Regulatory Transactions

From: BankCreditNews.com

A member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission requested last Thursday that the Office of Management and Budget review Dodd-Frank derivatives rules, saying that the rules have not undergone sufficient analysis.

Scott O’Malia, one of two Republican members of the CFTC’s five member board, wrote a letter to the OMB’s acting director saying that the CFTC has not been able to conduct a full, proper cost-benefit analysis of the proposed rules and their alternatives.

“The [CFTC] has failed to carefully and precisely identify a clear baseline against which the commission measured costs and benefits and the range of alternatives under consideration,” O’Malia wrote in the Feb. 24 letter, Bloomberg reports.

The issue of whether Information Collection Requests (ICRs) should continue to be subject to two public comment periods under the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) is being deliberated by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS). The appropriate number of ICR comment opportunities has been a subject of debate for a number of years and ACUS should be applauded for addressing this matter in an analytical fashion.

Editor’s Note:  The story states that industry had more meetinsg with OIRA on the issue than NGOs and Congressional staff but does not suggest that anyone who sought a meeting with OMB was turned down.  If some organizations choose not to meet with OIRA on issues of interest, that does not and should not impose any restrictions on OIRA meeting with other parties interested in discussions.

Editor’s Note:  The article fails to explain the role of OMB review of regulations in providing oversight of the Executive Branch’s regulatory program, a review power exercised in eight consecutive Administrations.

From: iHealthBeat

Editor’s Note:  The bipartisan letter to OIRA Administrator Sunstein may be found here.

From: The Hill

By Ben Geman

A pair of senators is urging the White House Office of Management and Budget not to let the Environmental Protection Agency sully the reputation of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” the controversial natural-gas drilling method.

Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) are asking OMB’s regulatory chief to ensure that EPA “reaches sound and well-supported scientific conclusions” when finalizing an explosive draft report that linked fracking to groundwater contamination in a Wyoming region.

From: BakingBusiness.com

by Eric Schroeder

WASHINGTON — The American Bakers Association, in a letter to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the Food and Drug Administration, voiced its opposition to planned research that would gauge consumers’ responses to Nutrition Facts labels with various declarations of added sugars.

In its Jan. 30 letter, the A.B.A. said it strongly believes that the F.D.A. should only conduct consumer research experiments around nutrition labeling for those nutrition labeling declarations that the F.D.A. has the authority to require or permit.

Editor’s Note:  A letter from a broad-based industry coalition to the SEC on the rulemaking is attached below.

From: CFO World

Controversy over this Dodd-Frank element rises, as business groups as the SEC to “expand public outreach.”

by Karen M. Kroll

Editor’s Note:  In that the proposed rule would have a significant economic impact on jobs and economic growth for an indefinitely long time, it is reasonable and responsible for OIRA to carefully scruitinize the rules prior to their promulgation.

From: NPR