The most important article in today’s Providence Journal is John Kostrzewa’s column about the slogging effort to allow Rhode Island businesses to pay their employees every two weeks.  It’s actually a laughably minor reform on which to hang the banners of “economic development” and “moving the needle,” but that’s part of what makes Kostrzewa’s column so important.

This is a major battle, in Rhode Island?  Just that fact, alone, does incalculable harm to the state’s economy.  Just that fact alone illustrates how strong the special interests are, here, and how difficult it is to change anything in the direction of economic freedom.

And then you get into the details of the regulations:

… the regulators included that businesses had to certify that they were in compliance with the law and then recertify every two years…

Business owners howled. … So the regulators, in their wisdom, rewrote the final rules … [to require] recertification every four years … [to] assure that companies met the law’s requirements, including that only businesses that pay average wages of more than twice the minimum wage can pay biweekly.

The rules also require employers… to pay workers on a designated date and provide proof of a surety bond in the amount of the highest biweekly payroll. Also, companies with employees subject to collective-bargaining units must provide written consent by the collective-bargaining representative.

Go read the rest.  The regulators took a law meant to give some flexibility to businesses and made it a bear for all but those that need flexibility the least (i.e., bigger companies able to jump through hoops).

The people who govern Rhode Island — elected officials and career bureaucrats — believe they run the state as their own organization.  It isn’t as important that you can build a business and make a living as that they can “assure” that you’re doing what they want.