Samuel H. Lindenbaum, both renowned and derided for his talent at steering real-estate developments through New York City's Byzantine regulatory mazes, has been busy.

It takes sophisticated lab work, expertise at getting through the regulatory maze, disciplined marketing - and plenty of money.

A few other airlines have been successful in doing that, and Delta needed somebody who could raise morale and knows his way around the regulatory maze.

Mr. Ackerman's staff handled 3,900 requests last year, from people who had not received their Social Security checks to businesses that wanted help through one regulatory maze or another.

Having spent a decade trying to emerge from the regulatory maze, Pyramid executives came well prepared May 2 to make their appeal to Mr. Gargano.

The point would be to simplify the regulatory maze, while at the same time ensuring big new reductions in major pollutants, including carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas.

Gov. Christine Todd Whitman announced changes yesterday that she said would turn New Jersey's "regulatory maze into a straight path for business," helping the state attract and keep jobs.

She has helped immigrants and the handicapped to negotiate their way around the welfare system's intricate regulatory maze.

The regulatory maze is so abstruse and byzantine, she said, that "unless you really have a lot of experience, it's hard to figure out."

Worse yet, builders and developers who want to build in the right way and in the right places are run through the same regulatory maze as everyone else.