Archive for May, 2018
Trump Admin. Plans to Keep Cutting Burdensome Regulations
May 23rd
From: The Washington Free Beacon
Federal regulatory czar expects ‘strongly deregulatory year’
BY: Charles Fain Lehman
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According to Rao, the new deregulatory agenda focuses on several key areas. Infrastructure, a key priority of the administration, is front and center, with much proposed deregulation focusing on easing environmental burdens on new infrastructure projects. These include regulatory changes under the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act, as well a proposal from the nuclear regulatory commission to ease the licensing process for new nuclear reactors.
OMB To Give Agencies New Guidelines for Guidance Docs: Source
May 21st
From: Bloomberg
The Office of Management and Budget is set to publish as early as this week more specific directions to agencies about issuing guidance documents, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
Guidance documents, including letters, bulletins, and other statements, are legally non-binding but are often used in agency enforcement actions. Critics see guidance as a way for agencies to circumvent the lengthier and more cumbersome formal rulemaking process.
Advancing Responsible Regulatory Reform: The Deregulatory Agenda
May 10th
Editor’s Note: See also The Coming of the Regulatory Budget.
From: The White House Blog
By: Neomi Rao
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Projecting progress toward reducing regulatory burdens, the agenda reflects an ongoing commitment to eliminate two regulatory actions for each new regulation and to establish a regulatory budget that reduces costs across the government, as directed by President Trump in Executive Order 13771. In the fall, OIRA will publish an accounting of the cost savings and deregulation achieved by agencies.
Tozzi backs bolstering existing data laws over EPA ‘secret science’ rule
May 7th
From: Inside EPA
Former White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) regulatory review chief Jim Tozzi is opposing EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s proposed “secret science” rule to bar use of data in decisions if it is not publicly available, countering that a more effective way to improve transparency would be to bolster two existing data laws.
Tozzi, now head of the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness that independently analyzes federal rules, told a May 2 American Bar Association (ABA) regulatory discussion that EPA should pursue its transparency goals through the Data Quality Act (DQA) and Data Access Act (DAA) rather than creating a complex new regulatory regime under a recently proposed rule.