In scoping
Public Agencies & Rulemaking
Regulatory agencies — federal, state, local. They write the rules, issue the licenses, and enforce the laws the legislature passes. The gap between what's in the Code of Federal Regulations and what's happening on the ground is measured in human consequences.
Where rules get set and outright ignored here
- Rules are finalized and then understaffed into non-existence. A rule without enforcement resources is a suggestion.
- Complaint intake is deliberately inaccessible — phone-tree mazes, PDF-only forms, short windows, impossible documentation demands.
- Settlements are signed with no admission of wrongdoing and no public case record.
- Industry-captured agencies consult regulated entities on their own rules.
- Inspection cycles stretch from "every year" to "every decade" without formal policy change.
What TASFGA will track
- Rulemaking calendar — proposed → comment → finalized → effective → enforced
- Enforcement ledger — violations cited, penalties assessed, penalties collected, behavior changed
- Complaint-pathway audits — how hard is it, from the citizen side, to file and get a response?
- Staffing trends — agency headcount vs. regulated universe size
- Revolving-door index — staff movement between agency and regulated industry
Why this matters
Legislatures pass laws. Agencies decide whether those laws exist in practice. When an agency is captured, underfunded, or simply tired, the statute on the books is aspirational at best. TASFGA's focus here is on the operational reality — the administrative machinery where law becomes behavior, or doesn't.