The OIRA Module: Published Research

Editor’s Note: Stakeholders considering changes to the Administrative Procedure Act should study its past and its purpose.

From: Notice & Comment | A Blog from the Yale Journal on Regulation and the ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice

In Bipartisan Reform of the APA, Is There “Fertile Ground Here to Actually Get Something Done”?

by Adam White

As Chris noted last night, Senators Portman and Heitkamp introduced legislation to significantly reform and modernize the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946. There is much to be written about this version of the “Regulatory AccountabilityAct,” including its provision for replacing Auer deference with a Skidmore

Editor’s Note:  A must read article on the regulatory budget. The author states:

“Finally, it bears noting that, while many of the bills discussed in this paper would be a welcome down payment on comprehensive reform, none by themselves will be sufficient to curb the growth of the regulatory state.”

An accurate point but the regulatory budget  is the only mechanism which places a ceiling on the size of the regulatory states. Also see

A Website Dedicated to the Implementation of a Regulatory Budget.

From: R Street | R STREET POLICY STUDY NO. 91

From: Notice & Comment

by Aaron Nielson

I’m pleased to announce that my latest article, Sticky Regulations, has been posted to SSRN. It will be published next year in The University of Chicago Law Review. If you are interested, I’m going to present it on April 21st at the Rethinking Due Process Public Policy Conference hosted by the Center for the Study of the Administrative State. This is still a very (very) early draft; I appreciate thoughts.

Editor’s Note: For an extensive set of regulatory review teaching resources, see the OIRA Teaching Modules.

From: Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin–Madison

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One of the key components of these projects is bringing faculty members’ research directly to state and national policymakers as well the general public,” said La Follette School Board of Visitors member Chuck Pruitt, who served on the selection committee. “Funding also benefits students, who will work alongside these highly talented scholars as project assistants.”

The funded projects and lead faculty members are:

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From: American Action Forum

Sam Batkins

• The short answer to the title of this hearing is, no, burdens are not lower. In 1997, after amendments to the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), the cumulative burden was 6.9 billion hours. Today, it stands at 11.6 billion hours. Small businesses are particularly affected, with 3.3 billion hours of compliance burdens and $111 billion in costs.

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• The PRA suffers from historical mismanagement from federal agencies who routinely violate the law. Last fiscal year, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) reported 283 violations, but there are no consequences for agency violations. Individual or business violations, however, can carry stiff penalties.

From: RegBlog

Orrin Hatch

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To be sure, Congress undoubtedly must play its role in restoring the proper separation of powers between the branches. To that end, as lawmakers, we must resume our role as actual, involved decision-makers over the major policy issues facing our country, rather than delegating broad, unbounded policymaking authority to federal agencies. We must also rein in federal agencies through the legislative reauthorization and appropriations processes, as well as better perform our oversight responsibilities over the regulatory state. And last but not least, we must empower courts to play a more significant role in protecting the public liberty from regulatory overreach.

From: Mercatus Center

Reeve Bull, Jerry Ellig

One of the most controversial issues in comprehensive regulatory process reform is the role of courts in reviewing the quality of the regulatory impact analysis (or other similar economic analysis) that agencies conduct to inform their regulatory decisions. Proponents of judicial review of regulatory impact analysis see it as a much-needed enforcement mechanism to ensure that agencies have an adequate factual basis for their regulatory decisions. Critics argue that judicial review of this analysis would allow judges to impose their own policy preferences on regulatory agencies and strike down necessary regulations for trivial reasons.

Editor’s Note: The following has been translated from the original Italian. For the pre-history of OIRA and cost-benefit analysis, see here.

From: Avvenire.it

Francesco Delzio

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Yet, in the era of complex societies one of the main objectives of the Government should be to simplify the lives of citizens. With laws written in simple language, understandable to the average citizen, based on the principle of “minimum essential” red tape. But none of these virtues belong to the Italian legislature, which is Byzantine for setting and cryptic by vocation.

From: Notice & Comment | A Blog from the Yale Journal on Regulation and the ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice

by Jennifer Nou

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Like the CBO Director, the OIRA Administrator is often a punching bag for both the Left and the Right. When you’re trying to maintain a reputation for nonpartisan number-crunching, you can’t please everyone. And like CBO, OIRA must also make predictions about the future amidst uncertainty: How many companies will go out of business as a result of technology-forcing requirements? How many people will no longer get lung cancer as a result of tobacco warning labels? These judgments require answers to hard questions about the right modeling assumptions, discount rates, and time horizons.

Editor’s Note: Reforming the administrative state requires reforming, i.e., broadening, the education of future administrators. See, Discussion Group: Educating Citizens on Rulemaking, Administrative Hearings and Other Administrative Procedures on the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) draft Agenda for its annual meeting.

From: Yale Notice & Comment | A Blog from the Yale Journal on Regulation and the ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice

by Adam White

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