The Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy has launched a new program which will increase the Office's interference in federal agencies' regulatory practices — specifically, in the selection of regulations agencies choose to review after they have already taken effect.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued a report which describes what it calls retrospective reviews. These reviews are attempts by federal agencies to assess the effectiveness of federal regulations and identify opportunities for improvement.

Agencies may conduct these reviews for a variety of reasons. Under Section 610 of the Regulatory Flexibility Act, agencies are required to perform reviews of major rules every ten years. However, the GAO report finds agencies often choose to review rules earlier, either in response to public or industry requests or at their own discretion. From reading the report, it appears as though this ad hoc method is more effective than the prescriptive Section 610 reviews.

The GAO report also finds agencies have limited time and resources to devote to regulatory reviews. What agencies don't need is more forced reviews and outside meddling from SBA or their White House cronies at OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. (OMB has engaged in a similar program during the Bush administration, strong-arming agencies into reviewing rules it finds objectionable. About 20 percent of the reviews studied by GAO were conducted at OMB's behest.)

Agencies are handling the selection of rules to review just fine on their own. Room for improvement does exist though, according to GAO. Agencies should adopt standard practices for conducting reviews, should document the reviews more thoroughly, and should improve participation by engaging the public in the review process and making results more transparent.

Agency resources would be better spent working toward those goals rather than dealing with this new SBA program.

Last week, the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank, released a report titled, "Safeguarding the American People: The Progressive Vision vs. the Bush Record."

The report shows how President Bush's anti-government and pro-business view points have manifested themselves in the forms of weakened public protections, poor enforcement of federal law, and a declining investment in America's needs. In pursuit of this ideology, the Bush administration has seemingly left no stone unturned, harming the environment, consumer safety, workplace safety, national infrastructure and financial protections.

In identifying a progressive vision, the report touches upon the need for better data, restoring the idea of the responsibility of government, transparency in decision-making, and holding government accountable for results.

Read the report here.

The Department of the Interior's Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE) will propose a rule which would make it easier for mining companies to search for coal on mountaintops and dump the waste into nearby valleys and streams, according to The New York Times.

Currently, federal regulations prohibit most mountaintop mining activities within 100 feet of streams. The rules are regularly flaunted. According to Earthjustice, a nonprofit group focused on environmental law, "1,208 miles of streams in Appalachia were destroyed from 1992 to 2002."

Instead of ramping up enforcement, OSMRE decided to change the rule in order to allow dumping. OSMRE issued a proposed rule to that effect in Jan. 2004. The proposal claimed the rule to be "not significant" because it would not have a substantial impact on the economy or the environment.

Luckily, common sense prevailed. OSMRE decided to delay the rule and prepare a detailed environmental impact statement after the public expressed concern during the comment period. The general tenor of the concern was, "So you're saying that chopping off the top of a mountain and dumping it into a stream does not have an environmental impact…Wha?!?"

Earthjustice has acquired a copy of the environmental impact statement. The news is not good. Ignoring the potential for severe environmental degradation, OSMRE will propose to allow most kinds of mining activities to occur within the stream buffer zone.

OSMRE is expected to issue the proposed rule tomorrow. The priority of the rule has been changed from "not significant" to "other significant." Because of this change in designation, the White House had the opportunity to make edits before publication. It's hard to imagine the White House could have made this proposed rule much worse, but you never know. Stay tuned to Reg•Watch for more.