Public Policy and Legos

Heather, Leah, and I sat down to discuss a couple of projects that I could work on during my internship. I was most interested in the e-cigarette issue that has many municipalities perplexed on how to handle this relatively new public policy issue. As I told Leah and Heather,  I'm very interested in taking the knowledge I have gained at ASU and putting it into practice during my internship with the Town of Gilbert. Right now, I am taking a Public Affairs class which focuses on policy research and analysis of government decisions, so I'm excited to see how public policy works on a local level.

Public policy, in a nutshell, is how the government implements law into action on an administrative level. On the state level public policy includes a wide range of potential action-allocating and spending money, establishing and administering guidelines and standards, creating departments/agencies and hiring qualified staff, designing tax incentives and subsidies, and even determining illegal behavior. Public Policy encompasses a wide range of issues with implications that affect everyone.

I see policy as the building components like Legos. As, a kid, I loved playing with Legos and fascinated that all these brightly colored bricks could create anything I wanted depending on the time and imagination I put into the project. Same with policy. There are several components that go into making law and then implementing that law into policy. Every step to creating effective policy is challenging, time-consuming, and filled with roadblocks and setbacks. For me, I love looking at all those tiny bricks that make up policy-deconstructing, analyzing it, and then putting it back together again.

So, it is just to say that policy, whether on the federal, state or local level, affects everyone and everything we do. The coffee I'm drinking is affected by public policy in many areas from international commerce, food regulation to homeland security. The internet I'm using is regulated by the Federal Communication Commission. The car I used to get to work is regulated by Arizona emission standards. Even my 4-day work week which was set by the town council is an example of local public policy. It is astonishing to think that's just a small part of all the policies surrounding and influencing my life at this very moment.

There is so much more I could write about this subject, but I have work that needs to be done. Until next time. -B