Regulatory Transactions

From: Government Executive

By Charles S. Clark

Howard Shelanski, the attorney-economist newly installed as President Obama’s regulatory chief, warned a House panel that sequestration and furloughs are delaying his office’s long-anticipated retrospective review of agency rules.

Testifying at a House Small Business Committee on “red tape,” the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs said the sequester “is having a negative effect, constraining us from having as much personnel” as needed to review agencies’ proposed regulations. “All of OIRA and [the Office of Management and Budget] is at bare-bones level of staffing because we’re not filling vacancies,” Shelanski said. “We lose some effort due to furloughs,” which are scheduled for the next two Mondays.

From: Environmental Leader

James G. Votaw, Partner – Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP

For nearly a decade, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been considering how and to what extent to regulate the environmental health and safety aspects of nanoscale materials within the framework of existing laws. EPA now appears primed to propose an information collection and use pre-authorization review rule applicable to all nanomaterials as a class.

From: Oil & Gas Journal

By Nick Snow

US oil and gas producers would pay an additional $345 million/year—or an average $96,913/well—under the US Bureau of Land Management’s amended proposed federal onshore hydraulic fracturing regulations, a study commissioned by the Independent Petroleum Association of America and the Western Energy Alliance found.

The study, by John Dunham & Associates of Brooklyn, NY, reflects improvements BLM made in its original proposal, IPAA and WEA said. But the amended proposal’s estimated costs still exceed the $100 million threshold requiring an economic assessment, which BLM has not conducted, they added.

The Regulatory Information Service Center (RISC) has released the latest Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.  An excerpt from RISC’s Summary of their Introduction to the Unified Agenda is below.  The most recent Unified Agenda may be found here.

SUMMARY: The Regulatory Flexibility Act requires that agencies publish semiannual regulatory agendas in the Federal Register describing regulatory actions they are developing that may have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities (5 U.S.C. 602). Executive Order 12866 “Regulatory Planning and Review,” signed September 30, 1993 (58 FR 51735), and Office of Management and Budget memoranda implementing section 4 of that Order establish minimum standards for agencies’ agendas, including specific types of information for each entry.

From: Vending Times

Emily Jed

From: BusinessWeek

Republican lawmakers criticized the administration of President Barack Obama for raising its estimated cost of climate change, a step they said will increase prices for fuel, electricity and appliances.

The adjustment to the so-called social cost of carbon was slipped into a regulation on the efficiency of microwave ovens.

“The cost just shifted for quite a few things in America, based on a microwave-oven rule,” Republican James Lankford, the chairman of a panel of the House Oversight committee, said at a hearing today. “Americans did not have large-scale input on this.”

Editor’s Note:  A pdf of the complete article is available here.

From: Mercatus Center/George Mason University

Jerry Ellig, James Broughel

more than three decades, presidents have instructed executive branch agencies to use the results of Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIAs) when deciding whether and how to regulate. Scores from the Mercatus Center’s Regulatory Report Card—an in-depth evaluation of the quality and use of regulatory analysis conducted by executive branch agencies— show that agencies often fail to explain how RIAs affected their decisions. For this reason, regulatory reform should require agencies to conduct analysis before making decisions and explain how the analysis affected the decisions.

From: The Hill’s Energy and Environment Blog

By Ben Geman

A House hearing next Thursday will provide a platform for GOP criticism of the White House decision to increase the estimated damages from carbon emissions that agencies use in crafting regulations.

A subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is delving into the higher “social cost of carbon” estimate.

Howard Shelanski, the top White House regulatory official, will testify at the hearing, a committee aide said. Shelanski heads the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the White House Office of Management and Budget.

From:  Association of Corporate Counsel

Matthew Deffebach/Haynes and Boone LLP

Editor’s Note:  The quality of the regulatory review process is far more important than it’s timeliness.  NGOs which favor activity over careful consideration of the impacts of that activity push the country down an economically perilous path.  After all, the public will have to live with the burden of the regulations long after regulators and activists have moved on to other projects.

From: The Hill’s Congress Blog

By Scott Slesinger

An important question before Congress this week: Should the regulatory process for projects that have major impacts on the environment be speeded up or slowed down?