Editor’s Note: CRE staff have been asked to participate in the Quantum Law conference.
From: Quantum Law Conference
Editor’s Note: See also Comments on the Draft Report to The Administrative Conference of the United States on the Paperwork Reduction Act (February 2012).
From: Notice & Comment | A Blog from the Yale Journal on Regulation and the ABA Section of Administrative Law & Regulatory Practice
69th Plenary Agenda (ACUS Update)
by Emily Bremer
The Administrative Conference will host its 69th Plenary Session on June 14th and 15th, 2018. If you have attended previous plenary sessions and are planning to attend this one, please note the new location! For the first time, the Assembly will meet in the Jacob Burns Moot Court Room at George Washington University Law School. The agenda for the meeting includes four proposed recommendations, described as follows in ACUS’s Federal Register notice:
From: Marketplace.org | Public Radio
By
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Under the new policy, academic study authors will have to share their raw data, to be picked apart and chewed over. Washington, D.C., veteran lobbyist Jim Tozzi, who has worked in the past for chemical and tobacco interests, has pushed for this change for years.
“If you want to get into this hot game, you got to take the heat,” Tozzi said. “And if you can’t, put your laboratory coat on and stay with the rats.”
The Data Quality Act
Apr 02
From: American Bar Association
Format: In-Person
Location: American Bar Association, 1050 Connecticut Ave NW Ste 400 Washington, DC 20036
Date: May 2, 2018 | Time: 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM ET
The Regulatory Policy Committee of the Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Section presents a brown bag lunch program on the Data Quality Act. The Data Quality Act (DQA) or Information Quality Act (IQA) directs the Office of Management and Budget to issue government-wide guidelines that “provide policy and procedural guidance to Federal agencies for ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information (including statistical information) disseminated by Federal agencies.” Some believe that DQA/IQA plays an important role in policy making. Others believe that the law acts as a roadblock to the regulatory process.
Editor’s Note: See also, FEDERAL RULEMAKING: OMB Should Work with Agencies to Improve Congressional Review Act Compliance during and at the End of Presidents’ Terms.
From: US General Accountability Office
Statement of Kris Nguyen, Acting Director Strategic Issues
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What GAO Recommends
In the April 2015 report on regulatory guidance, GAO made eleven recommendations to USDA, Education, HHS, and DOL to ensure adherence to OMB requirements and applicable elements of internal controls. Three of these recommendations to HHS remain open: 1) to develop written procedures for the approval of significant guidance, 2) strengthen application of internal controls over guidance processes, and 3) improve its website.
From: US General Accountability Office
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Economically Significant Regulations Determined to be Noncompliant with the Congressional Review Act
For more information about the US-Canada RCC, see here and here (page 3).
From: The E15 Initiative
by Simon Lester, Inu Manak
The renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) provides a path for institutional innovation. This post argues that the institutions that were created by NAFTA have either not functioned well, or been insufficiently used, and that the opportunity to improve the institutions that exist and to create new avenues for continental cooperation should not be missed.
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From: The Regulatory Review
Nicholas R. Parrillo and Lee Liberman Otis
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The new ACUS recommendation—which covers policy statements and may also be helpful for interpretive rules—sets forth a series of measures to foster flexibility in the face of these challenges. Some of the measures are low-cost and should be adopted universally, like making sure that policy statements include a disclaimer of binding status on the public, and ensuring that, if some agency employees are bound to follow a policy statement, other higher-level employees are authorized to depart from it.
From: The Regulatory Review
At its recent meeting, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) approved a recommendation entitled Plain Language in Regulatory Drafting. The recommendation offers a number of procedural suggestions to help agencies write their regulations and other public-facing documents in a way that relevant stakeholders can easily understand.
The overarching goal of these suggestions is not merely to simplify complex requirements, or eliminate unnecessarily technical jargon. More than this, plain language can advance core administrative law values, such as public participation in policymaking and the effective implementation of statutory goals.
From: Regulatory Pacesetters
The publication of the landmark treatise on the Data Quality Act (aka IQA) is timely because there is a substantial increase in its use by NGOs.
Future litigants, whether a plaintiff or a defendant, now have an arsenal previously unavailable to them.
One petitioner states the following:
The IQA has not been frequently litigated, but some courts have hinted at the possibility that judicial intervention may be appropriate to compel agencies to comply with its requirements. If any administration is likely to convince the courts that judicial enforcement of basic information quality standards is necessary, it is this one.
