THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Friday, July 15, 1994                  TAG: 9407140170
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON    PAGE: 06   EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Editorial 
                                             LENGTH: Short :   39 lines

CITY AND CITIZENS ALIKE TRIPPED BY RED TAPE

When the city gets tripped by the same red tape it trips its citizens with, citizens get some grim satisfaction. Mr. Robert Weis, who ran into a burdensome building-permit process, offers an example in a letter elsewhere on today's page.

Mr. Weis, meet John Baillio, owner of Baillio Sand Co., who has introduced the city to the same web of sticky stuff that has entangled his business for two years. Mr. Baillio owns half of a borrow pit. The city owns the other half. Mr. Baillio has laboriously met the regulations that govern when, how and what he may dump in his half. The city, apparently unaware that the same regulations applied to its half, has simply dumped its concrete waste, among other things, into the lake.

Mr. Baillio asked why the double standard. The Corps of Engineers says the remedy for it is requiring that the city complete the permit process just like Mr. Baillio. That would make the city, Mayor Oberndorf says, the ``role model'' for the private sector which government ought to be.

There is another remedy befitting another role model: cut the red tape to the minimum and change the bureaucratic attitude from Impede Wherever Possible. The fault, of course, begins not with the bureaucracy but with lousy lawmaking. Lawmakers enact broad statutes, leaving the details to the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the loudest-shouting lobby.

Construction waste seems a particular problem (Remember the rubble at Atlantic Park?) in particular need of creative solutions. Instead of butting heads, the city, the Corps and the business community should put their heads together. by CNB