Guest Column

As a conservative and a recovering legislator, I’ve always believed that public policy should be based on facts, not feelings. Laws, regulations and spending decisions from elected officials and executive branch agencies should be driven by science, economics and other relevant fields of research — not ideology or special interests.

It’s simple really: Ignore the facts when making policy and the policy won’t work. As founding father John Adams famously quipped: Facts are stubborn things.

But that raises the question: Where do we find the facts to create rational and effective public policies?...