White House Wants Federal Agencies Not to Issue Final Rules After Nov. 1
<https://www.bna.com/>

By Ralph Lindeman

President Bush's chief of staff has instructed federal agencies not to
issue any final regulations after Nov. 1, according to a White House
memorandum obtained by BNA.

The memo, dated May 9 from White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten,
notifies federal agencies that "except in extraordinary circumstances"
regulations should be proposed no later than June 1 and issued as final
regulations no later than Nov. 1.

In the memo, Bolten said the instructions were being issued to avoid "the
historical tendency of administrations to increase regulatory activity in
their final months."

"We must recognize that the burden imposed by new regulations is
cumulative and has a significant effect on all Americans," Bolten wrote.
The memo was sent to the heads of all executive departments and agencies.

The Office of Management and Budget's regulatory policy office will
coordinate with agencies "to complete administration priorities in this
final year while providing for an appropriately open and transparent
process and controlling regulatory costs," the memo states.

Asked how OMB, through its Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs,
plans to implement the memo's requirements, an OMB spokeswoman told BNA,
"We will continue to rely on the interagency review procedures in place
under EO 12866," which gives OIRA 90 days to complete its review of any
proposed regulation that is "economically significant," meaning it has an
annual economic impact of $100 million or more.

Experts on government regulation described Bolten's memo as an unusually
formal effort to curb the flurry of regulatory activity that typically
occurs near the end of administrations.

"While every administration has so-called midnight regulations, this
stands out as one of the more formal attempts to slow down that process,"
said James Tozzi, a former OIRA deputy director during the Reagan
administration who currently heads the industry-supported Center for
Regulatory Effectiveness.

While calling Bolten's memo "a laudatory step," Tozzi told BNA that
agencies could still appeal to OIRA for an exception to the deadline by
citing the difficulties of briefing a new administration on the need for
the regulation, for example. "The fact is there is nothing to stop a
determined agency head from putting a regulation in the Federal Register,"
said Tozzi.

Tozzi also said Bolten's memo comes "much earlier in the game" than other
attempts by OMB or the White House to warn agencies about last-minute
regulations. <https://www.bna.com/>

Memo Reflects Views of OIRA's Administrator <https://www.bna.com/>

Bolten's memo reflects the views of Susan Dudley, OIRA's current
administrator, who has spoken publicly and written about the need to stop
the midnight regulation phenomenon at federal agencies and departments.

Shortly after the Bush administration took office, Dudley criticized the
Clinton administration's last-minute burst of regulatory activity. "Like
Cinderella leaving the ball, many of Clinton's 7,000 presidential
appointees hurried to issue last-minute 'midnight' regulations before they
turned back into ordinary citizens at noon on January 20th," Dudley wrote
in the spring 2001 issue of Regulation, published by the libertarian Cato
Institute. Dudley was then a senior research fellow at the Mercatus
Institute, a public policy research center favoring the free market.

"Some of these new regulations may have been developed carefully over many
years, and only just now emerged from the procedural pipeline," Dudley
wrote. "But others were hurried into effect without the usual checks and
balances, perhaps to avoid scrutiny by the incoming Bush administration.
These latter regulations may cater more to special interests than the
public interest." <https://www.bna.com/> 5/14/2008 - EPA Defends Mercury
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