Shelanski Considering Changes in Agency Rulemaking Processes in Year Ahead
Jan 19th
From: Bloomberg/BNA
By Cheryl Bolen
Howard Shelanski, the new administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, is contemplating changes in 2014 to strengthen agencies’ retrospective review of rules and to provide more transparency about the status of rules under review by OIRA.
Shelanski outlined these changes and his agenda for the coming year during a Jan. 13 interview with Bloomberg BNA at his office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, overlooking the White House.
OIRA is an agency within the Office of Management and Budget that reviews draft regulations from executive branch agencies under Executive Order 12,866. In January 2011, President Barack Obama set a new standard for regulatory review through EO 13,563.
CSS Calls for OIRA Reforms to Enable Public Protections Agenda
Jan 10th
Editor’s Note: The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards (CSS) January 8th letter to President Obama discusses a report by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) on the White House’s centralized review of federal regulations and requests that the President “direct OIRA to address concerns about timeliness, transparency and effectiveness in the regulatory review process….” The final ACUS report, “Length of Rule Reviews by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs” provides important insight into how to accomplish CSS’s goal of speeding regulatory review:
Economists Need to Learn History
Jan 6th
Editor’s Note: The Wall Street Journal column below discussing political polarization notes that “economists…argue that presidents of both parties have politicized the bureaucracy by appointing partisan loyalists and shifting key decisions to White House staff not subject to confirmation.” Economists and other commentators need to recognize that White House review and supervision of key agency regulatory decisions goes back to the Nixon Administration and has continued, uninterrupted, since then. In short, it is misguided to blame more than forty years of bipartisan White House policy for the current political and economic climate. Moreover, the implied suggestion, that the President should not interfere with the government he leads, is difficult to understand.
Britain’s Ministry of Nudges
Dec 9th
Editor’s Note: For more information about regulatory review in the UK, please see OIRA Watch here.
From: New York Times
By: Katrin Bennhold
Alex Gyani had an idea, but even he considered it a little far-fetched.
A 24-year-old psychologist working for the British government, Mr. Gyani was supposed to come up with new ways to help people find work. He was intrigued by an obscure 1994 study that tracked a group of unemployed engineers in Texas. One group of engineers, who wrote about how it felt to lose their jobs, were twice as likely to find work as the ones who didn’t. Mr. Gyani took the study to a job center in Essex, northeast of London, where he was assigned for several months. Sure, it seemed crazy, but would it hurt to give it a shot? Hayley Carney, one of the center’s managers, was willing to try.
The Anti-Capture Justification for Regulatory Review
Dec 2nd
From: RegBlog
Michael A. Livermore and Richard L. Revesz
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), charged since the days of Ronald Reagan with overseeing the activities of regulatory agencies, is a consistent target of attack from across the political spectrum. Critics on the right argue that OIRA doesn’t do enough to rein in “job-killing” bureaucrats, while critics on the left argue that OIRA stands in the way of life-saving environmental, public health, and safety protections.
Feds reveal data behind ‘social cost of carbon’
Nov 25th
Editor’s Note: An advance copy of OMB’s Federal Register notice requesting comment on the social cost of carbon (60 day comment period) is attached here.
From: The Hill/RegWatch
By Julian Hattem
The White House is publishing the data behind its decision to increase the “social cost of carbon,” which is used to calculate the benefits of regulations cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
The metric, which was revised upward earlier this year, has been a point of contention for the Obama administration and critics who say that it was developed in a “black box” without proper oversight.
“The total number of federal regulatory restrictions is now more than one million. And they’re not all necessarily good ideas.”
Nov 17th
From: New York Times
More Freedom on the Airplane, if Nowhere Else
By TYLER COWEN
It is sometimes the small events that reveal the really big problems lurking beneath the surface. That’s the case with the Federal Aviation Administration’s recent decision to grant airlines the liberty of allowing the use of electronic devices during takeoff and landing.
You still won’t be able to call on your cellphone during those times, but, if the airline allows it, you will be able to read on your Kindle or play Angry Birds throughout the flight.
ACUS Examines Time it Takes the White House to Review Rules
Nov 14th
Editor’s Note: For more information on OIRA participation in agency rulemaking, please see Proper and Desirable Intervention by the President in Agency Rulemaking.
From: RegBlog/Penn Program on Regulation
Regulation impacts nearly every aspect of our lives. The medications we take, the seatbelts we buckle, and the very air we breathe are all subject to regulation. Sometimes, however, regulations that impact the health and safety of the public and the environment are significantly delayed in getting adopted because they are subject to review by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).
Burwell Embraces Mission Impossible Rescuing U.S. Budget
Nov 8th
From: Bloomberg
By Lisa Lerer
White House budget director Sylvia Mathews Burwell learned her management skills from some of the masters: former President Bill Clinton, Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates, and onetime Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.
Shortly after being selected as the new head of the Office of Management and Budget earlier this year, the longtime Washington hand was taught something else: Those Clinton-era lessons may be no match for today’s House Republicans.
Refining Estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon
Nov 4th
From: OMBlog
Posted by Howard Shelanski
As part of our ongoing effort to measure the impact of reducing carbon emissions, today we are issuing updated values for the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC), which are used to estimate the value to society of reducing carbon emissions. These updated values reflect minor technical corrections to the estimates we released in May of this year. For example, these technical corrections result in a central estimated value of the social cost of carbon in 2015 of $37 per metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2), instead of the $38 per metric ton estimate released in May.