OIRA@2050

From: LegalPlanet | BerkeleyLaw UCLA Law

DAN FARBER

Law students need to know about more than administrative procedure and judicial review.

Since the days of Felix Frankfurter, the Administrative Law course has been a staple of American law schools.  It’s a great course, but it’s limited.  The same is true of most of the courses on legislation and regulation in the first year, which also focus on how courts interpret statutes and how they review administrative actions.  But a student could emerge from these courses with an A+, yet without understanding the reasons for regulations to exist or how to argue before an administrative agency.  They also wouldn’t learn much about the compliance process, which may well be the stage where lawyers are most active. They may learn about the existence of OIRA (the White House office that reviews agency actions), but not about how cost-benefit analysis really works.  Yet as regulatory lawyers, that’s something they really need to understand.

Editor’s Note: CRE’s complete letter to AALS is available here. Below is an excerpt. Here is CRE’s letter to the ABA Accreditation Committee

I was pleased to learn that AALS is becoming involved in the review and, hopefully, the updating of law school curricula as described in Penn RegBlog’s Innovations in Regulatory Law series, see http://www.regblog.org/2016/08/15/innovations-in-teaching-regulatory-law/

CRE has always been of the opinion that law schools do a splendid job in teaching attorneys how to win in court but precious little in teaching them how to win before an agency. It is for this reason that we have developed the OIRA Teaching Module, http://www.thecre.com/oira_forum/?p=5363.

Publisher’s Note: Mr. Appelbaum and Mr Shear of the New York Times have written an epic report on the evolution of the use of Executive Power by the Obama Administration. It states:

In early 2014, the moment was finally ripe. Mr. Obama recruited John D. Podesta, then the head of the Center for American Progress, a liberal research and policy institution, to be his counselor in the White House.

The report also gives insight into the use of the  Executive Powers of the President in the event of a Clinton Presidency.

From: Regulatory Studies Center | Columbian College of Arts and Sciences

by Lili Carneglia, Summer Fellow

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Decreases in OIRA’s Resources While Rulemaking Increases

Since OIRA was established in the early 1980s, our Regulator’s Budget data reveal that the staff and budget resources allocated to regulatory review have decreased, yet the responsibility for oversight has expanded. While the full-time staff of regulatory agencies has grown 96% since 1981, OIRA staff has declined by 33%. Budget changes for OIRA have also been much lower than for all regulatory agencies since 1981. The total regulators’ budget has multiplied 8 fold while OIRA’s budget is only 1.5 times what it was in 1981. In the coming year, the requested percentage increase in OIRA’s budget is less than half that expected of all regulatory agencies.

From: Bloomberg/BNA

By Dean Scott

Aug. 2 — The Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies overseeing public lands are to consider how a range of energy projects to be sited there—from mines to oil and gas extraction—might worsen climate change effects under a White House guidance announced Aug. 2.

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The guidance doesn’t carry the authority of a federal rule or regulation, the council stressed, but its release was still hailed as a game-changer by environmental groups because it would ensure that climate impacts are integrated into the environmental reviews and assessments required for projects under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1970.

Editor’s Note:  See, Why OIRA Needs to Coordinate Federal Cyber Security Regulation. Cross-posted from FISMA Focus/Regulatory Cybersecurity.

From: Politico

Cyber ransom attacks panic hospitals, alarm Congress

By Arthur Allen

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But now, American hospitals face weekly ransom threats. If they don’t pay up, files get frozen, surgeries delayed and patients sent across town. One of these days, someone could die as a result. And no one in government has a clear plan to handle it.

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Editor’s Note: The damage to businesses from the federal government’s dysfunctional are extensive, see Federal Data Crisis: Unreliable Federal Databases are Destroying Opportunities for Small Businesses

ACUS, at its recent plenary session, released a report titled Agency Information Dissemination in the Internet ERA. The report is the first step in informing federal agencies and the public of the need to exercise oversight over some of the 200,000 databases published on federal websites—content stored away in the darkest corners of the regulatory state.

From: The Hill

By Tim Devaney

“Congress should also consider a first-ever regulatory budget that would place limits on the amount of regulatory costs federal agencies can impose each year,” the Republicans wrote.

“Once the budget limit is reached, the agency could not enact or issue any more regulations,” they added.

Read Complete Article

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

Chris Walker

The ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice has a terrific debate coming up on the evening of June 15th between Philip Hamburger and David Vladeck, with Judge Randolph moderating. You can register here. And here are the details:

“CHEVRON BIAS” AND THE ADMINSTRATIVE STATE

A GREAT DEBATE

Wednesday, June 15, 2016 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.

American Bar Association

1050 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 570, Washington, DC (Farragut North Metro)

From: RegBlog

Jamie Conrad

Business groups have led a growing movement to remedy the huge delays and uncertainties that plague infrastructure projects. The President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness highlighted the issue in a 2011 report, prompting the Obama Administration to launch an interagency initiative that includes an online Federal Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard.

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Under the new law, 13 federal agencies, plus the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Council on Environmental Quality, will constitute a Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, chaired by a presidentially appointed executive director. By December, this group must develop generic performance schedules for each category of project. These schedules are to be reviewed and revised every two years. Further, no decision involved in a review can take longer than 180 days after the agency possesses the necessary information for assessment.