December 6, 2001

The Honorable Joseph Lieberman Chair, Senate Governmental Affairs Committee United States Senate Washington, D.C. 20510

Re: OIRA Administrator John D. Graham's Efforts to Weaken Regulatory Protections

Dear Senator Lieberman:

We write to express our deep concern over recent reports and documents alleging the involvement of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) officials, specifically Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator John Graham, in an apparent collaboration with industry lobbyists to develop a strategy to weaken dozens of environmental, health, labor and other regulatory protections. We ask that you, as the Chair of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, request that OMB provide to your committee all meeting logs, notes, documents, calendars and other records pertaining to any meeting or communication between OMB officials and outside lobbyists to determine whether such an effort to roll back existing federal regulations occurred. In addition, we ask you to make these activities the subject of oversight hearings by your Committee, particularly as your Committee considers reauthorization of the Paperwork Reduction Act.

A December 4 article in the Washington Post, "Business Lobbyists Asked to Discuss Onerous Rules," indicates that OIRA Administrator Graham may have requested that Republican House committee staff convene a meeting of industry trade group lobbyists - including representatives of the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, and the American Farm Bureau - to discuss a strategy of "sunsetting" rules on public health, public safety, the environment, and worker's rights by invoking provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act. In preparation for this meeting, OMB staff gave House committee staff a printout of regulations that have one million or more paperwork burden hours. From this, House staff compiled a list of fifty-seven regulations as "possible sunset review candidates." That list, attached, involves programs cutting across nine federal agencies, including:

• Environmental Protection Agency's clean air program to update pollution controls on outdated facilities (called New Source Review), water quality clean up plans (known as "TMDLs"), and toxic chemical release reporting;
• Department of Labor's regulations on the Family and Medical Leave Act and Davis-Bacon Act, as well as fifteen health and safety regulations under the Occupational Safety and Health Act;
• Department of Agriculture's regulations regarding the use of restricted pesticides;
• Department of Health and Human Service's regulations on food labeling, investigational new drugs, and applications to market new drugs;
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission's regulations for licensing facilities.

The Post article indicates that provisions of the Paperwork Reduction Act could be used to undermine these regulatory protections. We encourage your Committee to examine ways in which the Act could be used to weaken or eliminate such protections. The Act should guarantee accountability, transparency and other assurances so that regulatory safeguards cannot be undermined through backdoor provisions in the law.

John Graham's confirmation was among the most controversial of the Bush administration to date. Many Senators and a wide variety of public interest groups raised concerns over Dr. Graham's close ties to regulated industries during his tenure as director of the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis - an organization that not only receives the majority of its funding from large corporate interests, but also has a strong predisposition for reaching anti-regulatory conclusions that are acceptable to the Center's influential funders. If Dr. Graham has indeed been involved in strategizing with business interests to overturn some of our most important public health, environmental, labor rights, and public safety regulations, then the concerns of those Senators and public interest organizations that opposed him are being realized.

The level of Dr. Graham's involvement in this apparent effort by industry groups to weaken or altogether undo regulations that ensure Americans' quality of life and well being merits a thorough investigation by Congress. We respectfully request that the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee initiate this investigation. Thank you for your consideration of our views.

Sincerely,

Martin Hayden Legislative Director Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund Bill Samuel Director of Legislation AFL-CIO Gary D. Bass Executive Director OMB Watch Joan Claybrook President Public Citizen Alan Reuther Legislative Director International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America, UAW Betsy Loyless Political Director League of Conservation Voters Barbara Coufal Legislative Affairs Specialist American Federation of State Co., & Municipal Employees Debbie Sease Legislative Director Sierra Club Wes Warren Senior Fellow of Environmental Economics Natural Resources Defense Council Terrence O'Sullivan General President Laborers' International Union of North America Kevin S. Curtis Vice President of Government Affairs National Environmental Trust

Benjamin Cohen
Senior Staff Attorney
Center for Science in the Public Interest

Susan West, MPH
Director, Environmental Health Programs
Physicians for Social Responsibility

S. Elizabeth Birnbaum
Director of Government Affairs
American Rivers

Anna Aurilio
Legislative Director
U.S. Public Interest Research Group

Mary Beth Beetham
Legislative Director
Defenders of Wildlife

Lexi Shultz
Legislative Director
Mineral Policy Center

Paul Schwartz
National Policy Coordinator
Clean Water Action

Sara Zdeb
Legislative Representative
Friends of the Earth

Beth Lowell
Policy Analyst
Endangered Species Coalition

Jodi Grant
Director of Work & Family Programs
and Public Policy
National Partnership for Women & Families