Time to Give Bootleggers the Boot!
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has an important and well-defined mission with broad public support. Too often, however, the Agency has sought to strengthen its position by aligning itself with politically powerful rent-seeking interests. My wish for the Agency on its fiftieth birthday is that it stays focused on its own mission and remembers that old adage: “Dilution is not the solution to pollution.”
The Federal Employee Paid Leave Act, enacted in 2019, allows several categories of federal employees to substitute up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave for the unpaid leave they are entitled to under the Family and Medical Leave Act. The substitution is permitted in connection with the birth, adoption, or foster care placement of a child with the employee. OPM’s interim final rule implements the legislation.
GSA unveiled a beta version of Regulations.gov, including a new API with a feature that allows users to submit comments on federal rulemakings through an API.
Unintended Consequences of GDPR
Recent studies explore the reasons for troubling and unintended consequence of GDPR on competition and market concentration.
The NTIA proposal includes several provisions that would narrow the scope of Internet intermediaries’ liability when they remove or restrict access to content provided by others. It would also require the intermediaries to disclose their content moderation policies in a form that is understandable by consumers and small businesses.
Improvements in SEC Economic Analysis
Several D.C. Circuit decisions that remanded regulations to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) between 2005 and 2011 provide a natural experiment that permits researchers to identify the correlation between judicial review, the quality of regulatory agencies’ economic analysis, and its use in regulatory decisions. SEC economic analysis improved substantially following the issuance of new staff guidance on economic analysis in 2012.
Mass, Computer-Generated, and Fraudulent Comments
The Administrative Conference of the United States requested proposals for a new project on “Mass, Computer-Generated, and Fraudulent Comments."
The public comment process offers a way to place evidence in an agency’s record that it might not otherwise consider, such as race-related effects.
Analyzing Agency Budgets for Regulatory Spending
This Regulatory Insight analyzes four Trump administration budget proposals to identify notable recurring trends in regulatory spending. Budget data indicate that spending on homeland security regulation has risen, while outlays for environment and energy regulation have fallen. Comparing the president’s budget proposals with actual outlays suggests where the administration has been largely successful in accomplishing its political goals and where Congress has hindered those goals.
OMB's original guidance on discounting from 1988 can help to resolve many misunderstandings about discounting that have developed since then.
