Washington's Surprisingly Flexible Rulemakers

A common perception of regulators in Washington is that they are rule-crazy, intent on churning out directives that restrict industry while loath to examine the costs and effects.

Not so, says a recent Government Accountability Office report, which finds that federal agencies review and change their work more than commonly thought, though the public often doesn't know about it.

"The big thing we saw was the amount of discretionary reviews done by agencies, and little awareness of them," said Mathew Scire, director of strategic issues at the GAO, the investigative arm of Congress.

The report, requested by two Republican members of Congress, is the first measurement of the Bush administration's efforts to use rule reviews to reduce the regulatory burden on business.

Auditors found that from 2001 to 2006, nine agencies conducted 1,300 reviews of existing regulations while they were issuing almost 12,000 new rules -- about half the federal bureaucracy's total for the period. The agencies included the Labor, Agriculture and Transportation departments and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Business groups want rules reexamined if they are costly or duplicative and have been pushing the idea of periodic reviews under Democratic and Republican administrations. The results aren't always what the industries have in mind.

"It's very narrow," William Kovacs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs, said of the typical review effort. "It's about implementation, not 'What am I trying to achieve?' " The report found that reviews are most often prompted by petitions from industry groups, which cite financial burdens or structural, market or technology changes in their fields.

For example, the egg industry made several requests for changes in a 2000 Food and Drug Administration rule requiring safe-handling instructions on egg cartons to prevent food poisoning. It cited financial hardship.

The final rule, issued Aug. 20, puts the safety information on the inside of the carton.

Congress often builds reviews into the laws it passes. The Federal Communications Commission and the EPA have review deadlines for many of their rules.

The Bush administration's Office of Management and Budget, which reviews major rules, asked regulated interests three times to suggest what needed to be overhauled or discarded. The majority of the responses came from business.

At the Labor Department, 42 of the 60 rules reviewed between from 2001 to 2004 were on requests from the OMB. The White House was even more interested in EPA rules, suggesting 116 of the 156 rules that were reevaluated. In contrast, the OMB instigated only 17 of 531 Agriculture Department reviews.