|
CNS
News
GAO:
35% of Major Federal Regulations Were
Issued Without Public Notice
February 8, 2013
By Matt Cover
(CNSNews.com)
– According to the Government
Accountability Office (GAO), 35 percent of major federal regulations –
those
with at least $100 billion in annual economic impact – were issued
without a
public notice from 2003 to 2010.
The
GAO also said that 44 percent of non-major
regulations were issued without a public notice, which is referred to
as a
Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM).
“During
calendar years 2003 through 2010,
agencies published 568 major rules and about 30,000 nonmajor rules,”
the GAO
said in a December report to Congress. “[Federal] agencies published
about 35
percent of major rules and about 44 percent of nonmajor rules without
an NPRM
during those years.”
The
GAO found a large spike in this practice
under President Barack Obama, with the percentage of major rules issued
without
public notice jumping from 26 percent in 2008 to 40 percent in 2009.
The number
of major rules issued this way also hit a high point in both 2009 and
2010.
(Obama’s first year in office as president began in January 2009.)
“In
particular, from 2008 to 2009, the
percentage of major rules without an NPRM increased from 26 percent to
40
percent,” reported the GAO. “Agencies
issued the largest numbers of major rules without an NPRM in 2009 and
2010 (34
in each year), though the percentage was higher in 2009 than in 2010.”
The
Obama administration also drastically
increased the use of so-called interim final rules. These rules are
effective
immediately and issued without public notice but often allow public
comment
once they are issued. Interim final rules differ from the normal
federal
rulemaking process in that they skip the normal notice-and-comment
period in
favor of simply issuing final regulations immediately, with the
possibility
that the rule can be changed later.
From
2003 to 2010, the GAO found that about 47
percent of all rules without an NPRM were interim rules.
The
GAO found a spike in such immediate
rulemaking under the Obama administration, jumping from about 11
percent of
federal rules in 2008 to 13 percent in 2009 to 22 percent in 2010.
Some
of the regulations the GAO found that had
been issued without public notice have been some of the most
controversial
rules issued in the past several years, including the Obama
administration’s
moratorium on offshore drilling, its Cash for Clunkers program, its
rule that
adult children up to age 26 could remain on their parents’ health
insurance,
and the rules for the TARP bank bailout program begun under former
President
George W. Bush and continued under President Obama.
Read
the rest of the article at CNS News
|
