Editor’s Note: In the recorded history of OIRA we know of no OIRA nominee who received a unanimous vote from the Senate committee having jurisdiction over OIRA.
Rotor News
Howard Shelanski, President Obama’s nominee to be the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) administrator at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB), cleared the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee June 25 by a unanimous vote. …….
The Department of Justice has recommended a settlement regarding litigation related to seismic exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Although there are no actions that can be undertaken with respect to the aforementioned transaction it triggers a comment on several administrative actions which could be taken immediately to address the “sue and settle” issues of the future.
Historically, on occassion DOJ has provided an opportunity for public participation when the government was a plaintiff. The DOJ, as a condition for settlement, should provide the same opportunity for public involvement as when the government is a defendant.
In a demonstration of Dr. Shelanski’s unquestioned qualifications to be Administrator of OIRA, the Senators at his confirmation hearing never questioned his qualifications. Instead, questions from the Senators on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee focused on long-standing issues regarding Administration regulatory policies and OIRA’s regulatory review function. A reporter from a business publication observed that “Business groups will like his commitment to subjecting proposed regulations to cost-benefit analyses.” The reporter also noted that “Shelanski committed to performing OIRA’s regulatory reviews in a timely fashion.”
NEW INFORMATION QUALITY ACT CASE FILED IN NINTH CIRCUIT REGARDING A DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PRESS RELEASE ON A WIRE FRAUD CONVICTION
The case, Harkonen v. U.S. Dept. of Justice (No. 13-15197), seeks judicial review of allegedly inaccurate statements made by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in a press release describing a wire fraud conviction. The conviction was for statements made in a company press release concerning interpretation of the results of a clinical drug trial. The Office of Management and Budget is also named as a Defendant-Appellee. Harkonen’s opening brief was filed on May 31, 2013, and CRE’s unopposed amicus brief was filed June 7, 2013.
Editor’s Note:
The Data Quality Act has become embedded in the operation of the federal government. When a member of the public believes that a federal agency has issued inaccurate information they can petition the agency to correct the said information. The majority of these petitions take place on a routine basis, much to the credit of career civil servants, with little fanfare. The action described below by NHTSA is an example of how the system does and should work.
The Washington Post
Editor’s Note: Bisphenol A has been a chemcial studied by a number of agencies. In virtually every instance numerous questions have been raised concerning the underlying studies which question its safety.
As a result of the deficiencies in Regulations.gov agencies are bypassing it at a greater rate each year. Agencies are resorting, at an increasing rate, to new venues to compile and disseminate regulatory information.What is lost is a comprehensive library of the actions taking place in the administrative state. In lieu of being in one accessible location they are scattered throughout the web and often vanish. The aforementioned bypassing is occurring because of the constantly changing demands for regulatory agencies to be more responsive to their constituencies coupled with the ever changing IT technologies.
Mr. Courtland Milloy in the Wednesday May 1, 2013 edition of the Washington Post states in an article describing the murder of a DC teenager in Ward 8:
“One is three black children live in poverty”.
“One of the boys who hung out with him [the deceased] told me that they had been looking for work, that they needed money. And not just to by sneakers. Having been kicked out of school, they no longer got enough food, the friend said”.
‘They wanted money to buy something to eat.”
Is there any more graphic statement of the deficiencies in our economic system?
A landmark book titled Lobbying and Policymaking has been published by the Congressional Quarterly based upon a decade of research sponsored by the National Science Foundation.
The focus of the book is to highlight the activities of policy(social) entrepreneurs in their private pursuit of the public interest by affecting the activities of regulatory agencies. The authors state that the presence of policy entrepreneurs has lead to significant changes in the operation of federal agencies. More specifically, “Policy entrepreneurs use their knowledge of people and institutions to get their issue on the agenda and to ensure that their preferred policy alternative has the best chance of success”. (p. 55)
