Regulatory creep: when federal ‘voluntary payments’ become mandatory
A little-known effort by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is underway to force private companies to pay mitigation for perfectly legal impacts to migratory birds and their habitat. A wonky system of “voluntary payments” to offset authorized and lawful impacts to bird habitat has become a de facto requirement for the agency’s approval of certain development projects. Though this effort is classic bureaucratic, inside the Beltway baseball politics, it reeks of the kind of regulatory creep that so many in Washington and the country at large have condemned. As the former...
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