Learn the lessons 2020 taught us

The poor are oppressed by the incompetent.

It is a phrase that increasingly rings in my ears as I watch government bureaucracies and politicians provide false hope instead of tangible assistance. The people who pay for these failures are often those who can least afford it. The examples in my home state of Washington are numerous, but are not unique.

My friend Kim Ngan came to the United States from Vietnam, and although she didn’t speak much English, she knew there was opportunity. Today she owns a cosmetology school in Seattle’s International District that caters to immigrants. Despite struggling financially, she still charges less than half of what larger cosmetology schools ask in tuition. “They are immigrants, they don’t have money,” she explains.

Last year, the Washington State Department of Licensing (DOL) created a new online system to track occupational licenses. Kim’s students must complete 1,600 hours of training and take a test before the state will allow them to receive a license to work. The new computer system, however, didn’t work, and students – who have little money to start with – were left waiting for months to get their license.

Another student was prevented from taking the licensing test due, in part, to COVID and the failure of the licensing system. Recently they found that the hours they earned toward the license had expired. Now they have to start over. Their knowledge didn’t expire, but the state’s archaic and unfair rules mean she can’t work until she spends hundreds of hours “learning” what she already knows.

Many of Kim’s students speak little English and navigating the government’s system is difficult enough. The state provides little help.

Faced with problems of its own making, what did DOL do? Virtually nothing.

By way of contrast, last year, the deans of law schools in Washington state wrote letters asking that the bar exam be waived. The state Supreme Court obliged their colleagues and allowed students to skip the test.

No such letters were written for those waiting for their cosmetology license. Months after the new system was introduced – and was still failing – DOL continued to strictly enforce the requirements. They asked for patience and understanding for their own challenges, but don’t offer the same understanding for people working without a license because they need the income.

Washington state suffered one of the highest rates of small business failure during the lockdowns. Despite that, Nigerian scammers received more from Washington state than businesses, which have had to rely on the federal government to compensate them for the state’s restrictions.

Meanwhile, the head of the state’s employment security program – after losing hundreds of millions of dollars to scammers while delaying legitimate payments to those who lost their job – got a promotion to the Biden Administration even after it was revealed she was actively blocking an investigation by the State Auditor. There is accountability for the least of us, but not for those who are connected.

The list goes on.

Parents whose children cannot go to school due to the risk of COVID infection are told that for an additional fee, their children can attend daycare at the same location they are told it is too dangerous to teach. More than 100 school districts, trying to understand how to deal with the risk of spreading the illness, wrote to Governor Inslee for guidance last summer. They still have not received an answer.

DOH is, at least, updating its work on case investigations – contacting those who test positive for COVID so they can prevent further spread. But the numbers are atrocious. Instead of reaching 90 percent within a day – their own goal – during the surge in cases in late 2020 the state’s system collapsed when it was most needed, reaching about 7 percent of people. Seven percent.

Nobody has been held accountable for these failures. It is the ultimate irony that there is no accountability for failing to provide the promised accountability.

None of this mentions the chaos many businesses are forced to deal with on the streets. The window of Kim’s school was smashed recently. A large homeless camp is now across the street from her school and she and her students have been followed by men from the camp.

Despite this shameful record of government failure at a time when a social safety net is most needed, political fights are becoming nastier. One reason is that although politicians fail the poorest, they are focused and aggressive when rewarding the special interests who support them.

When construction was shut down in Washington state as part of the COVID lockdown, Governor Inslee exempted one sector: government projects. The coronavirus can’t tell the difference between government and private construction, but the governor and his political supporters could. When Washington state hit the “scientific” targets for opening schools, the governor and school districts simply ignored them as the teachers’ union demanded the schools remain closed. As people across the state lost their jobs, the Governor granted raises to state employees unions.

This battle for the spoils of government is what dominates the political debates. As economist Tyler Cowan notes, “It’s hard to buy off the various interest groups” because the promises outstrip the capacity of government, so each side becomes “more and more likely to engage in a ‘fight to the death’ over political control.”

Meanwhile Kim Ngan’s students can’t work because government agencies aren’t competent enough to upgrade their computer systems and aren’t compassionate enough to waive the rules until they fix the problem. Poor immigrants don’t have powerful special interests to represent them, so they watch as other groups receive the benefits of political connection. And COVID is spreading rapidly because the Washington State Department of Health isn’t capable of tracking the illness or protecting those at most risk. The result is tighter restrictions that are harming even more businesses.

The poor are oppressed by the incompetent. Government regulation favors the rich. If 2020 did anything, it is to make these two truths undeniable.

– Todd Myers is the Director of the Center for the Environment at Washington Policy Center. He is one of the nation’s leading experts on free-market environmental policy. He can be contacted at [email protected].