Earlier this summer, Policy Integrity submitted comments on OIRA’s annual report to Congress.
The office recently released the final report which includes its responses to the recomendations of peer reviewers and public comments. There, they address Policy Integrity’s suggestion that rulemaking petitions, lodged with various federal agencies, should be reviewed by OIRA in order to scan effectively for areas of under-regulation. Noting their agreement on the value of examining pending petitions, OIRA states that it is “considering the appropriate vehicle for doing so.”
As Dean Revesz and Michael Livermore wrote in their Huffington Post piece on this subject, sometimes, government fails to regulate and in those cases, “little attention is paid, even when the stakes are high. To lessen the imbalance, there should be a formal process that reviews inaction.”
OIRA review of petitions would be just such a formal process and will help even out scales that are too often weighed against strong environmental and public health protections.