Earlier this month, the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy published a collection of essays filled with legal and policy recommendations for the next president. Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar Lisa Heinzerling closed out the publication with a piece on improving federal environmental policy, which includes recommendations for how the next president can ensure that the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) stays out of the way.
Under the auspices of a series of executive orders, OIRA has been interfering with agency rulemaking and the development of crucial public protections for decades. From closed-door meetings with industry lobbyists to inappropriate substantive changes that overrule the judgment of agency scientists and other experts, OIRA has not done enough to support agency actions in pursuit of cleaner air and water, better protected natural resources, and safer workplaces. Instead, OIRA's record is marred by repeated efforts to weaken rules for the sake of political expediency.
As Heinzerling notes in her essay, this has to stop:
The next president should dismantle this process and start from scratch. The primary method through which the president should exercise control over the executive agencies is the one envisioned in the Constitution: the nomination of "Officers of the United States." The president may, of course, choose these officers based on the conformance between the president's and the officer's views of regulatory policy and priorities. If their paths diverge during the course of the officer's service, the president may fire the officer. In addition, the president may oversee the general progress of the officer in fulfilling the president's overall regulatory mission. But the president and aides in the Executive Office of the President and White House should not veto particular regulations, stall them, change their details, imbue them with their own views of the meaning of the underlying statutes, foist upon them the unwarrantedly narrow criterion of economic efficiency, or subject them to line-by-line editing. The next president should cease those practices and let the agencies do the work Congress has assigned to them.
* * *
Protection of the environment is a matter of chemical, physical, biological, and ecological capacity, not political bandwidth. Restoring the independence of executive agencies would help begin to right a regulatory system that has been too much marked by politics and too little driven by expertise.
Heinzerling also calls on the next president to allow agency experts to speak with members of the media "without agency press office 'minders' or fear of reprisal" and to work with the Department of Justice to protect Americans' right to take agencies to court when they make environmentally damaging policy decisions.
The full set of essays is available on the American Constitution Society's website.
Editor's note: The Center for Progressive Reform has published a memo to the next president on needed reforms to the federal regulatory process. Be sure to visit our website shortly after Election Day for more specific recommendations on OIRA and a variety of environmental, safety, and enforcement policies.
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Brian Gumm | October 31, 2016
Earlier this month, the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy published a collection of essays filled with legal and policy recommendations for the next president. Center for Progressive Reform Member Scholar Lisa Heinzerling closed out the publication with a piece on improving federal environmental policy, which includes recommendations for how the next president can […]
Alice Kaswan | October 27, 2016
It’s been a month since the D.C. Circuit heard oral arguments on the Clean Power Plan, and the nation is in wait-and-see mode. But our report, Untapped Potential: The Carbon Reductions Left Out of EPA’s Clean Power Plan, released today by the Center for Progressive Reform, shows that, even if the Plan is upheld, continued […]
Matthew Freeman | October 26, 2016
Whatever else may be said about Ken Bone, the red-sweatered citizen questioner at the second presidential debate earned an important place in the pantheon of presidential debates: He’s the only person to ask a debate question remotely related to climate change in the last eight years. As it happens, his question wasn’t all that direct, since it didn’t actually […]
David Flores | October 18, 2016
To date, climate adaptation and resilience planning efforts on the local, state, and federal levels have largely focused on protecting residential, commercial, and municipal infrastructure from sea level rise and deadly storm surge through such structural practices as shoreline armoring. However, a growing number of advocates are raising concerns about the threat that extreme weather […]
Evan Isaacson | October 17, 2016
Today, the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) is releasing an assessment of the plans and progress of Baltimore City and the nine largest counties in Maryland to comply with their federal stormwater permits, a key component of the ongoing effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay and restore it to health. The analysis looks carefully […]
Brian Gumm | October 12, 2016
NEWS RELEASE: Center for Progressive Reform Welcomes New Climate Adaptation Policy Analyst Today, the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) announced that David Flores has joined the organization as its new policy analyst. Flores will serve alongside the group’s staff and Member Scholars in their efforts to protect public health and the environment, with a particular focus […]
James Goodwin | October 10, 2016
Originally published by the Oxford Business Law Blog. Reprinted with permission. Forced arbitration clauses are now almost impossible to avoid in consumer contracts for financial services and products ranging from credit cards to private student loans. Despite their ubiquity, most consumers aren’t even aware of them. This is because companies frequently bury them deep in […]
Katie Tracy | October 5, 2016
When it comes to worker health and safety, preventing injuries and illnesses is the number one goal. It was for this very purpose that Congress enacted the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSH Act) and tasked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) with setting and enforcing strong workplace standards. But when preventative measures fail […]
William Funk | October 3, 2016
Originally posted at Notice & Comment, a blog of the Yale Journal on Regulation and the American Bar Association Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice, as part of an online symposium entitled Reflections on Seminole Rock: The Past, Present, and Future of Deference to Agency Regulatory Interpretations. Reprinted with permission. The Separation of Powers […]