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While the EPA announced Thursday that it was delaying a decision on issuing a proposed rule for coal ash, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has already hosted 10 meetings with industry representatives in recent months on the issue. The 10 meetings — the most on any topic at OIRA so […]

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Perhaps caught up in the spirit of the holiday shopping season, a large number of industry bargain hunters have been busy seeking great deals on regulatory relief at the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in recent weeks. To be precise, the bureau hosted no fewer than 11 meetings with corporate interests […]

When the Electric Power Research Institute (ERPI)—the research arm of the U.S. power industry—met with OIRA last month to discuss the various “beneficial uses” of spent coal ash from power plants, their timing was impeccable.  Or so it would seem.  On the day of the meeting, October 16, EPA submitted for OIRA review its pre-rule […]

Last month the National Research Council (NRC) released Hidden Costs of Energy: Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use. Properly understood, the NRC report is an admirable attempt to bring the consequences of energy use into sharp focus by putting those consequences into terms that are readily understandable by the general public. The NRC recognizes […]

Issues of national security have always enjoyed a free pass when it comes to the use of cost-benefit analysis (CBA) as the primary form of making decisions.  For example, no military official or politician interested in keeping his job would ever dare publicly question whether the additional money spent on extra armor for tanks to […]

Today, I joined CPR Member Scholars Mary Jane Angelo, Holly Doremus, and Dan Rohlf in submitting comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS)—one of the agencies charged with primary responsibility for executing the Endangered Species Act (ESA)—suggesting several ways to improve the regulations for implementing interagency consultations under the Act. Under Section 7 […]

Earlier this month, representatives from the military and a number of defense contractors had a closed-door meeting with officials at OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).  The topic under discussion was ostensibly a Safe Drinking Water Act regulation for perchlorate—a highly toxic chemical used in the manufacture of rocket fuel—that the EPA is currently […]

When President Obama launched his open government initiative on his first full day on the job, few assumed that the ambitious endeavor it contemplated would be easy.  After all, lack of transparency and even active efforts to conceal information had become almost an inextricable feature of the federal government’s internal operations and decision-making—especially during the […]