Two leading academics offer critical advice on the criteria to be used in the selection of the next OIRA Administrator. If their advice is followed OIRA will continue to function as a viable and exemplary unit of the Executive Office of the President. Deviations from their advice will result in a chaos that should not be bestowed upon any President.
Jim Tozzi
Huffington Post
Dean at NYU School of Law; and Executive Director of Policy Integrity
Editor’s Note: Since the initial posting of the following article CMS has made available to the public the information requested by CRE. We applaud CMS for their timely action. CMS has now complied with the procedural requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act. In CRE’s forthcoming comments to OMB on the ICR, CRE wil now asssess CMS’ s substantive compliance with the PRA, most notedly the requirement that they respond to the comments CMS receivied.
In one of his first acts as President, Barack Obama launched his Administration’s Open Government Initiative. The White House has continued to develop the program which is built on three pillars: Transparency, Participation and Collaboration. As many Administrations learn, however, the President leading does not mean that agencies automatically follow.
Each day thousands of federal employees work on thousands of rules. A number of procedural questions arise constantly. Rulemaking over adjudication? What are the responsibilities of an agency under the Unfunded Mandates Act? Which regulatory oversight statutes allow for judicial review, which do not?
Administrative law textbooks furnish a wealth of information on how to practice in a court but offer substantially less information on how to practice in a federal agency.
The recently issued ABA publication titled “A Guide to Federal Agency Rulemaking, Fifth Edition, published by the Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice and Government and Public Sector Lawyers Division, by Jeffrey S. Lubbers, closes this void.
The House passed the Sound Science in Agency Rulemaking Act as an amendment to HR 4078, The Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act of 2012.
The Sound Science Act compels OSTP to comply with the sound science principals comparable to those in the Data Quality Act and requires federal agencies to also comply with the said principals.
Of equal significance, the Sound Science Act states very explicitly that “a policy decision of an agency that does not comply with guidelines approved under subsection (c) shall be deemed to be arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and otherwise not in accordance with law”
Editor’s Note: The complete document is attached below in pdf.
On June 18, Congressman Don Manzullo and six co-sponsors introduced H.R. 5952.[1] This bill is especially notable because (a) it would establish for all agencies substantive standards for the science on which they rely in issuing regulations, guidance, risk assessments, and hazard listings, (b) it has deadlines, and (c) the guidance required to be issued under the bill would be judicially enforceable.
Editor’s Note: In the long run Congress can exercise its statutory authority to establish personnel levels in any agency or component thereof. Historically Congress has focused its efforts on possible reductions in the OIRA staff level as a result of policy diffferences. In the short run OIRA’s personnel level is determined by the Director of OMB.
At its inception ( the Office of Regulatory and Information Policy (RIP) created by President Carter prior to the establishment of OIRA) the staff dedicated to centralized regulatory review was the second largest office within OMB –a remarkable occurence given the competition for personnel slots by the competing divisions within OMB, many of which opposed the creation of OIRA.
From: FACA Under Fire
The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE), in its watchdog role, attends various FACA committee meetings on an occasional basis to evaluate how well they operate. CRE attended the June 21st meeting of a recently created FACA committee, DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs Science Advisory Board. CRE was impressed with the quality and transparency of the SAB proceedings. CRE was particularly impressed by the participation in the meeting of Acting Associate Attorney General Tony West. Long experience has taught CRE that agency leadership is essential for the success of advisory committees and we are pleased that Mr. West is taking a hands-on approach to supporting science and the FACA process.
From: RegBlog
John F. Cooney | 06/19/12
For a practitioner, the most creative part of the regulatory process is in discussions with the agency that has been delegated authority to implement a statute. The discretion and flexibility, the ability to solve problems and accommodate conflicting interests, is greatest at this stage of the process. In planning presentations to the agency, you can draw on your entire education to develop policy arguments, based on any discipline you have studied, or drawing analogies from other areas in which you have experience.
FACTCheck.Org
Anneberg Public Policy Center
In Cleveland, President Barack Obama claimed he created more private-sector jobs in the past 27 months than President George W. Bush created “during the entire seven years before this crisis.” But that’s like comparing apples and mangoes. The president is absolving himself of responsibility for the savage recession he inherited, while assigning to Bush responsibility for the recession that began within weeks of his taking office in 2001.
Mary Kendall, the Interior Department’s acting inspector general, told USA TODAY this week that she was present for meetings at which top Interior officials discussed a report on drilling safety following the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which killed 11 people and resulted in the largest oil spill in American history.
