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Jason Schwartz, legal director for the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, praised the agency’s draft recommendations but warned that an overreaction to last-minute rule making can create problems of its own.

He said the legislation being considered in Congress, for example, goes too far because it prevents federal agencies from not only proposing regulations during the midnight period but also approving regulations that were proposed before the midnight period.

“If a rule was proposed a long time ago, and has gone through all the required analysis and public scrutiny and internal vetting, then finalizing it in the midnight period doesn’t raise concerns for us,” he said.

He added that he believes the Administrative Conference’s proposal will do a better job than the legislation at addressing the real problem of midnight rule making, which is that administrations eager to get their regulations in place truncate the amount of time allotted for analysis and public comment.

Jason Schwartz is legal director at NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

Jason Schwartz: Unfortunately, the trend across the country is toward adding more levels of regulatory review that aren’t particularly helpful.

Especially when, according to Schwartz, states regulate almost 20 percent of the U.S. economy.

“You have to focus on what you’re buying,” said Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law. “If you just look at the price, you don’t know what you’re getting. Are these wise investments? That’s the question.”

An example of a regulation that is paying off, according to Livermore, is the Environmental Protection Agency’s mercury and air toxics rule, which caps pollutants emitted by power plants. It will cost utilities about $9.6 billion per year and is projected to yield up to $90 billion in benefits in terms of saved lives, reduced illness and jobs created, according to the EPA.

When the Obama administration moves forward with stronger environmental protection, some see a “phony theology” at work. But most thoughtful observers see a moderate administration steering a middle course, irritating businesses with increased protections when they are cost-benefit justified, but also frustrating environmentalists with a relatively slow pace of change.

Two recent pieces raise the question of whether The Economist is falling into the alarmist’s trap. One accuses the Obama administration of over-counting benefits and the other frets that too many regulations are crushing the American economy.

Imagine you’re the CEO of a major national corporation with two million employees and 312 million customers. Now imagine having no consistent plan to revisit past decisions to determine what worked and what didn’t.

That’s how our government behaved until a year ago when President Obama put new rules in place to require review of past regulations — a process with the potential to make the government smarter. Businesses should be pleased since, in practice, this process has mostly meant the snipping away of red tape.

Some folks seem to imagine that there’s a small, semi-secret team of economist-bureaucrats in the White House toiling away to scuttle environmental regulations. Others think this office of experts has unleashed a regulatory tsunami on businesses, drowning profits and washing away jobs.

There is, in fact, such a group—though it’s not doing either of those things, at least not intentionally. It’s the unsexy but important Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), charged with weighing the economics of any regulation worth more than $100 million. Carefully reviewing the cost-benefit analyses agencies perform for each major rule, these (mostly) economists look to see if the experts have accurately examined whether, say, a rule requiring new scrubbers on smokestacks is worth the price of implementation.

The office in the White House that considers the costs and benefits of new regulations is being accused of bias in a recent report report by the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR). Concerned that the Obama administration is using its political compass to reduce public protections, the report lays blame at the feet of the somewhat obscure but extremely important Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).

The report takes issue with the number of changes this office makes to the rules it reviews. Before dealing with the specific complaints, we underscore that it is OIRA’s job to address questions that are brought up in public comments or by other agencies. Sometimes these comments are justified and require a response. This is the review process at work, not proof of bad faith. If OIRA were simply to stamp each regulation “approved” without making adjustments, there would be no purpose to having the office at all.

Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, told Bloomberg the regulatory issue is “getting picked up and talked about, but not for any good reason.”

“This is getting picked up and talked about, but not for any good reason,” Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, said in an interview. “There’s nothing new about this attack: It comes and goes in good times and in bad.”

In a report last year by New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity, the state got the discouraging mark of D+ for its process of reviewing regulations. One of Cuomo’s goals should be to make our state a model for the nation: tightening rules that don’t adequately protect New Yorkers from harm, but loosening those that slow job growth without sufficient benefit.