking NGOs specifically, though,

If you’ve got an entity that’s saying these are the principles here and we’re going to start passing things where it’s going to come through into your code in some way, I think legislators have a right to say, we ain’t going to do that. They just need to be aware about it and to the extent that they’re not, that’s the problem.

Procedurally, Lawson adds, “Obviously, if you don’t have something like” the Ohio legislature’s Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, which is “a legislative body looking over it, you should probably have one. The legislature should be involved—not just rubber-stamping things, but actually taking a look at it. … They may say it’s fine. They may say yes to it and that’s okay if that’s what they do, but they should have the opportunity to do it.”

For those elected legislators, he says, “It is asking a lot, but it’s not asking too much because that’s what they’re supposed to do.”

More largely, “What we’re trying to do now is rein back in some of the ‘administrative state,’ if you will,” Lawson concludes.

It’s a real thing. It exists. It’s grown. … It wasn’t like this a hundred years ago, and while there’s always going to be a need for some degree of rules. we need to be able to right-size those things and have people in charge. … Let’s make sure that we just let people be aware. Bring the accountability back. Doesn’t mean stop everything, but it just means bringing accountability to the table.

---

This article first appeared in the Giving Review on February 4, 2025.

Source: https://capitalresearch.org/article/a-conversation-with-the-buckeye-institutes-greg-r-lawson-part-2-of-2/