Blog

Over at Climate Progress, CPR Member Scholar Lisa Heinzerling critiques Cass Sunstein’s new book, “Simpler: The Future of Government.” Rules on worker health, environmental protection, food safety, health care, consumer protection, and more all passed through Sunstein’s inbox. Some never left. … In Sunstein’s account, OIRA’s interventions also ensured “a well-functioning system of public comment” and “compliance […]

From Member Scholar Lisa Heinzerling’s new article in the Yale Journal on Regulation: With President Obama’s nomination of Gina McCarthy as the new Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), much attention has turned to her record as the EPA official in charge of air pollution programs, experience as the head of two states’ environmental […]

A quick update on the OIRA leadership front: Dominic Mancini has been named the Deputy Administrator of OIRA, and now “leads” the office from this position, an OMB spokesperson says via email (The Hill was up with this news a bit earlier today). Boris Bershteyn’s appointment as Acting Administrator has ended, the spokesperson said. Bershteyn […]

Last week Rena Steinzor wrote here that  the Acting Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Boris Bershteyn, was approaching a time limit under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act. That law stipulates that a temporary appointee in a Senate-confirmed position can generally serve for no more than 210 days, unless a nomination […]

CPR Member Scholar Robert L. Glicksman will testify at a hearing this morning of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law. The hearing will promote the notion of “The Obama Administration’s Regulatory War on Jobs, the Economy, and America’s Global Competitiveness” (sounds awfully familiar), and the solution, the majority will […]

Just how accountable is an employer to an employee if the employee is only working for one day? In areas from construction to farm work, warehouse labor to hotel housekeeping, contingent work is growing or already common. Rather than hire permanent, full-time employees directly, many employers hire workers indirectly through 3rd party agencies, or on […]

CPR Member Scholar Noah Sachs published an op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch this morning critiquing the Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act. That bill would allow the White House to review rules proposed by independent federal agencies. Writes Sachs: Imagine if important government agencies, purposely designed by Congress to be insulated from political pressure, suddenly had […]

One of the biggest challenges for the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), a database for toxicological information and human health effects data that plays a role in many regulatory safeguards, is how slowly it produces chemical assessments. One of the reasons: chemical industry interests have flooded the comments on many IRIS assessments with pages […]

Here’s a final compilation of our posts on the Clean Water Act at 40: William Andreen: The Clean Water Act at 40: Finishing a Task Well Begun Dan Tarlock: Forty Years Later, Time to Turn in the CWA Clunker for Something Suited for the 21st Century Robin Kundis Craig: The Clean Water Act at 40: […]