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  • Regulatory Impact Assessment in the Age of Partisan Volatility

    The Trump Administration has defined its policy program in terms of reversing the prior Administration’s decisions on as many fronts as possible. Although this turnabout has been particularly intense, it actually marks a continuation of a long-developing trend.

  • States Sue EPA Over Plan to Weaken Vehicle Emissions Standards

    The Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law has released a new report analyzing EPA’s decision to withdraw the standards that concludes the agency’s basis for withdrawing the standards is not grounded in fact or economic analysis. For example, EPA cites factors such as lower fuel prices and concerns about the growth of electric vehicles as reasons to reverse its earlier decision, but both fuel prices and electric vehicle sales are in fact rising.

  • States Sue The EPA To Protect Obama-Era Fuel Efficiency Standards

    A report released by the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law said the EPA’s reasoning was “not grounded in fact.” For instance, the EPA says lower gas prices are making fuel-efficient cars less attractive, and cites flagging demand for electric cars as a sign the current standards are unrealistic.

  • How Technology and Artificial Intelligence Can Improve Regulation

    Opportunities to learn about and comment on regulation abound online, leading to an explosion of public participation. It is now common for agencies to receive over 1 million public comments on a proposed regulation. But agencies don’t have the person-power to process all that information, resulting in costly delays and undercounted perspectives.

  • Scott Pruitt Hasn’t Saved Taxpayers Anything

    Looking just at compliance costs also ignores the vast number of benefits — both economic and social — that regulations like the Clean Power Plan can have for society overall. According to a 2017 analysis by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law, for instance, costs of the Clean Power Plan would have been about $5.1 and $8.4 billion annually, while benefits would have been about $54 billion annually. This means that the Clean Power Plan would have created a net economic benefit of between $45.6 billion and $48.9 billion.

  • In His Haste to Roll Back Rules, Scott Pruitt, E.P.A. Chief, Risks His Agenda

    In the end, “a lot of those arguments were losers,” said Richard L. Revesz, an expert in environmental law at New York University. In particular, Mr. Revesz noted a case brought by the group against President Obama’s signature climate change regulation, the Clean Power Plan, which Mr. Pruitt is now working to overturn from within the E.P.A. The lawsuit challenged a draft proposal of the regulation, which was an unprecedented move that a federal court quickly struck down, saying that they could not legally challenge a draft.

  • Scott Pruitt’s Dirty Politics

    Federal agencies are supposed to abide by the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, to insure that the work informing new regulations is transparent, reasoned, and not overly politicized. Bethany Davis Noll, an environmental lawyer at the N.Y.U. Institute for Policy Integrity, said, “It’s also so you don’t have agencies turning on a dime in response to an election.” Courts hold agencies to the “arbitrary and capricious” standard: to rescind a regulation, they must demonstrate sound reasoning tied to a factual record.

  • Dispute Over Coal’s Effects on Climate Change Heads to Court

    The Trump Interior Department could not rush through an impact statement quickly just to get it out of the way, according to Jayni Foley Hein, policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. That’s because the National Environmental Policy Act, its regulations, and various court decisions have laid out firm guidelines about what a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement must include, she said.

  • Pruitt’s Delayed Chemical Plant Safety Rule Heads to Court

    Challenges to an EPA rule delaying a chemical safety regulation aimed at protecting emergency responders being argued March 16 could pose a test of the Trump administration’s push to roll back regulations. “Agencies need explicit statutory authority for their actions,” Bethany Davis Noll, litigation director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

  • Regulating Marketable Permits

    Although cap-and-trade programs for government permits to emit carbon dioxide occasionally make headline news, the average American may not realize that billions of dollars’ worth of government permits are auctioned or traded in a wide variety of industries, from broadcasting to construction to fishing.