Regulatory Transactions

From: Shopfloor

Chip Yost

Earlier this week Governor Mary Fallin, of Oklahoma,  wrote Jeffrey Zients, the Acting Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)  about the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) proposed rule on hydraulic fracturing on Federal and Indian lands.  Governor Fallin sent Mr. Zients a copy of a study done by the Oklahoma City University’s Economic Research & Policy Institute on the “Individual Well Costs from Proposed Rules Changes to Oil and Natural Gas Operations on BLM Lands” The study was commissioned by Devon Energy. The Governor encouraged OMB to review this study and reconsider the proposed rule.

Editor’s Note:  The same President, Richard Nixon, who established EPA was also responsible for establishing centralized Presidential review of environmental regulations.  Throughout EPA’s history, White House/OMB review of environmental regulations EPA regulations has been an appropriate exercise of the President’s Article 2 executive powers.

Lisa Heinzerling ¹

From: The Fiscal Times

By LIZ PEEK

Maybe our undisciplined government spending isn’t the problem; maybe it’s our stultifying legal system. That has been the message of Philip Howard for years. The author of “The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America” and founder of bipartisan reform coalition Common Good wants to banish out-of-date regulations that drive up costs and perpetuate senseless programs. Today, with legislators scrambling for ways to bring order to our financial house, perhaps his call for legal reform will pierce the cacophony of squabbling interest groups and taxpayers.

From: The Washington Post

By Juliet Eilperin

The Environmental Protection Agency will move ahead Friday with rules requiring cleaner gasoline and cars nationwide, despite fierce protests from the oil industry and some conservative Democrats, according to several individuals briefed on the matter.

The proposed rules — which had been stuck in regulatory limbo since December 2011 in the face of intense political opposition — would cut the amount of sulfur in U.S. gasoline by two-thirds and impose fleetwide pollution limits on new vehicles by 2017.

Editor’s Note: It is essential for global economic growth that the Chief Scientific Adviser’s potential “ensuring that reliable, well-founded scientific evidence will form the basis for EU legislative and regulatory decisions” be achieved.

From: RegBlog

Lorenzo Allio

Managing risks related to public health and safety while protecting the environment is now one of the principal functions that public opinion expects from the European Union. This sentiment has visible repercussions on EU policymaking, as it has been estimated that risk management counts for more than 70% of all regulatory decisions taken in Brussels.

From: Bloomberg/BNA — Occupational Safety & Health Reporter™

By Robert Iafolla

The White House Office of Management and Budget held its first stakeholder meeting in 19 months on the long-delayed proposed rule to modify regulations for occupational exposure to silica, OMB said March 14.

OMB heard a presentation from the American Foundry Society arguing that lowered permissible exposure limit for silica is unnecessary and would impose massive costs on the metal-casting industry, according to documents from the meeting posted on OMB’s website.

Editor’s Note: The Mercatus Working Paper, “The Employment Costs of Regulation” is attached here.  Below is the Abstract.

From: Mercatus Center/George Mason University

Keith Hall

Abstract

Editor’s Note:  For insights into President Nixon’s regulatory review program, see here.

From: Bloomberg

By Mark Drajem

President Barack Obama is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects, from pipelines to highways.

The result could be significant delays for natural gas- export facilities, ports for coal sales to Asia, and even new forest roads, industry lobbyists warn.

From: RegBlog

Maxwell Blum

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a final rule addressing mercury leakage from power plants in 2011, the agency’s Administrator observed that the rule had been twenty years in the making—due in large part to continued uncertainty about the threat mercury posed to human health.

The EPA’s mercury ruling illustrates a problem recently explored in an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report—how government officials should make regulatory decisions when they lack perfect answers to key questions.  Responding to an EPA request for guidance, an IOM committee of experts from a variety of fields, including risk assessment, health, economics, public policy, and environmental law, wrote this report to address risk-management in uncertain contexts, with a specific emphasis on risks to human health.

From: RegBlog

James Hobbs

Last summer, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a rule defining “pre-existing condition” for the purpose of implementing President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). The agency called for public input and received 4,627 public comments, but never officially responded to any of them. Cases like this, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), have been happening too frequently.