By Jorge Martinez
Until recently, the Texas Administrative Code contained roughly 20 million words. For a small business owner trying to understand which state rules apply, that sheer volume can translate into real time and money. Last year, Texas lawmakers created the Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office to begin simplifying that regulatory system.
The point is not simply to make the code shorter. It is to make compliance less costly and confusing for the Texans least equipped to absorb those costs. A large company can hand a new regulation to a compliance officer or outside counsel. The owner of a four-person crew may have to figure it out alone, at night, after the day’s work is finished. That difference makes regulatory complexity a question of economic opportunity, not just administrative housekeeping. That imbalance especially matters for Texas’s Hispanic entrepreneurs.
The Census Bureau counts 63,560 Hispanic-owned employer firms in the state, and Latino-owned firms averaged just 10 employees in 2020. Hispanic Texans also make up 61 percent of the state’s construction workforce — a sector where licensing, permitting, and inspection rules are part of doing business every day. Making those requirements easier to understand can therefore have an outsized effect on the entrepreneurs and workers helping drive Texas’s economy.
The early results suggest this effort is more than a word-cutting exercise. State agencies are reviewing rules governing everything from workers’ compensation to housing, while the Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office has cataloged 544 application forms across 50 state agencies on a single public website, available in both English and Spanish. For an owner in McAllen or Laredo trying to determine what permit or license is required, that kind of accessibility matters just as much as the number of words deleted from the code.
There are measurable results, although they remain preliminary. The office reports that its first 11 agency reviews identified nearly 70,000 words for removal from the administrative code and changes that could save taxpayers roughly $123 million. Its public dashboard now shows more than 4,100 rules reviewed. Those cuts still have to clear each agency’s own rulemaking process, including opportunities for public comment.
Simplifying regulation should not mean weakening necessary protections. A rule that keeps a construction worker safe on a scaffold serves an obvious purpose. But that rule also works best when an employer can readily understand what it requires. Texas law also limits TREO’s authority: The office cannot recommend eliminating rules that govern how the public participates in the rulemaking process.
Twenty million words is not a measure of effective government. What matters is whether Texas protects the public while making its rules clear enough for ordinary people and small businesses to follow. The office’s early work suggests the state can do both. For thousands of Hispanic entrepreneurs building businesses with small teams and limited resources, that would make regulatory reform more than an exercise in cutting words. It would make Texas a little easier to do business in.
Editor’s Note: The above commentary was penned by Jorge Martinez, Texas Strategic Director for the LIBRE Initiative.
