The last 100 days: midnight regulations

The Office of Management and Budget is burning oil – midnight oil, that is. They’re lucky it’s fairly cheap these days.

They’re working overtime to review a trainload of proposed rule changes that have been submitted by a variety of agencies in the twilight of the Bush Administration.

Late last spring, I flagged in this blog a memo issued by White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten to regulatory agencies advising them to pull together any proposed rule changes they might wish to pursue by June 1, with an aim toward making them final by November 1. This, Mr. Bolten explained, was to avoid a mad dash for midnight regulations -- those last-minute tweaks to federal rules made in the final weeks and months of a departing administration. The memo made an exception for “extraordinary circumstances” -- of course.

OMB Watch, a nonprofit group monitoring the activities of the White House Office of Management and Budget, reports that apparently there are a lot of “extraordinary circumstances.”

The Washington Post recently reported that as many as 90 new regulations are in play -- and many of them appear aimed at easing environmental rules governing everything from commercial fishing to power production.

Two rules that are of particular interest are those that would ease limits on pollution from power plants. One rule, which is facing some opposition within the Environmental Protection Agency, would allow current emissions at a power plant to match the highest levels produced by that plant, overturning a rule that more strictly limits such emission increases. According to the EPA’s estimate, the rule would result in millions of tons of additional carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere annually, worsening global warming.

A related regulation would ease limits on emissions from coal-fired power plants near national parks.

A third rule would allow increased emissions from oil refineries, chemical factories and other industrial plants with complex manufacturing operations.

Rulemaking is where the rubber truly hits the road in terms of enforcement (or lack thereof) of legislation. It’s where laws are either given muscle or where they are cannibalized. Midnight regulations are nothing new, of course, and every recent administration has used them to leave their mark and a set of challenges for the incoming regime. It is interesting to note that the Clinton administration went out with a bang by pushing through many last minute regulations that were aimed at strengthening environmental regulations and reducing greenhouse emissions.

What You Can Do

OMB Watch has compiled an extensive list of these midnight regulations, including environmental ones. For those rules that still have open comment periods, you can still have an impact: Go to Regulations.gov, search for any of the rules listed here or on the OMB Watch page that still have open comment periods, and let the agencies know what you think. You can also contact your elected representatives and senators and give them your thoughts on the proposed rule(s).

Our allies at Clean Water Action are running two campaigns around two specific rules:

• Keep perchlorate out of our drinking water: The EPA has declined to regulate perchlorate (an ingredient in rocket fuel) in our drinking water.
  
  
• Tell the EPA to Act to Cut Global Warming Pollution: The EPA has been forced by the courts to begin the rulemaking process for greenhouse gases.

Even if the proposed rule(s) succeeds in becoming regulation(s), urge your representatives in the 111th Congress to work to overturn the regulation(s) or nullify through legislation.

Rules are not written in stone or in indelible ink. We can do something about the ones that threaten to weaken environmental protection and exacerbate global warming. As with most aspects of active democracy, we need only to pay attention and engage.