Regulatory Delay: Why It Took OSHA 25 Years to Promulgate a Construction Safety Rule
OSHA has finally promulgated a Confined Spaces in Construction rule. The agency waited 25 years after it had issued an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) to issue a rule. Administrative law academics have been concerned for some time about the ossification of rulemaking due to a set of regulatory hurdles imposed by regulatory opponents. Proponents say these hurdles are necessary to ensure the accuracy and reasonableness of regulations, but they also deny workers and others of regulatory protection for years and years — a quarter century in this case. In short, perfection has become the enemy of the good, a pattern that has real consequences for the workers who depend on OSHA to issue rules in a timely way.
A history of tying up rules to protect construction workers in confined spaces has plagued the agency for decades. For example, in March 1980, OSHA issued an ANPR that posed 31 questions concerning the multiple hazards for construction workers that can occur in confined spaces. One concerned workers who die or are injured in excavation or trenching construction. In June 1989, OSHA separately issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) for a general industry confined spaces rule, which was adopted as …
Unless you’re living under a rock or are a FIFA executive official being indicted for criminal conspiracy, you’ve no doubt heard by now that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has at long last released its final rule establishing a clear regulatory definition that, consistent with both the previous court decisions and the best available science, delineates which water systems are covered by the Clean Water Act. The rule was included in a recent CPR Issue Alert, highlighting 13 essential regulatory actions that the Obama Administration should commit to completing during its remaining time in office.
The rule would seem to provide everything that conservative opponents of regulation would want: regulatory certainty and efficient use of agency funds (i.e., by preventing the EPA from having to undertake wasteful case-by-case analyses of which water bodies warrant federal protection). Yet, it has been a lightning rod of …
Perhaps as soon as this week, according to media reports, the Army Corps of Engineers and EPA will release a final "Waters of the United States" rule clarifying the scope of federal regulatory jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act. Simultaneously, Congress is considering multiple bills that would block the new rule and undo portions of the Clean Water Act. There are many reasons for the opposition, but one key argument is grounded in federalism. According to the Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, chief author of the Senate bill (as quoted in Saturday’s New York Times):
"This rule is not designed to protect the traditional waters of the United States. It is designed to expand the power of Washington bureaucrats."
This is a familiar refrain. Politicians say similar things to oppose all sorts of governmental initiatives, ranging from the Common Core educational standards to the Affordable Care Act …
The Wall Street Journal recently devoted nearly two pages of its Saturday Review section to an editorial by Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute urging American corporations to violate laws that they deem to be “pointless, stupid or tyrannical” as acts of civil disobedience. The article, which is a capsule summary of his recently published book titled By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission,” betrays a profound misunderstanding of the concept of civil disobedience and a deplorable contempt for the laws that Congress and state legislatures have enacted to protect their citizens from corporate malfeasance.
This is, of course, the same Charles Murray who has made millions of dollars writing poorly documented books like The Bell Curve and Losing Ground, which were designed to allow conservative politicians to feel good about reducing welfare for the poor, limiting immigration from Latin America, and eliminating …
This past Sunday, the Houston Chronicle published an opinion piece by CPR Scholar and University of Maryland Carey School of Law professor Rena Steinzor entitled, "With Dupont, OSHA's Tough Talk Falls Faint."
Steinzor recounts the chemical giant's negligence and reckless disregard for safety which ultimately led to the deaths of workers Gilbert and Robert Tisnado, Wade Baker and Crystle Wise.
She takes OSHA to account for the small penalties the agency levied against Dupont and notes, "Despite ample evidence that gross and reckless neglect of fundamental safety protocols caused the tragedy, OSHA could only muster alleged violations totaling $99,000 in civil penalties, an amount that DuPont could pay out of petty cash. Penalties this small relative to a company's size and revenues do not deter future misconduct by DuPont or its competitors. Instead, they are written off as a mere cost of doing …
It’s been almost 10 years now since Hurricane Katrina unleashed its fury on the Gulf Coast, setting in motion a massive failure of New Orleans’s flood-control system. More than 1,800 people lost their lives when Army Corps of Engineers-designed levees around New Orleans failed, allowing water to engulf the city.
What followed the levee failures was something not seen in an American city in a very long time. In addition to the huge loss of life, Americans outside the region watched on television as the city suffered more than $100 billion in property damage; massive and ill-organized evacuations; and the sight of thousands of Americans trapped in the squalor of the New Orleans Superdome for days, while their government demonstrated just how badly it was prepared for such a disaster. It was a slow-moving, man-made disaster, as CPR observed in a report issued a …
In her first major criminal settlement since becoming Attorney General, Loretta Lynch has delivered, trussed and on a platter, five of the world’s biggest banks—Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Barclays, Royal Bank of Scotland, and UBS. The five will actually plead guilty to specific crimes involving manipulation of foreign currency markets and will pay close to $6 billion in penalties for illegally collaborating to drive trading prices up and down. As one not-so-bright bank executive pronounced slyly in an online chat room that the self-named “cartel” used to communicate, “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying.”
Although the settlements send a strong message to future cheaters, the striking thing about the announcement was that the new Attorney General extracted something truly unusual: guilty pleas from these large corporations. Her predecessor, Eric Holder, famously settled time and again for “deferred prosecution agreements,” no matter how egregious …
Whether you are a frequent visitor to your local nail salon, or just an occasional passer-by, you are likely familiar with the offending chemical stench that emanates from within. You may have even considered whether the displeasing fumes are safe to breath, especially for the clinicians who work in the store every day. This is exactly what New York Times reporter, Sarah Maslin Nir, explores in her recent exposé of the nail salon industry entitled, “Perfect Nails, Poisoned Workers.”
Nir explains that there is limited research on chemical exposure to nail salon workers, which makes it difficult to reach hard conclusions on the long-term or accumulated health effects. Yet first-hand accounts of workers in the industry reveal that skin and eye irritation, breathing difficulty, and pregnancy complications are commonplace, and there is substantial data showing that the chemicals used by nail salon workers (like acetone, formaldehyde, and …
The major oil pipeline spills along the Santa Barbara coast and into the Yellowstone River in Montana this past year are only the most recent chapters in the growing list of major spills associated with oil transportation in the United States. These recent spills of 100,000 gallons and 50,000 gallons of oil, respectively, follow a nearly 1 million gallon spill of Canadian tar sands oil from an Enbridge pipeline that burst in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010, and other similar spills around the country. These spills and many others like them have resulted in significant harm to public health and the environment, created panic among residents, and forced state officials to declare states of emergency in affected area.
These more frequent pipeline spills are inevitable in light of the massive increases in oil and gas production in North America since 2007. Technological developments …
Recently, the Chesapeake Bay Commission released a report Healthy Livestock, Healthy Streams to advocate for stream fencing, one of several dozen longstanding agricultural best management practices (BMPs) recognized by the Chesapeake Bay Program. Promoting stream fencing is common sense: when livestock loiter near streams, they compact soil, clearing a path for runoff; when they enter the stream, they erode its bank and send sediment into the channel; and when nature calls, they deposit “nutrients” directly into the stream. It is not just bad for aquatic habitats, it is bad for farmers and their vet bills.
Despite significant reductions over the past 30 years in nutrient and sediment loading from agricultural sources, the share of these pollutants from the agriculture sector has remained remarkably consistent, contributing, for example, 45% of the nitrogen to the watershed in both 1985 and 2014. However, the Bay TMDL calls for the agriculture …
