Estimating the Benefits from Carbon Dioxide Emissions Reductions
Jul 6th
From: Office of Management and Budget | OMBlog
Posted by
By now, just about everyone accepts that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels are warming our planet and changing our climate in harmful ways. With growing frequency we see headlines about extreme weather events such as heat waves, polar melting, severe drought, and violent storms—a dangerous mix whose costs for our economy and environment will only grow over time. Transitioning to a lower carbon economy is an essential step toward reducing these costs. The social cost of carbon (SCC) is a tool that helps Federal agencies decide which carbon-reducing regulatory approaches make the most sense—to know which come at too great a cost and which are a good deal for society. The SCC is a range of estimates, in dollars, of the long-term damage done by one ton of carbon emissions.
Regulatory Working Group Guidelines, Executive Order 13609, “Promoting International Regulatory Cooperation”
Jun 29th
Editor’s Note: OIRAs Regulatory Working Group Guidelines, Executive Order 13609, “Promoting International Regulatory Cooperation” of June 26, 2015 is available here. Below is an excerpt.
Executive Order 13609, “Promoting International Regulatory Cooperation” (the Executive Order), calls on the Regulatory Working Group (the Working Group) to issue guidelines on the applicability and implementation of the Executive Order. In accordance with Section 2(e) of the Executive Order, the following guidelines were developed to address a number of responsibilities that the Executive Order gives to the Working Group and to agencies. Specifically, the guidelines provide answers to questions concerning:
- international regulatory cooperation activities that are reasonably anticipated to lead to significant regulatory actions,
Prepared Remarks of OMB Director Shaun Donovan, Williams Institute Spring Reception
Jun 19th
Editor’s Note: The updating of agency policies to reflect the Windsor decision remains incomplete. See here.
From: Office of Management and Budget
Posted by
[OMB] Editor’s Note – The following prepared remarks were originally delivered by OMB Director Shaun Donovan at the Williams Institute’s annual Spring Reception on May 20, 2015. Director Donovan spoke about driving the President’s vision and budget for a whole range of issues confronting the LGBT community, including homelessness, poverty, HIV/AIDS and expanding and improving LGBT data collection.
May 20, 2015
Prepared Remarks of OMB Director Shaun Donovan, Williams Institute Spring Reception
Moving Forward our Regulatory Partnerships with Canada
Jun 1st
Editor’s Note: CRE emphasizes the importance of the U.S.-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council’s Joint Forward Plan is our Data Quality Alert on EPA’s analysis of the economic benefits of neonicotinoid-treated soybean seeds. See pp. 12-13 here.
From: The Office of Management and Budget
Posted by Howard Shelanski
U.S. Federal Departments and Agencies together with Canadian Ministries have been working to develop new frameworks for cooperation since the release of the U.S.-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC) Joint Forward Plan last August. Collectively, these documents outline major objectives for bilateral cooperation over the next three to five years in specific areas of regulatory activity.
The Role of Cost-Benefit Analysis in the U.S. Regulatory System
May 11th
From: UCL Faculty of Laws
Wednesday 13 May 2015, 17:00 – 19:00
UCL Laws, Bentham House, Endsleigh Gardens, London WC1H 0EG
Speaker:
Howard Shelanski (Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, The White House)
Commentators:
- Michael Gibbons OBE (Chairman, Regulatory Policy Committee, UK)
- Adam Jasser (President, Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, Poland; previously Secretary of State in the Chancellery of Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland responsible for better regulation)
- Professor Claudio Radaelli (Anniversary Chair in Politics, Director of the Centre for European Governance, Jean Monnet Chair in Political Economy, University of Exeter)
OMB Reinforces its Policy Implementing the Data Quality Act
Dec 4th
December 21 will mark the beginning of the fifteenth year of the public using the Data Quality Act (DQA), aka the Information Quality Act, to ensure that federal agencies disseminate accurate information.
The most substantive recognition of the importance of the milestone in Executive agency accountability is the Office of Management and Budget issuing a binding Directive to agencies to improve the DQA’s implementation.
OMB has just issued data quality guidance applicable to federal statistical agencies that is equally applicable to the functioning of all agencies.
OMB Announces Agency-Level Regulatory Partnerships with Canada
Sep 17th
Editor’s Note: The U.S.-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council’s (RCC) Joint Forward Plan is attached here.
From: FEDWeek
OMB has announced the release of a U.S.-Canada Regulatory Cooperation Council “joint forward plan” outlining new federal agency-level partnership arrangements to help institutionalize how regulators for the two countries work together. The plan will remove duplicative requirements, develop common standards, and identify potential areas where future regulation may unnecessarily differ, according to OMB. The plan identifies 24 areas of cooperation that the U.S. and Canada will work together to implement over the next three to five years that OMB says will modernize its approach to international regulatory cooperation….
Serbia has 160 inapplicable [regulatory] strategies – minister
Sep 12th
From: b92.net
Source: Tanjug
BELGRADE — Serbia has 160 strategies that remain in force despite being mutually non-compliant and impossible to implement, Kori Udovički said on Thursday.
The minister of state administration and local self-government added that the Secretariat for Public Policies has been established “to help solve that problem.”
The role of the newly-established Secretariat is to direct government planning by analysing regulations and to give opinions about their impact, said Udovički, who warned that the process of establishing compliance could be “frustrating and a source of conflict between the Secretariat and the relevant authorities.”
***
White House Delays Proposal To Reclassify ‘Factoryless Goods Producers’
Aug 11th
From: International Business Times
By David Sirota
After an outcry by labor unions and consumer groups, the Obama administration announced Friday it would delay a controversial proposal to classify so-called factoryless goods producers as domestic manufacturers, even if the manufacturing jobs associated with those producers are offshore.
In a Federal Register announcement, Howard Shelanski, administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, said the “large number of comments on this topic indicate that agencies need an opportunity to perform additional research, testing and evaluation” of the new classification before moving forward. The announcement said the Office of Management and Budget therefore has “remove[d] the requirement for agencies to implement” the proposed change.
James MacRae
Jul 21st
From: OIRA Watch
Jim MacRae, a long time member of CRE’s Board of Advisors has passed as a result of a battle with leukemia.
Jim was a recognized expert in the regulatory process. He had the unique experience of being the only Deputy Administrator in the history of OIRA who also served as the Acting Administrator during the entire tenure of a sitting President. Mr. MacRae had the difficult job of defending OIRA’s role in its early days often to a very hostile Congress