“He might not be Italian, but Brennan is a real paisano,” I heard my friend Mike whisper to his buddies, emulating a “made man” from one of Hollywood’s gangster films. “Paisano”, an Italian word meaning countryman, can also be used to denote a close, trustworthy friend. This incident and my subsequent induction into this group of friends made me realize how deeply Hollywood gangster films and the stereotypes within them had influenced the Irish and Italian Brooklyn neighborhood that I called home. My neighborhood was also characterized by an understanding of the importance of law enforcement since many of its inhabitants were police officers. It was these influences that drove me to apply after my freshman year of college for a summer internship at the New York City Business Integrity Commission (B.I.C.), a law enforcement and regulatory agency formerly known as the Organized Crime Control Commission. I was intrigued not only by the culture of organized crime but also how these criminals were brought to justice. Despite having no legal experience and being the youngest candidate for the position, I managed to persuade the supervisor to give me a chance.

I started off the internship quite excited as I listened to the rhetoric of the supervisors and learned of the Commission’s lofty goals, which included ridding the private carting industry (the private garbage industry in NYC) of undue influence from organized crime and corruption so free markets could prevail for honest businessmen and consumers. Within my first two weeks, my supervising attorney made me read Rick Cowan’s “Takedown: The Fall of the Last Mafia Empire,” a tale of an Irish American, outer-borough New York City Police Department officer whose undercover mission helped take down a great deal of organized crime’s influence in the private trash business. I identified with the protagonist, and like the rest of the office, admired his values, including his steadfast dedication to ridding the private carting industry of corruption. I was eager to see how the Business Integrity Commission could use law and regulation to disrupt corruption in the industry.

However, I quickly became disappointed that the rhetoric of the supervisors and the mission statement of the organization didn’t match its day-to-day operations. I was astonished as the B.I.C., whose chief mission was to ensure free markets in the private carting industry, began erecting unnecessary obstacles to honest small business people. For example, the Commission began requiring small businesses and individual citizens to have self-hauler registrations in order to carry bags of leaves in the back of their trucks, something of no threat or consequence to the organization’s goals. If an individual carrying leaves lacked the registration, they were fined and their only redress was an administrative hearing. Once, I was forced to issue a violation to a small local nursery on Flatbush Avenue, just blocks away from my home in Brooklyn. While drafting these violations, I believed that the B.I.C. was loosing sight of its mission. I learned that government agencies could become more preoccupied with inflating their income and expanding their operations, instead of adhering to their intended mission. In my eyes, the Commission was acting contrary to its goals and was devoid of the economic integrity that it was designed to protect. The shifting focus of the Commission brought many questions to mind.

While riding the R subway train back to Brooklyn one day after work, I pondered about the purpose of regulation and these regulations, in particular. The rhetoric of the B.I.C. supervisors, coupled with my coursework in economics, had led me to believe that regulation was necessary to provide for the greater good, but I couldn’t help but become a bit disillusioned by the B.I.C.’s current practices. While I still believed that regulation was an important economic and governmental tool, I questioned what good was being brought about by the Business Integrity Commission’s new focus that ended up hurting small businesses. I realized that the B.I.C.’s regulation became overly burdensome because it had expanded beyond its much needed and intended purpose. Organized crime was no longer a rampant problem in New York City’s carting industry due to the Commission’s early success, but its current focus seemed to have high opportunity costs. The new enforcement was hurting local businesses without much benefit, while utilizing precious tax dollars that might have produced a greater good if spent on education or law enforcement. I pondered why such a utilization of funds did not occur and recognized that the B.I.C. had perverse incentives to expand its jurisdiction and income rather than relinquish some of its power

Despite these perverse incentives, I wondered if there was any oversight that might have stepped in to ensure a more efficient allocation of funds in order to produce a greater good for more people per dollar spent. It dawned on me that the B.I.C.’s role as an administrative agency might have been a contributing factor for this inefficiency. An organization that can make its laws, execute its laws, and judge its laws lacks the separation of powers needed for an honest evaluation of its performance. I understand the need for regulation, but the internship taught me that regulation must be used to fix real problems and must be constantly re-evaluated to make sure its application provides for the greatest good. It is this complexity of the law including the interplay of economic considerations and fundamental principles such as separation of powers that drives my passion for it. I look forward to engaging the topic of regulation in law school, while acquiring a more detailed insight into administrative law and law and economics.