## Notes from 17 April 2026 [[2026-04-16|← Previous note]] ┃ [[2026-04-18|Next note →]] Two interesting papers I came across today that are also worth noting: **Human capital and the quality of government**: Robin Rose Saywitz, a researcher at Saint Louis University, [published a text examining](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-032-10830-2_3?) if the quality of civil servants running water utilities affect whether those utilities comply with US federal safety standards. They tested it using Texas operator licensing data and [[US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)|EPA]] violation records from 2019–2024. The answer is yes. Having at least one Class A licensed operator (the highest certification, requiring a bachelor's degree plus eight years of experience) raised a utility's probability of meeting monitoring and reporting standards from 47% to 58%. That's a significant jump for a single hire. Another finding that stands out is the comparison between individual talent and workforce size: adding one Class A operator to a small utility had roughly the same compliance effect as expanding the total workforce from one or two people to ten or more lower-credentialed staff. Most American water utilities are small (often serving just a few hundred or a few thousand customers) and cannot realistically build large teams. The paper's policy implication is practical: shared contracting arrangements, where a highly qualified operator works part-time across several small utilities, might be a more feasible path to compliance than expanding headcount. **[[Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY)|Right to Build Zones (RBZ)]]**: The [[Economic Innovation Group (EIG)]], a Washington-based think tank focused on economic dynamism and place-based policy, published a [concept paper](https://eig.org/rbzs-concept-paper/) proposing a new federal housing policy called Right to Build Zones. The core observation is that citywide zoning reform consistently fails for the same reason: a small, geographically concentrated group of opponents can block changes they perceive as affecting their immediate neighborhood (nimby people). RBZs try to route around this problem. The mechanism is essentially a [[Special Economic Zones|special economic zone]] logic applied to housing: municipalities voluntarily designate zones where a streamlined federal zoning code applies by right, removing discretionary review and loosening density, height, and parking rules. In exchange, the federal government pays localities $10,000 per permitted unit (the "New Home Dividend") calibrated to roughly match the average impact fee that municipalities currently charge developers.