By the Las Vegas Review-Journal Editorial Board, November 4, 2025
President Donald Trump insists that his administration eliminate at least two federal regulations for every new one implemented. Nevada lawmakers should do him one better.
In an essay last month for Nevada Policy, a libertarian think-tank based in Las Vegas, analyst Cameron Belt highlights Idaho’s success in clearing the regulatory thicket by embracing “zero-based” regulation, which includes creating sunset laws to ensure that every state rule has an expiration date.
The new approach began in 2019 and led lawmakers in the Gem State to embark upon a thorough review of the state’s rulebook, which led to a 95 percent reduction in red tape, Mr. Belt reports. “The administrative code shrunk from 8,553 pages to 5,318 pages — a reduction of over 3,200 pages,” he wrote. Idaho now ranks “as the least regulated state in the nation.”
Many regulations do indeed enhance public safety and other desirable goals. But others are outdated, unworkable or anti-competitive (see: most state licensing boards), acting as a drain on economic dynamism by burdening entrepreneurs and driving up costs And once in place, they rarely go away, tending to multiply like kudzu. “Regulatory agencies have little inherent incentive to eliminate existing regulations,” noted Alex Adams in a 2024 paper for the Manhattan Institute.
Idaho’s approach overwhelms that inertia, relying on sunset laws and cost-benefit analysis, among other things. This has flipped “the script on regulations,” Mr. Adams notes. “No longer do agencies have to expend significant effort to eliminate a regulation; rather, regulations are eliminated by default, and keeping a regulation requires agencies to affirmatively justify its costs relative to its benefits.”
Idaho law now requires that new regulations automatically expire after a set time. At that point, the burden is on the agency enforcing the rule to defend its extension. In addition, the law includes limits on how many regulations each state agency may oversee, forcing them to prioritize new rules.
In 2023, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo issued an executive order asking state agencies to examine their regulations and to repeal outdated or burdensome rules. But the going has been slow. Efforts to eliminate unnecessary state boards, for instance, met resistance from the usual entrenched special interests.
Mr. Belt notes that Nevada’s administrative code consists of nearly 5 million words and that CNBC in 2025 ranked the state 42nd in terms of business friendliness. Nevada policymakers have long sought to create a tax and regulatory climate hospitable to innovation and entrepreneurship in an effort to reduce the state’s reliance on gaming and tourism. Codifying Idaho’s approach to rule-making would represent a big step toward achieving that goal.