OIRA Watch

OIRA recently celebrated its thirtieth anniversary with a conference at the George Washington University.  The focus of the conference was to draw upon the experiences of former Administrators and Deputy Administrators of OIRA, as well as the current Administrator, to develop recommendations for the future of the Office.

There seemed to be a consensus that the substantive centralized review of regulations began under President Reagan This consensus mistakenly discounts the fifteen years preceding OIRA during which centralized review was developed and implemented by OMB and vetted in the agencies and by Congress and the judiciary.  Although OIRA was created under President Carter and began operations under President Reagan, its beginnings should rightfully be traced back to President Johnson’s Administration. 

Editor’s Note: In that the Center for Progessive Reform is also interested in presidential accountability in rulemaking,  we have, subsequent to the text  below prepared by CRE,   downloaded a description of their activities as described on their website.

The Environmental Forum, a publication of the Environmental Law Institute http://www.eli.org, has been on the cutting edge of reporting on presidential review of regulations; see the articles in their first edition in 1982, and subsequent articles in 2004 and 2012. 

 OIRA was established based upon a recognition of the fact that regulations are a key instrument for managing federal agencies and that the President as the CEO of the executive branch has a responsibility for ensuring that regulations are effective and science based.