by Michael A. Livermore
Some small hope has been renewed for a climate change bill
out of Congress this year. But if the
legislative process fails to produce a law, Obama’s regulatory levers will
become more and more important—and how they evaluate new rules will come under
scrutiny.
So is it a problem that industry groups are meeting with key
regulatory officials in the White House in much bigger numbers than
environmentalists?
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is the
powerful behind-the-scenes agency that review cost-benefit analyses of major
environmental regulations like CAFE standards or coal ash regulation. Before
rules like these are put into action OIRA reviews agency analysis to see if the
rule is economically beneficial.
A quick scan of OIRA’s public meeting records shows
that, since President Obama took office, industry and trade associations have
held many more meetings with OIRA than advocacy NGOs or unions-something like eight
times as many.
If OIRA were turning down greens in favor of business
interests, this would be a major cause for concern. But, according to the folks in that office,
they take every meeting requested to discuss regulations under review. That means the reason for the lopsided
meeting log is a lack of requests from groups working for stronger protections.
Some progressive groups see OIRA as a major problem. Some even point to the imbalanced meeting
docket with suspicions of a biased OIRA.
And it is true that over the past thirty years, the office has been
known to use cost-benefit analysis in a biased way. The book “Retaking
Rationality” outlines the ways the office has been used to unfairly slow
down or block new rules, and push through deregulation.
But there are good reasons to think that under President
Obama, and his OIRA Administrator Cass Sunstein, OIRA is singing a different
tune. Recent evidence is here,
here and here.
For many regulations, when economic analysis is applied
without bias, the numbers come out on the side of public interest. Used fairly, it is a powerful tool for
environmentalists.
But this tool can’t achieve anything if environmentalists
are afraid to use it. While it is
understandable for groups to feel discouraged by past misuse of cost-benefit
analysis, they should make sure they are not giving industry a leg up in the
regulatory process with a new administration.
Under President Clinton, green groups missed a major opportunity to
reshape how cost-benefit analysis is used by failing to engage in the process-a
look at the past year shows that we are in danger of history repeating itself.
Over the next months we will learn whether Congress as an
institution is up to tackling climate change.
If it is not, more energy will be channeled into the regulatory
process. That will mean that industry
interests will continue to dump resources into pressuring the Administration,
including OIRA. If environmentalists
want to have more success with regulation than they are currently having in
Congress, they cannot let good opportunities to influence the process pass them
by. Instead, greens should be taking an
opportunity to gain ground: they should work with OIRA to forge an unbiased
cost-benefit analysis while they can.
And that starts with setting up some meetings.
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