Regulatory Transactions

From: FierceGovernmentIT

 By Marla Durben Hirsch – Contributing Editor

From: National Journal

by Olga Belogolova

President Obama is going to issue controversial rules on greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants only after the November presidential election, a narrow plurality of National Journal’s Energy and Environment Insiders predict.

The rules, which would limit greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, have been pending since last November, when the Environmental Protection Agency sent them over to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget for review.

From: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

By Cecil E. Roberts

Last December, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued a final rule intended to reduce electric utility emissions of mercury and other air toxics. The EPA projected that less than 5,000 megawatts of older coal-fueled generating plants would be retired as a result of its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule.

From: Bloomberg

By Andrew Zajac

Pending rules in the White House pipeline would position a re-elected President Barack Obama to outpace his predecessor with second-term rulemaking, according to a review of regulatory filings.

Obama has delayed until after the election decisions on regulating ozone levels and rearview cameras for cars. Rules still need to be written to carry out much of Obama’s signature first-term domestic policy initiatives, the health-care overhaul and the Dodd-Frank law regulating the financial industry.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 7, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Committee on Capital Markets Regulation today warned Congress of its “deep concern about the inadequacy of cost-benefit analysis” that its research has identified in proposed rulemaking under the Dodd-Frank, Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.

The independent, non-partisan Committee reported in a letter today to leaders of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs and the House Financial Services Committee that it identified widespread inadequacies in its review of the cost-benefit analysis provisions contained in 192 proposed and final rules under Dodd-Frank.

Specifically, the CCMR found that:

From: Bloomberg

By Andrew Zajac

The Obama administration’s delay of costly regulations, including one to require rearview cameras on cars and light trucks, weakens a Republican line of attack ahead of the election.

President Barack Obama has been hammered by Republicans for promulgating expensive rules, and the party’s front-runner for the presidential nomination, Mitt Romney, vows to do away with “job-killing regulation.” The camera requirement, mandated by a 2008 law signed by Republican President George W. Bush, was listed by the Obama administration last year as one of the five most expensive pending regulations, with an estimated price tag of as much as $2.7 billion.

A coalition of NGOs including Earthjustice and the Environmental Defense Fund have written to OIRA Administrator Sunstein “to express support for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) 2010 policy and 2011 regulatory proposal for the review of confidentiality claims related to chemical or microorganism identity in data from health and safety studies submitted to the EPA under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).”

The letter is attached below.

TSCA-Letter-to-OMB-re-CBI-02-29-12-Final