14 Jan 2010

Paperwork Reduction Act
How to improve implementation of the law

by Richard Belzer

in Paperwork Burdens

On October 28, 2009, the Office of Management and Budget solicited comments on its implementation of the Paperwork Reduction Act. The purpose of the PRA is to minimize burdens on the public resulting from the federal government's information requests.

Neutral Source managing editor Richard Belzer submitted comments on his own behalf. These comments eventually will be uploaded by OMB to Regulations.Gov, the Federal government's web portal for all regulatory matters. (Clicking on the link above will reveal a fundamental weakness of the web portal: Unless the agency chooses to include information identifying the name and organizational affiliation of the submitter, there is no way to find any specific comment without opening them all.)

In response to numerous requests, a copy of these comment is posted to the Library.

25 Feb 2009

Regulatory Review in the Obama Administration, Part 3:
Cass Sunstein and his critics

by Richard Belzer

in People & Institutions, Regulatory Policy

Long time University of Chicago Law (and recent Harvard Law) professor Cass Sunstein is expected to be nominated by President Obama to be the new Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. OIRA is the statutory office within the White House Office of Management and Budget that, among other things, has conducted centralized regulatory oversight on behalf of the president since 1981.

When Susan Dudley was nominated in 2006 to head this office, Neutral Source published an eight-part analysis of her "paper trail," which is summarized here. We undertook this task because her nomination generated controversy from certain activist groups, most notably Public Citizen, and we found significant factual discrepancies between the actual content of this paper trail and her critics claims about it.

We intend to repeat this effort, but Sunstein presents an unusually difficult challenge.

24 Feb 2009

Regulatory Review in the Obama Administration, Part 2:
Alive and well, reports to the contrary notwithstanding

by Richard Belzer

in Regulatory Policy

In a February 17 article, Politico reporter Josh Gerstein claims that "[i]n his first weeks in office, President Barack Obama shut down his predecessor’s system for reviewing regulations" and "managed to take all these actions with nary a mention from the White House press corps." Gerstein further claims that this "escaped notice because they were never announced by the White House Press Office and were never placed on the White House web site."

Gerstein's reporting is erroneous.

3 Feb 2009

Regulatory Review in the Obama Administration, Part 1:
Executive Order 13497

by Richard Belzer

in Regulatory Policy

On January 30, President Obama signed Executive Order 13497, which begins the process of changing the way the Office of Management and Budgwet performs centralized review of draft proposed and draft final regulations. In a memorandum to agency heads, the President also announced a plan to produce "a set of recommendations" within 100 days (~ May 14, 2009).

Texts for both documents are provided below.

12 Nov 2008

Petition for Correction to the Office of Management and Budget Concerning the Draft 2008 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulation

by Richard Belzer

in Information Quality

On November 7, 2008, Regulatory Checkbook -- Neutral Sourcve's sister nonprofit organization -- filed a public comment on the Office of Management and Budget's draft 2008 Report to Congress on the Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulation.

This public comment also was submitted as a formal Petition for Correction under OMB's Information Quality Guidelines (PDF). Under those guidelines, influential information OMB disseminates must be substantively and presentionally objective, transparent and reproducible, and provide utility for its intended purposes of informing Congress and the public.

The draft Report does not satisfy these information quality standards.

OMB is obligated by its own guidelines to respond within 60 days (i.e., by January 6, 2009).

25 Sep 2008

Benefits and Costs of Federal Regulation:
2008 draft report published for public comment

by Richard Belzer

in Regulatory Economics

The Office of Management and Budget has published its 2008 draft report to Congress on the benefits and costs of federal reguilation. OMB is required by lawe to publish this report every year.

Public comments are due by Friday, November 7, 2008.

19 Sep 2007

OMB's Principles for Risk Analysis:
OMB's initial response to the National Academy of Sciences

by Richard Belzer

in Regulatory Policy, Regulatory Science

Today the Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum to agency heads directing them to adhere to certain principles of risk analysis. The memorandum is OMB's initial response to the report of a National Research Council panel that OMB asked to review a 2006 proposed bulletin on risk assessment. That report called the proposed text "fundamentally flawed" and gave seven recommendations, one of which was that it be withdrawn.

A fair reading of the new memorandum is that OMB followed this specific recommendation. More...

27 Jul 2007

Who Pays the Cost of Regulation?
Insights from corporate income tax incidence

by Richard Belzer

in Regulatory Economics

Regulation is widely understood as a tax on the activity or person being regulated. Where these activities repair genuine market failures, benefits from regulation may result. If there are benefits from, say, automobile safety regulation, one would expect the beneficiaries to be persons who otherwise would have been killed or injured at the pre-regulatory safety level.

But what about the costs of regulation? Who bears them? More...

24 Jul 2007

The Perils of Seeking Perfect Information:
How many roadway signs is enough?
Is there a public participation process that can help find out?

by Richard Belzer

in Regulatory Economics, Regulatory Policy

A conventional example of market failure often used to justify regulation is the absence of perfect information. This is explicitly set forth in the Office of Management and Budget's guidance on the conduct of Regulatory Impact Analysis.

While it is true that the strictest form of the economic theory that is the foundation for benefit-cost depends includes this assumption, it is made for expository convenience rather than necessity. Information need not be perfect for economics to explain or predict behavior. Indeed, it works fine when knowledge is limited; the pursuit of knowledge is one of the instruments through which markets improve general welfare, and for some people gaining knowledge is the very activity that brings them satisfaction.

So how much knowledge is enough -- or, in the language of economics, "optimal"? Assuming that it's true that ignorance generally is bad and knowledge is good, is there an amount of knowledge that the government can provide to "solve" market failure, beyond which people start to get worse off? Today's A-hed in the Wall Street Journal gives an example showing that there is an optimum. More...

11 May 2007

Government-wide Information Quality Guidelines:
Does journal peer review achieve "adequate" objectivity?

by Richard Belzer

in Glossary, Information Quality, Peer Review

Federal guidelines require information disseminated by federal agencies to satisfy a few broad criteria, one of which is objectivity. These guidelines give a "rebuttable presumption" to scientific information published in scholarly journals.

• Do all scholarly journals transmit this rebuttable presumption of objectivity? What about scholarly journals that also have an advocacy mission?
• What is the burden of proof for mounting a successful rebuttal?

9 May 2007

Federal Agency Guidance Documents:
What's "significant"?

by Richard Belzer

in Regulatory Policy

OMB has new procedures for agencies to follow in making significant guidance documents transparent.

We posted an extensive discussion on OMB's Bulletin on Good Guidance Practices, and recently OMB issued an implementation memorandum. Yesterday we commented on the first task facing federal regulatory agencies: assembling and publishing online lists of guidance documents.

Today we address another fundamental question: What constitutes a "significant" guidance document, an d how is this determination made? More...

8 May 2007

Federal Agency Guidance Documents:
Building the inventory

by Richard Belzer

in Regulatory Policy

Executive Order 13422 and OMB's Bulletin on Good Guidance Practices will lead to major changes in the way federal agencies issue guidance.

The first step for each agency is to develop and publish inventories of their significant guidance documents. The deadlines for agency compliance are July 24, 2007 (for significant guidance documents issued on or after January 25, 2007) and August 23, 2007 (for all significant guidance documents). More...

7 May 2007

The New OMB Regulatory Review Procedures:
A primer on implementation

by Richard Belzer

in Regulatory Policy

On April 25 OMB issued guidance to agencies concerning the implementation of Executive Order 13422. More...

20 Feb 2007

Markets Work
What happens when governments suppress market forces

by Richard Belzer

in Legislation, Regulatory Economics, Regulatory Policy

Today's news brings a pair of interesting (and foreboding) lessons in what happens when government tries to suppress markets.

In Iran, government subsidies make the price of gasoline just 40 cents per gallon. In Florida, the state has decided to subsidize the cost of property insurance.

In Iran, there is massive overconsumption of energy that threatens both the economy and the polity. Its authoritarian, theocratic government is unwilling to endure the public reaction that would result from restoring market prices for energy.

In Florida, property owners in harm's way will overinsure and not bother taking otherwise cost-effective measures to reduce their losses from future hurricanes. When the hurricanes come, their losses will be covered by surcharges on other property owners (especially those out of harm's way) and taxpayers.

14 Feb 2007

Executive Order 13422, Part 5a
The House subcommittee oversight hearings

by Richard Belzer

in Regulatory Policy

Today we start a series summarizing the testimony from all eight witnesses who appeared yesterday before two separate House oversight subcommittees. More...