Jared Meyer writes in Forbes this week looks at the role of regulatory reform in Florida’s job growth:

On January 4, 2011, Rick Scott was sworn in as Florida’s governor and immediately launched deregulation efforts by signing Executive Order 11-01, which he later reinforced with Executive Order 11-211. Since then, Florida has repealed over 4,700 individual rules and regulations that directly affected businesses—a reduction of more than 20 percent. Following these actions, Florida led the United States in job creation.

Executive Order 11-01 did two primary things. First, like President Trump’s regulatory freeze, it required all agencies under the direction of the governor to “immediately suspend all rulemaking” and requested the suspension of rulemaking by all other agencies. Second, it created the Office of Fiscal Accountability and Regulatory Reform (OFARR) to oversee the state’s deregulation efforts.

Under the executive order, OFARR is empowered to “review proposed and existing rules and regulations” to establish whether they adversely affect job creation, restrict access to employment, impose burdensome costs on businesses, or unreasonably restrict the ability of individuals to find employment. OFARR’s authority extends to all agencies where the agency head serves at the pleasure of the governor and OFARR reports directly to the governor.

Executive Order 11-01 granted OFARR the ability to hold agencies accountable for reducing the adverse effects of regulation on job creators and job seekers. Each year, agencies must submit a list of identified rules and regulations that should be eliminated or amended to OFARR. According to John MacIver, former Director of OFARR, rules that receive the most scrutiny are those that place additional requirements on individuals as a prerequisite for entering a specific profession or business.

Florida’s experience in reining in bureaucracy, cutting job-killing regulations, and unleashing over one million private-sector jobs provides a replicable strategy for promoting economic prosperity.

Meyer highlights his Foundation for Government Accountability paper with Andrew Brown entitled “Freedom to Prosper: How Florida Promoted Job Growth by Cutting Red Tape.”