Bush Wants Sun to Set on Midnight Regulations

(By Keith Bendis -- Bloomberg News)

Several important and contentious rules are still in the pipeline. The Bush administration has not issued a final rule on how automakers should meet stricter fuel-economy requirements for cars and light trucks -- an issue of particular interest in a world of $4-a-gallon gas.

The Department of Transportation is supposed to update in July its 34-year-old standard for vehicle "roof crush resistance" to reduce the risk of injury and fatalities in rollover accidents.

Interest groups have their own priorities. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants the Environmental Protection Agency to issue an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking to fulfill an April 2007 Supreme Court ruling that the EPA consider regulating carbon dioxide as a contributor to climate change. Environmental groups oppose this approach.

William Kovacs, the Chamber of Commerce's vice president for regulatory affairs, said the interested parties need the time to comment, a period that is likely to stall any final decision during the remainder of the Bush administration.

The Grocery Manufacturers Association and other groups representing the food industry met with OMB and Agriculture Department officials on March 20 to try to lobby against disclosing the names of retailers affected by certain recalls of tainted meat or poultry products. The Department of Agriculture had issued the proposal in March 2006 to name the retailers.

Other important issues include whether the administration will exempt farms that raise large numbers of animals from having to get water pollution permits from the EPA, and whether it will determine how many hours a day truckers should be allowed to drive.

Peg Seminario, AFL-CIO safety and health director, predicted that the administration will find time to put new rules into effect to increase the financial disclosure requirements of unions.

Susan Dudley, a former Mercatus regulatory studies director who now heads OMB's office of regulatory review, fingered the Clinton administration as a big-time midnight regulator while she was at Mercatus.

"Like Cinderella leaving the ball, many of Clinton's 7,000 presidential appointees hurried to issue last-minute 'midnight' regulations before they turned back into ordinary citizens at noon on January 20," she wrote in the spring 2001 issue of Regulation, a magazine published by the libertarian Cato Institute.

De Rugy said Dudley "knows better than anyone" what a last-minute surge of rules implies, and "they are trying to avoid the label."

Cindy Skrzycki is a regulatory columnist with Bloomberg News. She can be reached atcskrzycki@bloomberg.net.