Trump's EPA Budget Plan Would Harm Many Everyday Americans
Imagine that a hostile foreign power covertly manipulated our democracy and government to impose on Florida and other coastal states heightened risks of catastrophic sea level rise and an intensification of hurricanes, floods, droughts, and diseases carried by insects and parasites. Suppose, too, that the same foreign government then set about to demolish the work of American institutions that prevent serious diseases and avoidable deaths to our people. Without doubt, we would regard those acts as threats to our national security. That's just how we should regard Donald Trump's proposal for a 31-percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) budget.
EPA's statutory obligations, as assigned by Congress, have increased significantly in recent years. Yet its budget has been steadily reduced by Congress over the past two decades. Its inflation-adjusted operating funds are now at the same level as they were in 1979. Its workforce has shrunk from 18,000 employees in 1999 to fewer than 15,000 today. Now the Trump administration proposes to lay off 3,200 more EPA employees in 2018.
The president's budget calls for zero dollars to fund the agency's work to combat or even measure climate change – a worsening …
Late last Thursday, the Small Business Administration's (SBA) Office of Advocacy announced that it was soliciting proposals for "small business research" projects. The solicitation – and particularly the category of topics that the SBA Office of Advocacy has selected for potential research projects – offers one of the first clues on how this obscure but powerful office is likely to operate under the Trump administration.
The SBA Office of Advocacy is a small and unusual office within the federal government that up until a few years ago largely flew under the radar. The singular event that brought them to broader attention among policymakers, the press, and members of the public interested in the U.S. regulatory system? Its sponsorship of a now-infamous piece of anti-safeguards propaganda that was produced in response to a solicitation of small business research just like the one from last Thursday.
In 2010, the …
No one is safe from the effects of climate change. That's the key takeaway from a March report by nearly a dozen highly respected medical organizations that studied the link between climate change and risks to our health. And these aren't far-off impacts or theoretical dangers: human-driven climate change is already making people sick.
Here's just one example: A woman in southwestern Pennsylvania who had never heard of Lyme disease saw five of her friends contract the illness in recent years because of warmer weather that led to a longer season for blacklegged (deer) ticks. She has since had her dog vaccinated against the disease and checks her children for ticks on a regular basis.
It's not just people in blacklegged tick country who are at risk for negative health impacts related to climate change and its causes. Low-income communities and communities of …
Originally published by the George Washington Law Review
How should a court assessing a regulatory takings claim define the "property" allegedly taken to assess the degree of the economic impact the regulation has on it? That question has plagued the Supreme Court for nearly a century, with different and conflicting answers emerging, sometimes in relatively rapid succession. In Murr v. Wisconsin,1 the Court has provided its most comprehensive answer to the so-called "denominator" question so far, although even the analytical framework the Court provides leaves ample room for refinement in future cases.
Not until 1922 did the Supreme Court clearly establish that the Fifth Amendment's prohibition on the taking of property without just compensation (which applies to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment) applies to regulations as well as physical intrusions and compelled transfers of title. The case in which it did so provided its …
Earlier this week, Axios and Greenwire ($) reported that international oil behemoth BP is bringing on a new lobbyist to work on "regulatory reform advocacy related to Federal energy and environmental rules," as described in the required lobbying disclosure statement. That in itself is hardly news. What makes this story remarkable is who the lobbyist is, or in this case, was. Nathan Frey, who appears to be the only partner with the lobbying firm Regulatory Strategies and Solutions Group, used to be on the staff at the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).
Regular readers of this blog know by now that OIRA plays a powerful role in the regulatory system. A series of executive orders stretching back to the Reagan administration requires executive branch agencies to submit their biggest and most important rules to OIRA for centralized review. Agencies cannot proceed with proposing or …
As appalling as the first five months of the Trump presidency have been to those of us who care about public policy and good government, we can't claim to be surprised. As Hillary Clinton memorably explained to historians last summer in Philadelphia, "There is no other Donald Trump. This is it."
But what has been a surprise is how bad this Congress has been at legislating. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are hardly newbies to the Washington scene or the political process. In particular, McConnell is the quintessential political insider: He's not much of a spokesman and is not known as an "ideas guy." But he knows the rules of the Senate, has built relationships with his Republican colleagues, knows how to wield power, and because he feels no need to be popular outside of Kentucky, he is willing to do things that are unpopular …
Originally published on Environmental Law Prof Blog by CPR Member Scholar Dave Owen.
EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers just released a proposal to repeal the Clean Water Rule and to return to previous regulations. The Clean Water Rule (also known as the WOTUS Rule) would have clarified the scope of federal regulatory jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. It was one of the Obama administration's signature environmental initiatives, and it was one of candidate and then President Trump's signature targets. So the emergence of this proposal is no surprise. Nevertheless, the contents of the new document are surprising in several ways.
First, I'm not sure I have ever seen a notice of proposed rulemaking that makes so little effort to justify the rule it adopts. EPA and the Corps seem to have offered two, and only two, justifications for switching from the newer regulations to …
This post originally appeared on the Maryland Clean Agriculture Coalition's website.
All month long, MCAC has been highlighting the Bay cleanup plan, also known as the Bay TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load), in order to keep track of the progress that is, or isn't, happening within the Bay watershed to reduce pollution. We recently chatted with Evan Isaacson, policy analyst at the Center for Progressive Reform, about tracking the progress of the Bay TMDL, what more states should be doing and how citizens can get involved in the fight for clean water.
How Bay States are Progressing
Isaacson says that according to the latest modelling from the Bay Program, the bay states as a whole region remain far off track to meet both the 2017 midpoint and 2025 final pollution reduction targets.
"If we want to have any hope of restoring the Bay, we're …
Last fall, the Senate directed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to contract with the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) to conduct an independent study on affordability of municipal investments in water infrastructure. As someone who spent several years within the halls of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, I was honored to contribute to NAPA's research efforts by responding to a survey with suggestions for public administrators and communities struggling to meet the challenges caused by massive underinvestment in water infrastructure and the growing threats that poses to public health and water quality.
The specific questions that NAPA has been charged with answering are difficult. Over the years, EPA has developed an ever-evolving set of guidance documents with an increasing degree of complexity for state and federal regulators and the regulated community of municipal agencies and water utilities. A certain degree …
Today, Neomi Rao is likely to take one step closer to becoming the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) – that is, the Trump administration's "regulatory czar" – with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee expected to favorably report her nomination to the Senate floor for a final confirmation vote.
As detailed in an April 2017 CPR report on her nomination, Rao would arrive at her new position with little substantive expertise related to OIRA's work. (Evidently, her demonstrated commitment to the prevailing conservative anti-regulatory orthodoxy was the only real qualification that was needed.) But Rao still has some time to brush up on the big issues she will face as OIRA Administrator, and at the top her reading list should be The Twin Demons of the Trump-Bannon Assault on Democracy, a new report out today from Center for Progressive Reform …
