Executive Order 12866 of 1993 has been amended and shaped to include RPO (Regulatory Policy Officers) positions that in general have strengthened oversight since January, 2007. The issues could be summarized with the following:
requires agency regulatory policy officers to be presidential appointees and expands the powers of those officers;The impacts take time to read and follow implications that could arise with the public idealogy of a Susan Dudley in charge. Governance by appointment is for another post. My immediate interest is the following issue:
shifts the criterion for promulgating regulations from the identification of a problem like threats to public health to the identification of a “specific market failure” and,
in conjunction with the Final Bulletin, allows the White House to exert control over agency guidance documents – subjecting a new class of information to political considerations and possible delay.
Endocrine disruptors at last have scientific tests sensitive enough to obtain good data. Why would anyone, either party or political preference, wish to risk damaging an entire generation for the sake of a few dollars? And why would the people who run companies push the risk of knowing into the future without looking for substitutes?
In 1996, Congress passed legislation mandating EPA assess the health impacts of endocrine disruptors — a class of chemicals which affect the way the body regulates mood, growth and development. Until this summer, EPA had made no progress in evaluating the chemicals impacts.Why in God's name would we not want to know when the preponderance of evidence suggests investigation is warranted?
When EPA finally unveiled its endocrine disruptor screening program, which includes risk assessments for evaluating the chemicals, it turned out not to be worth the wait. Critics assailed EPA's program as scientifically flawed and accused the agency of designing experiments to purposefully minimize findings of adverse effects.
Now, the White House Office of Management and Budget is reviewing the structure of the risk assessment and the selection of chemicals that EPA will test.
OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) generally reviews agency proposed and final regulations. However, because of recent changes President Bush made to the regulatory process, OIRA can now review agency "guidance documents." Guidance documents are an ill-defined class of agency information which may include policy interpretations and the research and supporting materials that go into regulation, like EPA's endocrine disruptor screening program.
It is unclear who made the decision to submit the screening program and list of chemicals for review: EPA or OIRA. It may also turn out to be unclear what changes the review ultimately brings. Because of a gross lack of transparency in the OIRA review process, the public is left in the dark.
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