Kent Lassman is the President of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI).

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Federal Newswire: What would founder Fred Smith think of CEI today?

Lassman: Thanks for bringing new ideas forward—that was part of what Fred's vision was way back in 1984. He had been something of a convert, a refugee, a very bright, charismatic, energetic, southern transplant who came to Washington to work at the EPA and quickly became disillusioned at the harms that were caused by these regulatory institutions. All the good intentions in the world didn't really matter if the way you were affecting people's lives was negative.

Federal Newswire: What has most surprised you in your role, and what are some of the challenges?

Lassman: I'll stick with Fred Smith for just a moment. He and I had this kind of vaudeville-style joke that we did over and over again, because we were colleagues for a couple of years where he was serving as a senior fellow.

I came into the organization, and I knew some of the senior fellows...and I knew what to expect about their dedication, skills, and the type of work they produced. I would sometimes scratch my head or wonder how this piece fit with that piece or how we could maybe get a little bit of an efficiency out of these two different folks who were studying two different things.

Fred would say to me, “Kent, [do you know] my favorite form of management?” It was like a call and response–[my] job was to say, “no, Fred, what is that?” He would say, “don't manage.” 

I think there's a really wonderful gift baked into the culture here of allowing people to pursue projects that aren't yet clear as far as where they're going to land to follow their passion and develop expertise and policy areas that maybe are up and coming and are short on the front pages. But there's a tension with making sure that we're doing the work that really informs the debate and helps policymakers do a better job.

Federal Newswire: What sets CEI apart? 

Lassman: The metrics movement, whether it's in private enterprise, government institutions, other nonprofits, or especially in the public policy sphere, this is a good thing. Clearly, like any good thing, the dose makes the poison. 

If you over focus on counting a certain behavior or outcome, then people tend to follow their instincts and they produce more of that thing, and maybe that thing is only an input to some larger goal, some social circle.

I think of metrics this way. It is important for us to track how many times our senior fellows are invited to testify. It's important to know how many provisions of law that are introduced were actually drafted here. We take care to make an honest tabulation, and they don’t tend to be the same every year. They vary depending on the political circumstance.

The metric that matters most is the one where it's less easy to see and it requires a degree of prudential judgment. [For example,] how many times did a policy change because CEI showed up? That's where prudential judgment comes in. 

Federal Newswire: What are your thoughts on the best way to work with government agencies on regulatory measures? 

Lassman: I don't want to belabor this because it lends itself to going into calling names or naming people or things like that. You need to be confident in your ideas. You need to do the hard work of studying the policy and studying the economics of it and understanding the law. That's difficult and tedious. 

There was a horrendous proposal from the Obama team in their last year. When the next administration came in, they put a freeze on the regulation, and then they took their time. When they finally worked through the process there was one very narrow, small provision that we at CEI took. The issue with it was interpretation of this way down in the weed's subsection, that provision of a major law. The rest of the proposal was wonderful. It used good economic analysis. It was well drafted.

I went to the administrator, and I said, “I'm going to wait about 45 days until this shows up in the Federal Register. Then on this very narrow provision, I'm likely to go forward and tell people what a great rule this is, except for this. Then I will sue you. I'm going to sue on that provision.” He looked me dead in the eye and he said, “I knew that was coming.” 

The point is that friends, allies, legal scholars, they will disagree on how far you can take a provision of the law. That sort of behavior [and debate] is healthy. Had the administrator said, ‘well, I'm just going to take what the Obama team did and cut it in half and put that forward,’ that's renegotiation that we don't want to see at all.

It really does require [us to] always be mindful of this. We always have to check our impulses. People get cozy in Washington. That's not just something that is said, that is a genuine risk and danger.

Federal Newswire: What is your opinion on the Administrative Procedure Act–does it give too much power to agencies?

Lassman: The concept of having a general law that guides and creates the process for the behavior of regulatory agencies; that is wholly a good thing. We want that process to be governed by statute. We don't want that process governed by politics or by the whims of an agency administrator or a department head. Having a law in place is instructive to the public administrator, but it's also a tool for those of us who want to say you've gone too far. That's where the litigation strategies come in.

The current law I think needs to be rewritten. It is the case that, as many critics will highlight, there are general prerogatives or there is default positions baked into how the APA is written that favor the government versus private enterprise.

Those defaults need to be evaluated, and they need to be reconsidered. I think it's due not just for a tune up, it needs a significant overhaul.[paragraph end] The Brownlow Committee from the 1930’s said this headless fourth branch of government– independent agencies–[was] a problem. It had recommendations...about how to bring those agencies in, and it was anticipating the problem that was known by the mid 1930s. It was anticipating what came with the APA–that we need to create boundaries for these agencies, both of substance and what they're allowed to work on.

These procedural boundaries are valuable not just because they allow us to challenge a rule or sue an agency, but because basic procedural rights–civil rights–need to get rooted somewhere in the law. The APA says the EPA, or the Department of Interior or whatnot, has been abusing people. We want those procedural rights in the same way that we want the Bill of Rights. 

Federal Newswire: Where can people find more about the Competitive Enterprise Institute? 

Lassman: Go to CEI.org. There's a full retinue of programming, including events and podcasts. Also, we're right downtown, so if you have an interest, you can also pop in on us. Just let us know ahead of time and we'll roll out the red carpet for you.