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Monday, September 10, 2007

The Other Surge: Regulatory Activity at the End of a Presidency

An article in yesterday's New York Times describes how President Bush has started a flurry of 11th hour regulatory activity. Every president since John Adams has used the waning days of his presidency to issue executive edicts and final regulations in order to ensure his policy beliefs outlast his days in the White House.

The article mentions the environmentally damaging mountaintop mining rule the administration proposed last month (click here for details) as a precursor of things to come.

Reg•Watch is concerned Bush may be more effective at this than many of his predecessors. While presidents have spent the end of their terms pursuing individual policy goals, Bush appears to place just as high a priority on altering the policymaking system.

In January, Bush amended Executive Order 12866, Regulatory Planning and Review. The changes will further politicize the rulemaking process by giving senior officials unlimited reach into agency scientific and technical decisionmaking (as if they needed it). The changes also force agency guidance documents — i.e. policy statements and interpretive memos — through a White House review process.

The next year may bring more meddling in the cross-cutting policy by which agencies develop rules. Susan Dudley, the White House's regulatory czar, has indicated she will pursue finalization of OMB's Risk Assessment Bulletin. The Bulletin would create uniform and inflexible requirements for the preparation of agency risk assessments — the process by which agencies determine the severity of an environmental risk. Dudley would pursue the Bulletin despite the pleadings of Congress and the National Academies of Science.

And that's just what we know they're planning. The next 16 months could prove to be tumultuous.