Search Results Archives: September 2015
From: The White House
Convening State and Industry Leaders; Supporting Strategies for the Long-Term Development of a Clean and Abundant Energy Resource Along All U.S. Coasts
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In addition, the White House is announcing the following actions in support of the development of offshore wind:
From: Bloomberg View
Republican presidential candidate and former Florida governor Jeb Bush has just released a plan for regulatory reform. Though there are a few clunkers, many of his ideas are excellent. (I have had some experience on these issues; from 2009 to 2013, I helped oversee regulation under President Barack Obama, as Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.)
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Also excellent: Reform the process of “sue-and-settle,” in which public interest groups sue federal agencies to force them to issue rules. In some cases, the agencies don’t really disagree, but have refrained from acting in part because of political constraints. Once an agency enters into a settlement agreement, it’s under a legal obligation to act within a specified amount of time.
OIRA invoked its authority under the Paperwork Reduction Act in its joint Memorandum with OSTP to the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, and of the Independent Regulatory Agencies implementing key sections of President Obama’s Executive Order Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the American People. The “Memorandum advises agencies on how to use behavioral science insights to improve Federal forms and informs them of resources and administrative flexibilities to assist with implementation of the Executive Order.”
Here is the announcement of the Student Writing Competition:
From: HealthITAnalytics
The American Medical Association and forty other professional societies are strongly urging HHS and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) not to publish the finalized rule for Stage 3 Meaningful Use.
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“The physician community is extremely dismayed by recent press reports that the Final Modifications Rule and the Final MU Stage 3 Rule have been combined and this rule is now under review at the OMB,” the societies say in a pair of letters addressed to Shaun Donovan, Director of the Department of Management and Budget and Secretary Sylvia Burwell of HHS.
On September 8, 2015, the 9th Circuit issued an opinion in Harkonen v. U.S. Dept. of Justice and U.S. Office of Mgmt. and Budget (No. 13-15197) in which it held that DOJ news releases are exempt from the IQA. The Circuit panel concluded that it should give deference to DOJ’s interpretation of its own IQA regulations as exempting all press releases. This is the latest court decision on the IQA and judicial review. A copy of the opinion is attached below.
The following material was downloaded from Information Quality Government-wide Initiatives from OMB’s website.
M-07-24, Updated Principles for Risk Analysis (September 19, 2007) (13 pages, 156 kb)
From: RegBlog | Penn Program on Regulation
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Professor Dilulio‘s dazzling data-driven response highlights the contractor problem in government. We do not know if contractors are better or more efficient than civil servants, but we do know that their use has grown exponentially, while the civil service has remained the same size it was during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. As Professor Dilulio shows, we now spend the same amount on service contractors as on the entire civil service. Some agencies are virtually run by contractors. The U.S. Department of Energy, for example, has about 13,000 civil servants and over 100,000 contractors, and I have a feeling that one would find similar ratios at the U.S. Agency for International Development. In these circumstances, the question of who is in charge is one with serious implications for our constitutional structure.
Editor’s Note: For an example of how career OIRA bureaucrats help fight poverty, see Accolades to the Census Bureau, OMB and BLS for Developing a Supplemental Measure of Poverty.
From: NACS Online | The Association for Convenience & Fuel Retailing
Proposal will provide clarity for state agencies to implement the photo EBT card option.
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will soon issue proposed regulations related to the use of identification photographs on Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards used for the redemption of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits.
In deciding Harkonen v. U.S. Dept. of Justice, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit explicitly declined to opine on whether agency actions under the Data (Information) Quality Act are subject to judicial review. In reaching its decision, the court rebuffed DOJ which had asserted that the court did not have the authority to review DQA cases. Specifically, the Opinion stated,
The government argues the IQA does not authorize courts to review the correctness of information disseminated by an agency.
We have no reason in this case to reach the broad question of whether the IQA confers upon a private individual the right to seek judicial review of the correctness of all information published by the government.