From: The Regulatory Review
Michael Sant’Ambrogio and Glen Staszewski
Agencies should work to expand public engagement efforts beyond notice and comment.
The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) commissioned us to prepare a report surveying the outreach tools and practices—beyond the required minimum of notice and comment—that federal agencies use during rulemaking. We focused in particular on agency efforts to enhance public understanding of rulemaking issues and to foster meaningful participation by traditionally absent stakeholders. We also identified best practices to help agencies invest resources to maximize the likelihood of obtaining high quality public information throughout the course of the rulemaking process.
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The existing literature generally treats what happens before publication of a notice of proposed rulemaking as a “black box,” and suggests that rule development is primarily influenced by political considerations and pressure from well-organized interest groups.
