OIRA News

From: American Action Forum

Dan Goldbeck, Dan Bosch

***

The driver of the week was the SEC rule regarding “Regulation Best Interest: The Broker-Dealer Standard of Conduct.” The rule is SEC’s attempt to update certain investor protections in light of the demise of the Department of Labor’s (DOL) “Fiduciary Rule.” The American Action Forum’s Thomas Wade explained the proposed version here. There is some controversy over whether or not this rule is the proper replacement for DOL’s previous regulation, but there’s no denying that it establishes quite the administrative regime in-and-of itself. In examining simply the paperwork burdens involved, SEC estimates that the price tag for this rule is “approximately $27.5 billion.” Of course, SEC is an independent agency outside of the direct control of the White House and not subject to the regulatory budget under Executive Order (EO) 13,771. Nevertheless, it is a remarkable total given the overall regulatory trends of the past couple of years.

Editor’s Note: OIRA “has issued a directive to federal agencies requiring that all guidance documents be submitted to OMB before they are promulgated. … Of particular note are agencies that have issued guidance documents and never listed them on their website as directed by OMB in an earlier directive.” See The Resurrection of the Congressional Review Act.

From: Competitive Enterprise Institute

Sean Stewart

***

This week we look at documents from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

• A reminder that NARA has seven different guidance documents on how to handle emails and other records.

From: FedScoop

Written by Tajha Chappellet-Lanier

***

Enter the PRA Guide, a new website developed by the DigitalGov and 18F teams at the General Services Administration, with subject-matter expertise from the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the office that oversees PRA clearances.

“The PRA Guide is a plain language guide which answers the most common questions like, ‘What is the PRA for?’, ‘Do I need clearance?’ and ‘What’s the process?’,” an introduction to the new site reads. “It aims to give federal employees confidence working with the PRA — and through this, lower the barriers to working effectively with the public.”

From: EHS Daily Advisor

By William C. Schillaci

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which is part of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), recently issued a memo clarifying how it determines if a proposed federal rule is a major rule and the level of cooperation the OIRA expects from federal agencies to assist in that determination. The memo applies to all federal agencies and departments and is particularly relevant to the EPA, which leads all its sister agencies by a wide margin in both the value of benefits from major rules and the associated cost of compliance.

From: Policy & Medicine

By Thomas Sullivan

The Trump administration recently issued new guidelines that will expand White House and congressional oversight and review of federal agencies’ rule-making processes, including those for traditionally independent agencies. This will have an especially important impact on the work of the FDA.

Impact on FDA

Generally, FDA releases draft and final guidances to help industry understand the agency’s thinking on a subject. Regulatory Focus notes almost 100 draft guidance documents are intended to be released by just the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research alone. This causes some confusion as to whether the agency regulates based on the non-binding guidance documents.