The Alaska House and Senate will hold hearings this week on Gov. Sean Parnell’s legislation to assume administration of the U.S. Corps of Engineers’ dredge and fill program.

The bureaucratic term for this action is “primacy.” I call it the last chance to bring common sense to a regulatory program—based on my experience with the Corps—which is a rat’s nest of rules, ad hoc imposition of requirements that are essentially “fast food law,” and is huge federal overreach triggered by a misguided court ruling in the mid-1970s.