State's Price Controls on Gasoline Are Said To Have Cost Consumers

The New York Sun reports:

Hawaii is about to scrap its effort to legislate away high gasoline prices, after the state's "gas cap" law failed to lower prices at the pump and led to claims that the regulation cost drivers tens of millions of dollars since it went into effect in September.

"It's farcical, to be honest," the president of a gas station chain on the islands, Richard Parry, said in an interview yesterday. "Everyone sort of says, 'This obviously hasn't worked.'"

In a vote earlier this month, only one of Hawaii's 51 state representatives voted to retain the cap. Even the state senator who led the drive to institute the cap last year has endorsed the idea of suspending the cap indefinitely, though he has also proposed modifying the price controls so they would only kick in under certain conditions.

How many times does regulation have to fail before politicians stop trying it?