OIRA

A funny thing happened this week when President Obama’s regulatory czar, Howard Shelanski, was called to testify before Congress. The subject of the hearing: transparency at Shelanski’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). On the eve of the hearing, OIRA tried to fool us by pretending to be transparent. For the last several months, I’ve been routinely checking OIRA’s website for notations about meetings the staff has held with individuals or organizations which have an interest in particular pending OSHA regulations. I knew meetings with particular groups had taken place, but…

Cross-posted from CPRBlog by James Goodwin In case you didn’t get the memo:  President Obama is entering the last year of his final term in office, so now we’re all supposed to be panicking over a dreaded phenomenon known as “midnight regulations.”  According to legend, midnight rulemaking takes place when outgoing administrations rush out a bunch of regulations during their last few days in order to burnish their legacy or make concrete several of their policy priorities in ways that would be difficult for a successor—presumably from a different party—to undo.  The legend further holds that…

Earlier this month, a few dozen individuals and organizations submitted comments to OSHA on its proposed rule to protect beryllium-exposed workers. The lightweight and super strong metal is associated with lung cancer and causes chronic beryllium disease. I've spent some time browsing through many of the submissions and there was one that especially caught my attention. It came from the business consulting group ORCHSE Strategies, LLC. What had me looking twice at the firm's comments was not their views on this provision or that provision. It was something else. ORCHSE Strategies called out…

OSHA announced today that it is proposing a health standard to protect workers who are exposed to beryllium. Exposure to the lightweight but super strong metal causes a debilitating illness called chronic beryllium disease (CBD) and lung cancer. The proposed rule is coming about, in part, because of an effort by those who will be most affected by an OSHA beryllium regulation: the nation’s primary beryllium manufacturer, Materion, and the United Steelworkers (USW). They engaged in two years of negotiations to agree on key provisions of a regulation. In February 2012, they submitted their…

(Updated below (5/1/2015)) There’s a lot of griping in Washington DC about businesses being burdened by too many federal regulations. The gripers and their friends on Capitol Hill have introduced legislation with snappy names, such as the SCRUB Act (Searching for and Cutting Regulations that are Unnecessarily Burdensome), the REINS Act (Regulations from the Executive in Need of Scrutiny) and the ALERT Act (All Economic Regulations are Transparent). But there's no doubt these laws are designed to put the skids on the rulemaking process. For some agencies, including OSHA, they’ve already been…

It’s a rare thing on Capitol Hill when a member of the Administration is on the hot seat from both sides of the aisle. But that’s what happened on Tuesday when President Obama’s regulatory czar, Howard Shelanski, JD, PhD, testified at a joint hearing of two subcommittees of the House Committee on Oversight & Government Reform. The Republican Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) and Ranking Member Gerry Connolly (D-VA) and other subcommittee members, peppered him with questions about OIRA’s lack of transparency in numerous arenas. Their motivations were different, but they were equally tough in…

I took a little time this week to review the regulatory agenda of worker health and safety initiatives which was issued by the Labor Department. The November 21 document contains a mixed bag of unaddressed workplace hazards and slipped deadlines, as well as a few new topics for possible regulatory action. The fault for some of the slipped deadlines falls right on the doorstep of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), for example, has been working on a rule that would require machines used in coal mines to cut…

Just before Memorial Day---the kickoff of the summer season---the Obama Administration released its agenda for upcoming regulatory action. In the worker safety world of OSHA, “regulatory action” rarely means a new regulation. Rather, it refers to a step along the long, drawn-out process to (maybe) a new rule to protect workers from occupational injuries, illnesses or deaths. The items identified by the Labor Department suggested that OSHA planned a productive summer of 2014. Here’s what OSHA outlined for its summer tasks. In May 2014: Convene a meeting of small business representatives to…

For 17 years, Salvadora Roman deboned chickens on the processing line at Wayne Farms in Decatur, Alabama. In particular, she deboned the left side of the chicken — a task she was expected to perform on three chickens each minute during her eight-hour shift. Because of the repetitive movement and speed of the processing line, Roman developed a chronic and painful hand injury that affects her ability to do even the most basic household chores. About three years ago, she was fired from the plant for taking time off work to visit a doctor for the injury she sustained on the line. “My hand started…

[Updated: 3 hours after I posted it. See below] Black lung----now referred to by experts as coal mine dust lung disease (CMDLD)--- was back in the news last week courtesy of the Pulitzer Prize. The Center for Public Integrity’s Chris Hamby received the prestigious recognition for his reporting on the steep hurdles faced by coal miners who seek black lung disability compensation. Hamby's piece focused on the back end of the problem. On the front end is preventing CMDLD in the first place. Coal miners wouldn’t have to maneuver the legal obstacle course for disability benefits if CMDLD became a…

(Update below (1/10/2014)) Obama’s “regulatory tsunami” is the term used by the US Chamber of Commerce to describe an expected flood of new regulations. Their message to the business community is that the floodgates will soon open and all of them will drown in red tape. The Chamber’s president Tom Donohue said it last month in a speech, and he’s been saying it for years. But him saying it, and us seeing it are two different things. In the worker health and safety world, there’s been no tsunami. For Obama’s first five years, it’s been more like a slow drip at the kitchen faucet. Remember, this…

This week will mark the 90-day point of the Labor Department submitting for White House review one of its top priority regulations to protect coal miners' health. It's a rule to prevent black lung disease. The director of the office that conducts those reviews, Howard Shelanski, promised earlier this year during his confirmation hearing that timely review of agencies' regulations would be a top priority. Mr. Shelanski said: “I absolutely share the concern you just raised about timeliness. ...I recognized that EO 12866 establishes the initial 90 day review process, and it would be one of my…

Roger R. King, 62, in West Virginia. Robert Smith, 47, in Illinois. Mark Christopher Stassinos, 44, in Wyoming.  Larry Schwartz, 59, in Indiana. Four coal miners, working in four different States, employed by four different mining companies, all fatally injured on the job during the first eleven days of the government shutdown.  King was employed at CONSOL's McElroy mine, Smith at Alliance Resources' Pattiki mine, Stassinos at PacifiCorp's Bridger mine, and Schwartz at Five Star Mining's Prosperity Mine. I didn’t learn of these deaths from anything posted on the Mine Safety and Health…

The Environmental Defense Fund and the Environmental Working Group (EWG) both reported last week (here, here) on the Obama Administration’s decision to withdraw two actions being proposed under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA).   Chemical manufacturers strongly opposed the measures.  Now, advocates of environmental protection, public health and chemical right-to-know really are exasperated with the sheepish manner the Obama Administration behaves when pressed by powerful interests. “It seems like a lifetime ago that the Obama Administration came to power and immediately ramped up the…

As Liz Borkowski noted yesterday, we are following up on a tradition that we started last year to mark Labor Day.  We released our second annual review of U.S. occupational health and safety for Labor Day 2013. Liz explained in her post our objectives in preparing the report.  She also highlighted its first section which profiles some of the best research from the year published in both peer-reviewed journals and by non-profit organizations.  Here’s a peek at section two of the report on activities at the federal level: Sequestration and other budget cuts have affected our worker protection…

President Obama's regulatory czar, Howard Shelanski, has been on the job for a month.  During his confirmation hearing Shelanski expressed his commitment to transparency.  He suggested it was one of his key priorities within the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) which is housed within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  As noted, however, by CPR scholar Sidney Shapiro and his colleague James Goodwin, OIRA has a long history of secrecy with respect to its role in the centralized review of agencies' regulatory activities.  Many in the open-government…

After more than 900 days of "review" by the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), OSHA announced it was publishing a proposed rule to protect workers who are exposed to respirable crystalline silica.  It's a workplace hazard that causes the irreversible and progressive lung disease silicosis, and is also associated with lung cancer, autoimmune disorders and kidney disease.  About 2.2 million workers are exposed to the fine dust in their jobs, many of which are employed in the construction industry.  I've been writing here for about two years on the need for a…

Here we go again.  Worker killed on-the-job.  The employer decides---after the fact----it would be smart to install a piece of safety equipment that likely would have prevented the death.  That's what happened after coal miner John Houston "Hollywood" Myles, 44, was killed on-the-job. Myles worked at the Metinvest's Affinity Mine in Raleigh County, WV.  The veteran of Operation Desert Storm (1991) had worked as a coal miner for a total of four years, one of which at the Affinity mine.  On February 19, 2013, Myles was shoveling loose coal and material from the mine floor.  In an adjacent entry…

Finally!  After far too much hullabaloo about the cost of regulations, there was a U.S. Senate hearing today on why public health regulations are important, and how delays by Congress and the Administration have serious negative consequences for people's lives.  Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called the hearing entitled "Justice Delayed: The Human Cost of Regulatory Paralysis," the first one conducted by the Senate Judiciary Committee's newly created Subcommittee on Oversight, Federal Rights and Agency Action.  The witnesses included a parent-turned advocate for automobile safety, AFL-CIO…

Employers in British Columbia's (BC) construction industry recognized that workers were exposed to respirable silica and other rock dust.  What they needed was a standard from the province's  worker safety regulatory body on how to identify and control the hazard.  The BC Construction Association, which represents 2,500 companies and the Council of Construction Associations (COCA) formally requested a standard on silica to fill the regulatory gap. In BC, worker safety regulations are proposed and adopted through their Workers' Compensation Board, part of WorkSafeBC.  Earlier this month, the…