From: FierceGovernment

By Ryan McDermott

he Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs doesn’t need legislation to reform the way it reviews regulations, OIRA Administrator Howard Shelanski told the House Judiciary Committee subcommittee on regulatory reform, commercial and antitrust law in a Sept. 30 hearing.

“We’ve got a good set of executive orders that set forward I think the right analytic principles and the right regulatory process for reviewing rules,” Shelanski told the panel.

Shelanski said legislation would lock in a “one size fits all” procedure when OIRA needs different way for dealing with different kinds of regulation.

Keeping the process going through the executive orders rather than legislation will keep the set of practices that make sure OIRA is listening to the stakeholder’s comments on proposed regulations, he said.

“I think that process works well. And at this point, I think that leaving the process where it is with OIRA under the executive orders to develop in that environment will be sufficient to ensure sound regulatory system going forward,” Shelanski said.

Shelanski also committed to publishing a unified agenda and regulatory plan twice a year. OIRA is mandated to do that, but has failed to do in the past. OIRA failed to release a spring 2012 agenda and didn’t release its fall 2012 agenda until the end of December.

“We have been working very closely with agencies to ensure that what they do publish in terms of their plans going forward, actually aligns reasonably closely with what they are publishing and what they are in fact doing,” he said.

For more:
– go to the hearing page (webcast and prepared testimony available)