Agencies Release Preliminary Plans for Retrospective Reviews

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"There is a concern about allocation of agency resources. Many of the plans discuss multi-year processes for retrospective reviews. This comes at a time that Congress is cutting regulatory agency budgets. The result is likely to mean that the more agencies look back, the less they will be able to look forward. Americans demand more from their government to protect them from harm."

On May 26, a wide range of federal agencies released 30 preliminary plans outlining steps each intends to take to meet requirements for reviewing existing regulations, reducing burdens on business, and expanding public participation in the rulemaking process. The plans are part of the Obama administration's efforts to examine ways to reduce regulatory costs and identify outdated and ineffective rules.

President Obama issued Executive Order 13563 (E.O. 13563), Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review, on Jan. 18. The executive order directed federal agencies to develop and submit preliminary plans to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) by May 18.

The plans meet the requirement in section 6(b) of E.O. 13563 for each agency to identify how it "will periodically review its existing significant regulations to determine whether any such regulations should be modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed so as to make the agency's regulatory program more effective or less burdensome in achieving the regulatory objectives."

In announcing the public release of the preliminary plans at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, OIRA Administrator Cass Sunstein described the retrospective review effort as an attempt to change the regulatory culture of Washington by concentrating on cost-effective rules based on evidence of what works. The overall intent of the effort, he said, is to focus on burden reduction and cost savings. He indicated that this review is expected to save "hundreds of millions of dollars in annual regulatory burdens."

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