Mission Critical: Under New Regulatory Czar Shelanski, OIRA Must Begin to Affirmatively Help Reinvigorate the Regulatory System

Welcome aboard, Administrator Shelanski. You're already well into your first week on the job as the head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). You've already received plenty of valuable advice - during your confirmation hearing and from the pages of this blog, among other places - on how you can transform OIRA's role in the regulatory system so that it's not a continued impediment to effective government. For example, many have urged you to end the pattern of long-overdue reviews at OIRA (at last count, 72 of the 137 rules undergoing review are past the 90-day limit provided for in Executive Order 12866), to improve transparency of OIRA's reviews so that decision-makers can be held publicly accountable for changes they make to pending safeguards, and to restrict the use of cost-benefit analysis as a means for justifying the dilution of safeguards so that they are weaker than what applicable law requires. These practices not only leave the public inadequately protected against unreasonable risks; they also amount to a kind of usurpation of the public will by thwarting the effective and timely implementation of laws enacted through the constitutionally-defined legislative process that is central to our unique republican form of government. Yes, transforming OIRA so that it is not objectively "bad" is an important start. But now I would like to urge you to think bigger and bolder. In particular, I would like you to re-imagine OIRA's role in the regulatory system so that it operates as a positive force for "good." In this new role, OIRA would actively support the efforts of protector agencies - such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) - to achieve the statutory missions that Congress has assigned to them in a vigorous, timely, effective, and wise manner. As you continue to settle into your new job, I encourage you to think about how OIRA can start taking the following affirmative steps: