Public Participation

Bottom Line

President Carter signed the Paperwork Reduction Act on December 11, 1980 making it unique in the history of the  Presidency in that oversight would be exercised over one component of the administrative state on a daily basis by intervening in its insatiable appetite for more information.  It should be noted that this landmark effort was preceded some nine years earlier by another precedential action which gave the President oversight authority over environmental, health and safety regulation, the Nixon Quality of Life Review, which provided the information base for designing process changes championed by the Ford, Carter and Reagan Administrations.

    ALR       JBCA       Yale-ABA

Options for the Management of the  Administrative State 

After forty years of existence, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) housed in the White House Office of Management and Budget has demonstrated that it is the fulcrum of the administrative state. In the establishment of OIRA the Congress, and subsequently the President, rightfully made one person publicly accountable for the numerous federal regulatory actions taken each day within the Administrative State. That said OIRA is one of the very few institutions that has the President’s back when well intentioned appointees to federal agencies fail to recognize that their actions are often guided by a natural migration toward a silo mentality. It are these actions to which the public holds the President accountable every four years.