Regulatory Transactions

Editor’s Note:   The assertion below that OMB is responsible for delays in promulgation of safety rules contradicts a just-released GAO report discussing the length of OSHA rulemakings.   The GAO report, attached below, does not cite OMB as a source of delays nor is OMB mentioned in the list of suggestions for speeding rulemakings.  Any effort to reduce the length of rulemakings needs to take into account preserving the public protection and government accountability provisions in the “good government” laws which regulate the regulators.

Statement of Lisa Gilbert, Deputy Director, Public Citizen’s Congress Watch Division

From: The Hill

By Ben Geman

Natural-gas companies are taking concerns about looming Interior Department “fracking” regulations to the White House with efforts that include a meeting between a major producer and the Obama administration’s top regulatory official.

The recent meetings — which include trade groups and big players like Exxon and Anadarko Petroleum — are part of a wider industry push to ensure that regulation of the development method doesn’t create what the companies consider burdensome requirements that stymie production.

Editor’s Note:  The letter from the Chamber to OIRA is attached below.

From: Bloomberg/BNA

By Kevin P. McGowan

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is urging the Obama administration to compel the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to allow public input as the agency ponders issuing new enforcement guidance regarding employers’ use of criminal background and credit checks.

In an April 2 letter to Office of Management and Budget official Cass Sunstein, the chamber said EEOC’s potential guidances on both topics warrant OMB’s review for procedural and substantive reasons.

From: FierceGovernmentIT

 By Marla Durben Hirsch – Contributing Editor

From: National Journal

by Olga Belogolova

President Obama is going to issue controversial rules on greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants only after the November presidential election, a narrow plurality of National Journal’s Energy and Environment Insiders predict.

The rules, which would limit greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, have been pending since last November, when the Environmental Protection Agency sent them over to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for review.

From: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

By Cecil E. Roberts

Last December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a final rule intended to reduce electric utility emissions of mercury and other air toxics. The EPA projected that less than 5,000 megawatts of older coal-fueled generating plants would be retired as a result of its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule.

From: Bloomberg

By Andrew Zajac

Pending rules in the White House pipeline would position a re-elected President Barack Obama to outpace his predecessor with second-term rulemaking, according to a review of regulatory filings.

Obama has delayed until after the election decisions on regulating ozone levels and rearview cameras for cars. Rules still need to be written to carry out much of Obama’s signature first-term domestic policy initiatives, the health-care overhaul and the Dodd-Frank law regulating the financial industry.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 7, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Committee on Capital Markets Regulation today warned Congress of its “deep concern about the inadequacy of cost-benefit analysis” that its research has identified in proposed rulemaking under the Dodd-Frank, Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

The independent, non-partisan Committee reported in a letter today to leaders of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and the House Financial Services Committee that it identified widespread inadequacies in its review of the cost-benefit analysis provisions contained in 192 proposed and final rules under Dodd-Frank.

Specifically, the CCMR found that:

From: Bloomberg

By Andrew Zajac

The Obama administration’s delay of costly regulations, including one to require rearview cameras on cars and light trucks, weakens a Republican line of attack ahead of the election.

President Barack Obama has been hammered by Republicans for promulgating expensive rules, and the party’s front-runner for the presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, vows to do away with “job-killing regulation.” The camera requirement, mandated by a 2008 law signed by Republican President George W. Bush, was listed by the Obama administration last year as one of the five most expensive pending regulations, with an estimated price tag of as much as $2.7 billion.

A coalition of NGOs including Earthjustice and the Environmental Defense Fund have written to OIRA Administrator Sunstein “to express support for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) 2010 policy and 2011 regulatory proposal for the review of confidentiality claims related to chemical or microorganism identity in data from health and safety studies submitted to the EPA under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).”

The letter is attached below.

TSCA-Letter-to-OMB-re-CBI-02-29-12-Final