Oh, for Pete’s sake. Other Pioneer Press readers may have had the same reaction this week when they learned that St. Paul’s booya kettles no longer are deemed safe and may not be used.
Is this another example of what legal pundit Philip K. Howard has termed “the death of common sense?”
To be sure, it is a good example of the economic issues involved in protecting public safety.
Some disclosures at the outset: I have never eaten booya and am not a member of any organization that uses the kettles.
Secondly, I am a farm kid, and that influences my gut reactions. Farmers are famous for keeping old machinery in operation long after any reasonable non-farmer would junk it. They also excel at improvised modifications and repairs.
Farmers are not, however, paragons of safety awareness. Many exhibit missing extremities or dramatic scars as evidence.
Finally, while I have replaced a few water heaters or home heating boilers, I am not an engineer or an expert in gas appliance safety.
That said, it seems unreasonable that five gas-fired kettles, which have been used safely for decades, pose such a threat to the public that they must be replaced at the cost of $40,000. Word spread Wednesday that the St. Paul parks department is trying to find a less expensive way to fix the problem.
Meanwhile, can economics provide any useful insights?
Economists agree that government regulation may play a legitimate role whenever there is potential for external effects–that is, when the acts of one person may harm others. Standards are set for the manufacture and installation of gas-fired appliances because people other than the manufacturer or owner might be hurt if a device malfunctions and such people have no way of knowing their exposure to risk.
Moreover, administering safety regulations inevitably has to involve some arbitrary rules. There are millions of possible situations where someone might or might not pose a “true” safety hazard. We cannot assemble a panel of engineering professors to rule on every one. The administrative
costs–what economists call “transaction costs”–would more than eat up any resources saved through flexibility.
In other words, economists don’t have any bone to pick with the underlying logic that led to condemnation of the parks department’s booya kettles. But we can still raise a few good questions that may irritate both sides in the conversation.
Is providing booya kettles an essential public good? That is, will there be no way to make booya if government doesn’t provide the kettles? Is there some fundamental way in which unaided or regulated market forces somehow fail to meet an important need of society? If so, what is the cause of such market failure?
If booya events serve primarily as fund-raisers for private charitable entities, is any subsidy implicit in city-owned kettles available to all, regardless of race, religion or geographic location within the city? Or is it government advancement of a few specific groups?
Would concern about the safety of the kettles be as great if it were not for the excessively litigious nature of U.S. society? Is the underlying decision, “These kettles really are unsafe,” or is it, “There is only a minuscule chance anyone will ever be injured by these kettles, but if something did happen, the city would be sued for millions and the inspections department would be pilloried by some trial lawyer.”
Is the only solution complete replacement of the kettles at the cost of $40,000? If they are otherwise serviceable, couldn’t someone retrofit them with a modern solenoid shut-off valve actuated by a flame sensor or thermocouple that would automatically cut the gas flow if the flame goes out? Modern furnaces have such features, and the components cost a few hundred dollars.
If the answer to retrofitting is no, is it because there truly is no way to make the existing kettles safe or because no gas appliance firm or engineer would assume the legal risk of declaring the modifications adequate?
Does the code simply prohibit retrofitting? If so, is that driven by true safety considerations or because gas appliance manufacturers have undue influence in writing model codes at the national level and want to ensure that they can sell as much new equipment as possible?
Is replacing the existing kettles fiscally impossible? If the existing equipment is fundamentally unsafe and the kettles constitute a true public good, is there no way to buy new, safe equipment?
Amortizing $40,000 worth of new kettles over 20 year at 8 percent interest yields an annual cost of about $4,000. Could this be recovered through user fees? If user fees would amortize the purchase of new kettles, is the city so fiscally strapped it cannot, in effect, make a $40,000 secured loan?
If the city cannot fund the purchase, would some neighborhood bank or community organization handle the finances as long as the city continues to donate use of the park shed where the kettles are installed? Isn’t there room for some institutional creativity to solve the problem? Or, do rules prevent a solution?
To outsiders, it is just a tempest in a booya kettle, but to us here in St. Paul, this is a serious public policy issue. To some, there may be none more important.
© 2003 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.