
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 7, 1995                   TAG: 9505080025
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CUT `RED TAPE' AND CUT SAFEGUARDS

The League of Women Voters has joined with 200 other organizations nationwide to form a coalition called Citizens for Sensible Safeguards. This group hopes to arouse citizens to health, safety and environmental dangers implicit in the anti-regulatory legislation passed by the House of Representatives and now before the Senate. We hope voters will not be misled by the cry "cut the red tape" (nobody likes red tape!) into giving up valuable safeguards. These regulations now protect our health, our safety and the environment from pollution of air, water and soil.

The rallying cry of those who want to do away with protective regulations is "cost-effective" and "risk assessment," both of which seem reasonable at first glance. Cost-benefit analyses would require federal agencies to prove that a regulation's benefits "justify" its economic costs and that it would be the most cost-effective way of achieving the agency's goal. Risk assessment would require that federal agencies present detailed scientific data evaluating the health risk caused by a substance or activity. The agency would then compare that to similar risks, as well as those encountered in everyday life, such as car accidents and lightning strikes. Can you imagine that fulfilling these requirements would cost nothing? Or result in a simplified regulatory system?

The underlying premise of these anti-regulatory bills is that cost is the most important factor. The real underlying premise of regulations is to benefit the health and safety of ordinary citizens who cannot, without government help, police the actions of powerful industries whose primary motive is profit. (Remember the fight car manufacturers put up about having to install seat belts?)

The League of Women Voters is primarily concerned with the welfare of American citizens. It is nonpartisan and nonprofit. It urges everyone who cares about what happens to us to write, or telephone Sens. John Warner and Charles Robb as soon as possible and urge their opposition to Senate Bills S-291 and S-343.

Nadine J. Newcomb

Blacksburg

by CNB