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Matthew Freeman | June 18, 2010

The People’s Agents: Steinzor Op-Ed on Regulatory Reform in Baltimore Sun

CPR President Rena Steinzor has an op-ed in this morning’s Baltimore Sun on the various regulatory failures at work in the BP oil spill. She writes that important questions need to be answered “about how the federal regulatory system allowed BP and other oil companies to drill in waters so deep without effective fail-safes,” and continues: In […]

James Goodwin | May 24, 2010

Eye on OIRA: No Room for a More Compassionate CBA in EPA’s Coal Ash Rule

“Although the 1976 RCRA Resource Conservation and Recovery Act statute does not require benefit-cost justification of RCRA regulations, this RIA regulatory impact analysis presents a qualitative benefit analysis for compliance with OMB’s 2003 ‘Circular A-4: Regulatory Analysis’ best practices guidance.” This statement comes from the executive summary to the cost-benefit analysis (CBA) that EPA sent to […]

Rena Steinzor | May 7, 2010

Wishful Thinking on the Right: Reviving the Information Quality Act?

Our loyal opposition at the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness has engaged in some very creative reading of legal opinions in order to breathe new life into a discredited anti-regulatory tool of the George W. Bush era: the Information Quality Act. This pesky little statute instructs the Office of Management and Budget to “provide policy and procedural […]

Rena Steinzor | May 7, 2010

Eye on OIRA: Government Releases Before-and-After Docs on Coal Ash Rule; Lisa Jackson, Public Face of Environmental Protection, Meet Nameless White House Economist

This post is written by CPR President Rena Steinzor and CPR Policy Analyst James Goodwin. President Obama appointed Lisa Jackson to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on December 15, 2008. Confirmed by the Senate on January 22, 2009, she is a Cabinet-rank member of the Administration and the first African American to serve as […]

Ben Somberg | May 3, 2010

Coal Ash Announcement Now Scheduled for May?

The EPA had projected an April announcement on the next step in regulating coal ash. But April came and went. The EPA now lists “05/2010” as the projected time for publication of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in the Federal Register.

James Goodwin | April 21, 2010

Eye on OIRA: Sunstein Brings Behavioral Economics to NHTSA Tire Fuel Efficiency Program

On March 19, OIRA Administrator Cass Sunstein issued the office’s first Review Letter of the Obama Administration, telling the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to redo their studies on how to design the labels for the agency’s new “Tire Fuel Efficiency Consumer Information Program.” (For background on Review Letters and the other types of […]

James Goodwin | April 20, 2010

Eye on OIRA: Is EPA About To Take a U-Turn on Coal Ash?

For the past 6 months, OIRA has hosted an all-out assault on EPA’s proposed coal ash waste rule, as a parade of representatives from King Coal and the coal ash reuse industry have walked in to attack any and every aspect of the hybrid approach the agency reportedly proposed. (Under the hybrid approach, EPA would […]

Matthew Freeman | April 16, 2010

Who Needs Regulation, Anyway?

The Competitive Enterprise Institute is upset with the way administrative law works. On Thursday they released their annual report on the costs of regulations. I hesitate to dignify it with pixels, but here goes. CEI has a problem with agency rulemaking altogether: Congress should answer for the compliance costs (and benefits) of federal regulations. Requiring […]

William Funk | April 13, 2010

The Public Needs a Voice in Policy. But is Involving the Public in Rulemaking a Workable Idea?

Informal rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act was, as the late Kenneth Culp Davis opined, “one of the greatest inventions of modern government.” It not only decreased the procedural requirements (and therefore the overhead) of “formal” rulemaking, but it also broadened the universe of persons able to participate in the informal proceeding to the public […]