On Nov. 14, a panel of regulatory experts released a report calling for significant changes to the federal regulatory process. The recommendations are directed to President-elect Obama and the new Congress and are designed to achieve a more effective, efficient, and timely process that is now burdened with excessive requirements and assessments.

The report, Advancing the Public Interest through Regulatory Reform: Recommendations for President-Elect Obama and the 111th Congress, outlines many of the problems that afflict the regulatory process and calls for specific actions to resolve those problems. The recommendations are both short term, urging immediate steps in the first 100 days of Obama's administration, and ongoing, such as recommending changes to statutes that impact how federal agencies develop public protections.

The report identifies numerous symptoms of the problems with a regulatory process that "no longer adequately protects the public." The symptoms include "the crises in the housing and financial sectors; mine and crane collapses; contaminants in consumer products like toothpaste and pet food; contamination of spinach, jalapeños, meat, and other foods; dangerous chemicals used in popular medicines; and the exploitation of our public lands and natural resources." In addition, agencies are understaffed, require significantly more resources to respond to the challenges they face, and are required to perform a wide range of analyses, some of which are unrelated to the goal of producing effective regulations.

Among the high-priority recommendations described in the report are a call for Obama to impose an immediate 60-day moratorium and review of any new regulations finalized but not yet in effect, and for the creation of a blue ribbon commission to suggest "fundamental changes" to improve the regulatory process by reducing unneeded analytical requirements and bureaucratic hurdles.

The report also addresses the relationship between White House offices and the agencies responsible for promulgating regulations. The authors write, "We believe that the White House has been too involved in the substantive review of agency rulemakings, at times disagreeing with agency experts and changing the science presented by the agencies." Throughout the report are recommendations that place the locus of decision making within agencies, reserving the role of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as more of a coordinator.

According to the report, the authors differed on one of the most contentious aspects of the current regulatory process, the use of cost-benefit analysis. They agreed, however, that the prescriptive directives, such as the OMB Circular A-4, Regulatory Analysis, that require one government-wide approach to performing cost-benefit analysis, should be curtailed. The panel strongly agreed on principles that should guide the use of the cost-benefit tool, including using it in ways consistent with legal requirements and not as a determining factor in selecting regulatory options unless required by statute. Additionally, the report notes that agencies should have flexibility in deciding when and how to apply cost-benefit analysis to regulatory work.

The report notes that agencies must be given the resources necessary to initiate, write, and enforce regulations. The report is critical of the loss of agency experts and the impact limited funding has had on agencies' ability to do their regulatory jobs. The report provides a variety of recommendations to deal with the politicization of science, including improvements in the integrity of science and the suggestion that all research used in rulemaking be publicly available and part of the rulemaking record.

Following a chapter on recommendations for the first 100 days, the report is organized by several themes. The thematic recommendations address ways to improve regulations, restore integrity to the information used by agencies, improve the implementation and enforcement of regulations (including increasing resources for agencies), increase the transparency of the regulatory process, and improve ways for the public to participate in the process.

According to the report, the recommendations are based on six principles:

• Regulatory decisions should be timely and responsive to public need.
• The regulatory process must be transparent and improve public participation.
• Regulatory decisions should be based on well informed, flexible decision making.
• Authority to make decisions about regulations should reflect the statutory delegation granted by Congress.
• Agencies must have the resources to meet their statutory obligations and organizational missions.
• Government must do a better job of encouraging compliance with existing regulations and fairly enforce them.

The Steering Committee for the project on Advancing the Public Interest through Regulatory Reform consists of 17 regulatory experts with different perspectives on the problems with the current regulatory process. Many of the committee members, who work in public interest organizations, academia, scientific organizations, business, and local government associations, have often expressed differing opinions about regulatory matters. What is unique about this group, according to the report, is that, because they agreed that the current process is broken, the committee members found ways to sidestep disagreements to offer concrete recommendations to improve the rulemaking process.

The group began its work in July 2007 in order to have recommendations ready for the next president and Congress. The project was initiated and staffed by OMB Watch, but the consensus recommendations are the result of committee meetings over the course of the project. The panel commissioned four task forces to address broad regulatory topics and drew on that work and other information to inform its decision making.