Recent Projects

In a decision ordering the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to implement a fair housing rule that the Trump administration sought to delay, Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia cited Policy Integrity’s amicus brief in the case. The Small Area Fair Market Rent rule, finalized under President Obama, seeks to give low-income families greater access to housing in higher-rent neighborhoods and break up areas of concentrated poverty. Our brief argued that, in suspending the rule’s implementation for two years, HUD violated principles of administrative law by disregarding economic impacts and failing to seek public comment. Judge Howell found that HUD’s decision to delay the rule exceeded the agency’s legal authority and that the reasons it gave for doing so were arbitrary and capricious. She ordered HUD to implement the rule by January 1, 2018.

Under Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Department of Education has twice delayed implementation of the Borrower Defense Rule, a 2016 regulation designed to help students who have been defrauded by for-profit educational institutions discharge their federal student loans. In our amicus brief supporting borrower and state challenges to the delay, we argue that the Department violated the Administrative Procedure Act by arbitrarily disregarding the harms that the delays impose on student borrowers. We also submitted a comment letter to the agency regarding the second delay.

Our amicus brief to the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming defends the 2016 Bureau of Land Management’s “Waste Prevention Rule,” which is designed to limit methane waste from oil and gas production on public lands. In our brief, we show that the rule reasonably complied with BLM’s statutory duty to set waste-prevention rules that focus on private benefits to industry as well as on the health and environmental benefits of protecting natural public resources and the environment. We also argue that BLM’s approach to evaluating those health and environmental benefits of reducing methane emissions through the use of the Social Cost of Methane was reasonable and appropriate. The Social Cost of Methane is the best available metric for measuring damages from methane emissions. And it allowed BLM to set restrictions based on the global estimate of damages from methane emissions, which best advances U.S. interests and is consistent with BLM’s statutory mandate.

We submitted comments on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s environmental impact statement for potential offshore oil drilling and an undersea oil pipeline off Alaska’s northern coast. While expanded drilling in the Arctic presents many climate and public health concerns, BOEM did use the Social Cost of Carbon in assessing environmental impacts of the Liberty Development and Production Plan. Our comments encourage BOEM to continue using the best available methods for the Social Cost of Carbon in future environmental impacts statements, and we also recommended that BOEM use the Interagency Working Group’s Social Cost of Methane to quantify methane damages.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently paused certain requirements to reduce methane leaks and emissions from new oil and gas facilities. In its “notice of data availability” for the proposed stay, EPA claims that the compliance costs of reducing these emissions exceed the benefits to the public and to industry. Our comments argue that EPA manipulated economics to make this claim. EPA undervalued the social cost of methane emissions and claimed that the forgone benefits of the rule are only $5.4 to 23 million per year, when EPA’s original estimates said the rule would create public benefits of $140-180 million per year.

Federal agencies continue to request the public’s suggestions for rules to repeal or reform, tacitly implying that most regulations stifle economic growth. In comments to several agencies, we argue that regulatory review should consider the public benefits of regulation, not just the costs to regulated industries, and should prioritize review of rules for which actual costs and benefits diverge significantly from predicted costs and benefits. We also recommend that agencies develop prospective plans for regulatory review going forward. The agencies for which we recently filed comments include Small Business Administration, Department of Transportation, National Credit Union Administration, Food and Drug Administration, and Customs and Border Control Bureau.

The Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), an independent federal agency that recommends improvements to government processes and procedures, recently approved a set of recommendations from Policy Integrity’s Jason Schwartz concerning marketable permits. Marketable permits, in the appropriate context, are a powerful tool for achieving policy objectives more efficiently, by letting market participants buy and sell compliance obligations. But like all markets, permit markets require proper oversight to prevent market manipulation. The new recommendations adopted by ACUS provide agencies with best practices on structuring and overseeing marketable permit programs.

The Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corp of Engineers’ newest attempt to delay implementation of the Clean Water Rule adds an “applicability date” to the original rule. Our comments to EPA argue that this “applicability date” is effectively an administrative stay of the Rule, which the Agency has no authority to issue. Moreover, delaying implementation of the Clean Water Rule will have substantial negative economic consequences, as detailed in our report on the rule. And the agencies have not provided an adequate justification for imposing these costs on society.

New York State is carefully considering rate design reforms that could be adopted by utilities to provide efficient incentives for adoption of distributed energy resources. Studies on customer bill impacts of such rate design changes are necessarily going to be an important factor in moving forward. Our comments on the scope of bill impact studies emphasize that the effect on consumer bills is just one of the aspects to be considered when looking at rate design changes. In addition, we suggest that DPS give more guidance on the types of rate designs it’s considering, parameters used to model consumer behavior, and the time horizon that the studies cover.

Bethany Davis Noll, our litigation director, and Dr. Jeffrey Shrader, our economics fellow, participated in a Technical Conference on carbon pricing in New York wholesale markets, hosted by the New York State Department of Public Service and the New York Independent System Operator. Davis Noll participated in the roundtable discussion on how best to address any potential leakage, expressed our support for efforts to address the issue, and discussed the legal implications of any such efforts. Shrader participated in the roundtable discussion on revenue allocation, expressed our support for carbon pricing as the most economically efficient and technology neutral way of internalizing climate damages from greenhouse gases, and discussed that there are many ways to use the revenue based on policy priorities as long as the revenue allocation does not undo the incentives carbon pricing creates.