OIRA
cmonforton | June 12, 2013Themes related to time---meeting deadlines, doing retrospective reviews----were heard frequently today by President Obama's nominee to direct his Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Howard Shelanski, JD, PhD, the President's choice for his "regulatory czar" post, appeared for his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs.
The nominee's written statement was short on details about his vision for OIRA, but in response to a question from Committee Chairman Tom Carper (D-DE), he mentioned three specific priorities:
"Should…
cmonforton | May 15, 2013Spring 2013 looked like it would be a banner season for progress by the Obama Administration on new worker safety regulations. In the Labor Department's most recent regulatory agenda, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) indicated they'd be taking key steps in March through June 2013 on rules to better protect workers from health and safety hazards. I thought these optimistic projections meant President Obama's second term would be a more productive one than his first. With the Presidential election behind them, the…
cmonforton | May 8, 2013The rate of work-related fatal injuries in some States is more than three times the national rate of 3.5 deaths per 100,000 workers. That's just one disturbing fact contained in the AFL-CIO's annual Death on the Job report which was released this week. In Wyoming, for example, the rate of fatal work-related injuries is 11.6 per 100,000, based on 32 deaths in the State in 2011 (the year for which the most recent data is available.) North Dakota's and Montana's rate is 11.2, based on 44 and 49 deaths, respectively. The rate in Alaska is 11.1, based on 39 deaths. In total, 4,693 workers…
US industrial sand production increases dramatically, yet industry says worker protection too costly
egrossman | April 18, 2013By Elizabeth Grossman
Since the White House Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) began reviewing the Labor Department’s proposed rule to reduce by one-half the permissible workplace exposure to respirable crystalline silica more than two year ago, the US has seen a dramatic increase in industrial sand mining, a major route of workers’ exposure to silica dust. As Celeste Monforton reported for The Pump Handle on March 20th, OIRA’s review of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) draft proposed rule crystalline silica…
cmonforton | April 4, 2013On this blog, we've not minced words about the damaging impact on new worker safety and other public health regulations by the actions of the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). It began causing trouble for OSHA the moment it was created by President Reagan, and its interference continues to this day.
During those early hope-and-change days, I had my fingers crossed that our new President had a fresh vision about the role of his regulatory czar. But in January 2009 my hope was dashed when President Obama nominated law professor Cass Sunstein to lead OIRA. …
cmonforton | March 20, 2013A funny thing happened when representatives of U.S. foundries met on March 12 with White House officials to complain about a not-yet-proposed worker safety regulation. The industry group seemed to forget that the targets of their complaints are contained in their own best practices publication.
The American Foundry Society (AFS) requested the meeting with the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) to discuss a draft proposed rule by the Labor Department's OSHA to protect workers exposed to respirable crystalline silica. AFS argued that…
cmonforton | February 14, 2013Imagine an organization that is given 90 days to complete a task, but after two years still hasn't finished the job. When you ask them 'what's taking so long?' or 'when we'll you be done?' they respond with 'no comment.'
That's the frustrating situation encountered by the U.S. public health and worker safety community when it comes to the Obama Administration and a proposed rule to protect workers from respirable crystalline silica. The proposed regulation would potentially affect workers involved in stonecutting, sandblasting, tuckpointing, brickmaking, foundries, and road, tunnel and…
cmonforton | January 8, 2013With five days left in calendar year 2012, the Obama Administration released to the public its current plan for regulatory and deregulatory activities, including those affecting individuals exposed to hazards in their work environment. Executive Order 12866 (adopted in 1993) says the annual regulatory plan “shall be” published in October, and the Regulatory Flexibility Act (5 USC 602) says the semi-annual regulatory agendas “shall” be published in April (Spring) and October (Fall). The Obama Administration failed to meet either of these deadlines, and simply issued for 2012 one regulatory…
cmonforton | November 20, 2012
Shortly after taking office, the head of the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) acknowledged the troubling slow pace at which new worker safety regulations are put in place. In a February 2010 speech, David Michaels, PhD, MPH said:
"Some standards have taken more than a decade to establish, and that's not an acceptable response when workers are in danger."
In a March 2010 speech the OSHA chief added:
"Clearly the current system for issuing standards doesn't work well for those it's supposed to benefit - workers. When rulemaking takes years and even…
cmonforton | August 28, 2012I'll be the first to admit I've criticized the Obama Administration's OSHA for failing to issue or even propose many new worker safety and health standards. As I wrote earlier this month, under President Obama and Secretary Solis, OSHA has only issued three new worker safety rules, two of which were safety standards affecting discrete industries and the third, a rule broadly endorsed by big business. Some colleagues and commentators attribute this mediocre record to regulatory resistance in the White House, pressure from Republicans on Capitol Hill, too few staff in the OSHA standards…
cmonforton | August 14, 2012In a New York Times story reporting on the resignation of Cass Sunstein, President Obama's director of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), the paper missed an opportunity to take readers beyond the rhetoric to reality. One sentence in the article said this:
"Business lobbies and Republicans in Congress complain frequently about 'job-killing' regulations, citing rules like the E.P.A.’s new standard for carbon emissions from power plants (recently upheld by a federal appeals court) and the Department of Labor’s new worker-safety rules."
"What Department of Labor's new…
cmonforton | July 5, 2012"Regulation in an uncertain world," was the title of a speech that President Obama's regulatory czar Cass Sunstein delivered on June 20, 2012 at a National Academy of Science's government-university-industry research roundtable on "Decision Making under Risk and Uncertainty." Mr. Sunstein's speech, as prepared for delivery, tried to make the case that under his leadership at the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) the Administration has instituted new procedures and practices that make the federal regulatory system more rigorous, evidence based, and transparent…
cmonforton | May 31, 2012The Obama Administration's quest to appease business interests' claims about burdensome and outdated regulations awoke a giant in the form of the civil rights, public health and workers' safety communities. From the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Council of LaRaza, to the American Public Health Association and Nebraska Appleseed, the feedback is loud and clear: USDA should withdraw the regulatory changes it proposed in January (77 Fed Reg 4408) which would shift the responsibility for examining and sorting poultry carcasses with obvious defects from USDA inspectors to the…
cmonforton | May 1, 2012Earlier this month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report on the snail's pace of the OSHA process of issuing new rules to protect workers from health and safety hazards on-the-job. One telling table in the document showed the agency issued about 20 new major regulations in each of the previous two decades (i.e., 24 in the 1980's and 23 in the 1990's), but during the 2000's, OSHA only issued 10 final rules. Although some of these regulations only affected a fraction of all U.S. businesses because the hazards are industry-specific (e.g., servicing of rim wheels, grain…
cmonforton | April 12, 2012More than 425 days----that's 14 months----have passed since the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sent to the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) a draft proposed regulation designed to protect workers who are exposed to respirable crystalline silica. The hazard is one of the oldest known causes of work-related lung disease, yet OSHA does not have a comprehensive, protective standard on the books to address it. In the last few decades, epidemiological studies have also found a strong association between silica exposure and…
cmonforton | March 12, 2012Making a $10,000 bet, insulting people for wearing plastic rain ponchos, and asserting that $374,000 is not much to earn in speaking fees are just a few examples of Mitt Romney being out of touch. The Republican Presidential hopeful doesn't seem to have a clue either about how federal agencies like EPA and OSHA conduct their work. On Romney's website, his issue brief on "Regulations" says:"A look across the landscape shows that federal agencies today have near plenary power to issue whatever regulations they see fit. Though most are nominally controlled by the president, in actual…
cmonforton | February 17, 2012"What's taking so long?" might be uttered by a youngster waiting for a parent to assemble a swing set, or an art patron waiting for a conservator to restore a masterpiece. When the wait is finally over and the eager child or art lover see the final product, they realize the time was well spent.
Public health and worker safety advocates have been asking "what's taking so long?" for the White House's Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to complete a review of a draft occupational health standard. A 1993 Executive Order gives OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) authority…
cmonforton | January 30, 2012The Labor Department provided an update on January 20, 2012 to its regulatory agenda, including revised target dates for improved workplace safety and health standards. Several of the rules OSHA now expects to publish in 2012 are regulations the agency previously said would be issued one or two years ago. Missed deadlines, however, are nothing new for OSHA---an agency that has only issued two new major health or safety standards in the last 10 years.
To put these new projections from OSHA in perspective, I'll refer to forecasts made previously by the Obama/Solis Administration in 2009 and…
cmonforton | January 27, 2012The Republicans' mantra about the burden of regulations seems to have cast a spell on the Obama Administration's attitude about promoting new regulatory initiatives. My observations about this were reinforced this week when I read the Administration's statement accompanying its Fall 2011 regulatory plan. The message is clear: new regulations and an election year don't mix.
The tone of this new Obama Administration regulatory statement oozes caution. Let's set aside the fact that this "Fall 2011" regulatory plan was not released at all in the autumn, but on January 20, 2012. It seems the…
cmonforton | January 25, 2012A group of 300 scientists, physicians and public health experts are urging President Obama to direct his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to complete its review of a proposed Labor Department health standard on the carcinogen crystallline silica. OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has been reviewing the proposed rule for nearly a year, although the Executive Order (EO) giving OIRA authority for such review sets a four-month maximum time limit.
The signatories on the letter to President Obama, many of whom are members of the Union of Concerned Scientists or the…