There’s something very wrong with a government regulation when the regulators can’t explain why they do what they do. 

As reported in The Leaf-Chronicle last week, Tennessee escape room owners are being notified that their businesses are now classified as “amusement devices.” 

It seems like a funny designation, but then they find out what it means: Amusement device operators are required to submit to an additional safety inspection, at their own cost, and to pay an annual permit fee to the state. That’s not so funny.

This is in addition to the annual inspection already being done by the local fire marshal. Although the amusement device law dates back to 2008, the state didn’t start funding it and hiring employees for the unit until 2015. 

So what’s an amusement device? The definition on the books is vague, but it includes roller coasters, Ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, glass houses, zip lines, inflatables, trampoline parks, haunted houses, challenge courses, canopy tours and now escape rooms.

What’s not an amusement device? According to state law, wave pools, roller and ice skating rinks, skateboard ramps or courses, hay rides, mechanical bulls, go-karts, bungee cord or similar elastic devices, and devices operated on a natural body of water.

It’s like a logic riddle. What do roller coasters and haunted houses have in common that they don’t have in common with mechanical bulls and roller skating rinks?

Are mechanical bulls and roller skating rinks less amusing? 

Officials with the Amusement Device Unit, part of the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, can’t explain these exemptions either. They say all they’re doing is enforcing the law, and the law came with those exemptions.

There’s a related problem: Why do we need this law in the first place? 

Amusement Device Unit officials say their inspection, which, by the way, is contracted out to private vendors, exceeds what’s required by the fire marshal. But the Clarksville fire marshal disagrees, and he’s as stumped as anyone else about why the additional inspection is needed.

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So here we have a state regulation with a list of exemptions that the regulators can’t explain, requiring an inspection that inspectors say duplicates what’s already being done.

And the end result is increased costs to small-business owners trying to make a living in Tennessee.

This appears to be a well-intentioned piece of legislation designed to improve public safety that has gotten mangled along the way to implementation. Speaker pro tem Rep. Curtis Johnson, R-Clarksville, is looking into it, and we encourage him and the rest of the Tennessee General Assembly to come up with a solution.

Sensible regulations that keep us safe are necessary and important. Regulations that harass small-business owners and confuse everyone involved — as this one appears to be — just make government look bad.

Editor Chris Smith wrote this editorial for The Leaf-Chronicle. Reach him at chrissmith@theleafchronicle.com or 931-245-0282 and on Twitter @cssmithwrites.