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Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Clash Is Latest Chapter in Bush Effort to Widen Executive Power
The Washington Post is putting the revelation that Bush authorized spying on the American people into the bigger picture:

Clash Is Latest Chapter in Bush Effort to Widen Executive Power The clash over the secret domestic spying program is one slice of a broader struggle over the power of the presidency that has animated the Bush administration. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney came to office convinced that the authority of the presidency had eroded and have spent the past five years...
[Via washingtonpost.com - washingtonpost.com - elections, campaigns, government and politics news and headlines.]

The drive to create an Imperial Presidency is unfortunately not new. Check out this from OMB Watch earlier this year:

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

e-Rulemaking Development Suspended
The following letter circulated to agencies in the wake of the Transportation/Treasury approps (text courtesy of Harvard's Cary Coglianese):

December 19, 2005
E-Rulemaking Executive Committee Members:
Recently-signed provisions of the FY06 Treasury/Transportation/HUD appropriations bill contain restrictions on government-wide funding of E-Government (E-Gov) Initiatives. This significant legislation requires agencies to inform and secure Congressional approval to fund E-Gov initiatives including eRulemaking. The Office of Management and Budget and the eRulemaking Program Management Office (PMO) are aware of this and other Congressional appropriations restrictions and are working to resolve them.
At the current rate of expenditures, the eRulemaking PMO available funding will expire in mid-February 2006. In response, as Co-Chairs of the eRulemaking Executive Committee and in conjunction and concurrence with the OMB E-Gov Administrator, we have decided to allocate remaining funds to operate and maintain the current Federal Docket Management System, Regulations.gov. This will ensure continued operations and service for federal agencies that have already implemented and use FDMS/Regulations.gov as well as millions of public users of the system. In addition, in light of the funding shortfall, eRulemaking will suspend all further agency implementation and development activities, effective beginning second quarter FY2006. As funding is approved and received, the PMO will resume agency implementation and system development activities to the extent that resources allow. The eRulemaking PMO will keep the eRulemaking Initiative partner agencies apprised of any future developments as information becomes available.
We recognize that this action will impact E-Gov implementation plans for several agencies. We will continue to work with those agencies affected by this decision and renegotiated new migration and implementation dates.
We regret that this decision had to be made but are doing so in consideration of the importance of maintaining functionality for all of our participating agencies and the user community. If you have any concerns or wish to discuss further please contact us . . . . We look forward to our continued collaboration on this important government-wide initiative.
Sincerely,
Kimberly T. Nelson
Co-Chair, eRulemaking Executive Committee
Chief Information Officer and Assistant Administrator
Office of Environmental Information U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Donald R. Arbuckle
Co-Chair, eRulemaking Executive Committee
Deputy Administrator
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Office of Management and Budget

It's unfortunate that work will apparently slow on the development of the e-rulemaking initiative, but it may be a blessing in disguise. The e-Rulemaking project has so far resulted in a clumsy system that is based on but less adequate than what was at the time the second-best system, EPA's e-docket system.

Assuming that some funding will be scraped together in the future to pick back up on the project, maybe the interim period will allow for some re-thinking of the unfortunate direction that e-Rulemaking was headed in.

Posted by Robert Shull, 05:36:39 PM

Monday, December 19, 2005

Happy Holiday Gift from the White House
... although it's more like the package that turns out to be a sweater or some pairs of socks: the White House has announced an extension of the deadline for public comments on the proposed bulletin on "good guidance practices". Comments were due at the end of this week, but now they aren't due until Jan. 9.

Here's the notice of the extension.

Posted by Robert Shull, 06:06:58 PM

Guidance v. Blindness: Another Example
BNA's Daily Report for Executives is reporting on two OSHA standards interpretations just posted this month that address employer responsibilities for asbestos and bloodborne pathogens:

Peggy Teeling of Clifton Park, N.Y., asked OSHA what an employer's obligation is to an asbestos worker who quits and moves to another job. Teeling wanted to know if the employee is entitled to the "actual full report" of the examination conducted under the medical surveillance program for asbestos, or whether a clearance or summary report would be acceptable.
Enforcement Director Richard Fairfax replied that under OSHA's construction asbestos standards, the employer must provide a copy of the physician's written opinion within 30 days of its receipt.
In answer to Teeling's question on whether workers are entitled to a copy of their mask fit test when they leave the job, Fairfax said that under 29 CFR 1910.134, the written material must be made available on request to the affected employees for examination and copying. He also noted that employers are required to establish and retain written information about respirator fit testing.
Gary E. Thomas of Marietta, Ohio, asked OSHA whether an employer must provide another series of hepatitis vaccine shots if a worker's blood test shows there is no longer a detectable titer.
The OSHA standard requires that the employers make the hepatitis B vaccine and vaccination series available to all employees who have had an exposure incident as well as post-exposure follow-up.
Fairfax said, however, that neither a new series of shots nor a hepatitis B vaccination booster is currently required under the current U.S. Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's guidelines.
"The CDC has said that vaccine-induced antibodies to HBV decline gradually over time, and less than or equal to 60 percent of persons who initially respond to vaccination will lose detectable antibodies over 12 years," Fairfax said. "Studies among adults have demonstrated that, despite declining serum levels of antibody, vaccine-induced immunity continues to prevent clinical disease or detectable viremic HBV infection. Therefore, booster doses are not considered necessary."

This is the kind of valuable information that businesses and the public alike need to be able to rely on agencies to produce. The OMB Proposed Bulletin on "Good Guidance Practices" would add new burdens to this kind of guidance, which in some cases could even mean full notice and comment. The OMB bulletin could create new disincentives to the publication of such valuable information to the public, with the result that we could all be left in the dark.

Posted by Robert Shull, 02:36:23 PM

Thursday, December 15, 2005

Guidance: It, well, GUIDES us
The SEC told reporters that it is working on new guidance to clarify its thinking on some enforcement matters, according to BNA's Daily Report for Executives:

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox said Dec. 14 that the commission intends to issue formal guidance that "more clearly explain[s] objective criteria for imposing ... penalties" in enforcement actions.

Speaking to reporters after an open meeting of the commission, Cox said that the purpose of the document will be to "demystify" the process of levying penalties "internally, in [the Division of] Enforcement, and externally, for the regulated community that seeks to understand how the commission operates."

. . . .

The guidance will not represent a break with the past, because the law is the same . . . .He added that the commission is making an "effort to lay out in greater detail the substantive process of the application of the law to the facts that the commission goes through in every case."

This is exactly the kind of valuable information that agencies provide all the time. The White House's draft bulletin on "good guidance practices" would create disincentives to the production of such guidance, thus creating the risk that the public would be left in the dark until the agencies swoop in with fines.

Posted by Robert Shull, 03:56:10 PM

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

White House on FOIA: A Big Nothing?
The President signed an executive order this afternoon dealing with FOIA. The transcript of the White House press briefing makes it sound like a big nothing: among other things, it appears the EO does not undo the Ashcroft memo that presumes secrecy under FOIA when there is any question about access to the records.

Stay tuned: once we obtain the EO, we'll have more to say.

Posted by Robert Shull, 04:36:14 PM

Friday, December 09, 2005

Hit List Updates
For those who have been following the White House's anti-regulatory hit lists: OIRA's annual report on the costs and benefits of regulations includes an appendix that reports on the current status of the hit list items. Click here to download just the appendix.

Posted by Robert Shull, 01:52:22 PM

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Nobel Scientists Criticize Bush Anti-Science Trend
USA Today is reporting on criticisms of Bush administration policy at the Nobel Prize events:

Two American Nobel Prize winners said Thursday they are worried about President Bush's attitude toward science and accused his administration of ignoring important research findings.
"There is a measure of denial of scientific evidence going on within our administration, and there are many scientists who are not happy about that," said Roy J. Glauber, who shared this year's physics prize with fellow American John L. Hall and Germany's Theodor W. Haensch. Their research on the quantum nature of light has resulted in more precise optical clocks and measuring systems, and is used in today's satellite positioning systems.
Glauber also said some U.S. Congress members are more concerned about the political consequence of research projects than their scientific importance when they decide where to allocate money.
"(The projects) are not evaluated scientifically, they are only evaluated politically," Glauber said . . . .

Scientists tend to prefer to stay above the fray, but the Bush administration has been so aggressively anti-science that many have begun to speak out. They get news coverage precisely because they so rarely address political matters at all.

Of course, the Bush administration has its spin machine handy: "Administration officials have dismissed such concerns as misguided and accuse some scientists of playing politics — of attempting to undermine Bush administration policies by claiming they are based on bad science."

Posted by Robert Shull, 03:45:20 PM

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

OIRA Report Available
The OIRA web page still hasn't been updated, but the final reg accounting report is available for download. We're making it available here.

Posted by Robert Shull, 05:39:15 PM

OMB Report Out Soon
OIRA's annual report on the costs and benefits of regulations is apparently coming out today, according to an OMB press release. (The OIRA web page hasn't yet been updated to include the report, but that will presumably happen soon.)

OMB Watch filed comments on the report when it was released in draft form in March. It will be interesting in particular to find out if OIRA finally addressed the recurring errors that made their way into this year's draft. Stay tuned....

Posted by Robert Shull, 04:10:20 PM

OMB "Good Guidance Practices"
Keep track of developments related to the latest White House power grab -- the proposed bulletin that heralds an OMB role in agency guidance documents -- at www.ombwatch.org/regs/whitehouse/guidance.

Posted by Robert Shull, 03:59:14 PM

Friday, December 02, 2005

EPA Subverts Science to Justify Clear Skies
A new Congressional Research Services report finds Clear Skies will have far fewer health benefits than competing pollution legislation. Moreover, EPA exaggerated the costs of more stringent pollution controls to justify the administration's bogus Clear Skies Initiative. From the report:

CRS reexamines EPA's data, producing cost and benefit estimates for each bill incremental to the costs and benefits of current law and promulgated regulations. The reanalysis finds that Clear Skies would have negligible incremental costs and added benefits of $6 billion in 2010 and $3 billion in 2020. For the same years, S. 843 would have annual net benefits 8 and 5 times as great as Clear Skies at annual costs of $4.2 billion and $3 billion, and S. 150 would have annual net benefits 10 and 16 times those of Clear Skies at annual costs of $23.6 billion and $18.1 billion.
EPA conducted limited sensitivity analyses to examine the effect on cost of select combinations of assumptions, including (1) the responsiveness of electricity demand to changes in price; (2) the availability of skilled labor to install control equipment; and (3) the growth of electricity demand and natural gas prices. However, some potentially useful combinations of assumptions were not examined. For example, if EPA had combined a relaxed skilled labor constraint with some responsiveness of electricity demand to changes in price, the cost of S. 150 and S. 843 would be substantially reduced. CRS also concluded that the Hg control costs used in the analysis may be substantially overstated because of dated assumptions.
Numerous benefits were not estimated by EPA, partly because of methodological difficulties. Benefits not estimated include the environmental (as opposed to health) benefits of controlling the pollutants; the health effects of mercury control; and any benefits from controlling CO₂ emissions. Thus, even though benefits exceeded costs for each of the options in both EPA's and our analysis, one should perhaps view the benefit estimates as a floor rather than a best estimate, particularly for S. 150 and S. 843, which include significant Hg and CO₂ reductions.

Even by EPA's numbers, Clear Skies is no better at controlling pollution than existing regulations.

Posted by Genevieve Smith, 12:22:15 PM

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