COLORADO'S SUNSET REVIEW 1976-1981: AN EXPERIMENT IN STATE REGULATORY REFORM |
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| Authors: | Michael S. March |
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| Affiliation: | MICHAEL S. MARCH is Professor of Public Affairs in the University of Colorado's Graduate School of Public Affairs. After 28 years as an analyst for the U.S. Bureau of the Budget, March joined the faculty at Colorado and was an active and major participant tn the implementation of the nation's first formal sunset review program. |
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| Abstract: | Sunset review seeks to determine whether governmental agencies meet a genuine public need, and to terminate those that do not. Some form of sunset review has been adopted by two-thirds of the states. March reviews the last five years of sunset review in Colorado and characterizes it as a trial and error process punctuated with some mistakes, but a process which eventually became cost-effective. The article narrates the history of different review processes, successes, and evaluation criterion. Evaluation methodologies were developed over time and altered occasionally as the criteria in the initial legislation was seen as unsatisfactory. In Colorado the process proved to be vulnerable to special interest groups. |
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