Politicizing the Regulatory Process
The White House
Office of Information and Regulatory
Affairs(OIRA) has been a refuge for special interests seeking to
avoid regulation since the early days of the Reagan Administration. But
candidate Barack Obama was clear about his intention to free government from
the grip of special interests, make governance transparent, and use the
regulatory process to enforce – at last – the nation’s laws protecting health,
safety, and the environment.
Nearly three years into the
Obama Administration, it has become clear that those laudable objectives are
being thwarted: The regulatory process is every bit as political as it was during
the Bush years, while being no more transparent; and vigorous enforcement of
the nation’s health, safety, and environmental laws has suffered as a result.
Those are among the principal
findings of CPR’s detailed study of the work of OIRA, the obscure office that
rides herd over the regulatory process from within the White House. According
to
Behind Closed
Doors at the White House: How Politics Trumps Protection of Public Health,
Worker Safety and the Environment, by CPR President Rena Steinzor, Policy
Analyst James Goodwin, and Intern Michael Patoka, President Obama’s OIRA, under
Administrator Cass Sunstein, has pursued an “all you can meet” policy that
industry and other special interests are eagerly exploiting. As a result,
special interest representatives’ meetings with OIRA’s economists and White
House political appointees vastly outnumber OIRA’s meetings with public
interest organizations.
The meetings with special
interests are remarkable for several reasons. The statutes under which the
agencies regulate delegate authority not to the White House, and certainly not
to OIRA, but to the departments and agencies themselves, because that is where
the substantive expertise resides. OIRA imposes cost-benefit requirements on
the agencies,
often in
contradiction of those same laws, but does not restrict its review
of proposed regulations to that analysis. Instead it frequently substitutes its
judgment about the substance of regulations for the judgment of the agencies
themselves, almost invariably with the result of diluting regulatory
safeguards. And OIRA forms that judgment after holding court for special
interests, all of which have already had ample opportunity to participate in
public-comment periods during the agencies’ development of
regulations. According to the report:
- Industry
dominates the OIRA meetings process. OIRA makes no effort to
balance its meeting schedule by hearing from even a rough equivalence of
organizations supporting protective regulations. In the 10 years studied
in the report, OIRA hosted 1,080 meetings, with 5,759 appearances by
outside participants. Sixty-five percent of the participants represented
regulated industry interests; 12 percent of participants appeared on
behalf of public interest groups.
- OIRA
meetings correlate with changes to rules. Rules that were the
subject of meetings were 29 percent more likely to be changed than those
that were not. OIRA does not disclose its changes, but the evidence is
that OIRA functions as a one-way ratchet, exclusively weakening agency
rules.
- The
EPA is OIRA’s favorite punching bag. While EPA rules made up only
11 percent of all reviews by OIRA, 41 percent of all OIRA meetings
targeted EPA rules. EPA rules were changed at a significantly higher
rate—84 percent—than those of other agencies—65 percent—over the whole
ten-year period.
- OIRA
routinely misses deadlines, stalling public health and safety protections. By executive
order, OIRA has 90 days to review a rule, plus a possible
30-day extension. Of the 501 completed reviews in which outside parties lobbied
OIRA, 59 (12 percent) lasted longer than 120 days.
- OIRA
ignores public disclosure requirements. OIRA is required by
the same executive order to make available “all documents exchanged
between OIRA and the agency during the review by OIRA,” and agencies are
required to “identify for the public those changes in the regulatory
action that were made at the suggestion or recommendation of OIRA.” Such
requirements are routinely ignored.
For more information:
http://www.progressivereform.org/OIRASpecInterests.cfm