Since 2000, major regulatory activities by OSHA do indeed slow down during a Presidential election year compared to the year preceding it.
During the last seven Presidential election years, OSHA has an interesting record of issuing new rules on worker safety issues despite the heated national campaigns.
President Obama offered high praise to his regulatory czar on the day Mr. Cass Sunstein announced his resignation. It’s disappointing neither are bold enough to address the grave limits of cost-benefit analysis.
Cancer
Ideas galore on ways to speed process for new worker safety protections. Where is the leadership to implement them?
Earlier this month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a report on the snail’s pace of the OSHA process of issuing new rules to protect workers from health and safety hazards on-the-job. One telling table in the document showed the agency issued about 20 new major regulations in each of the previous two decades (i.e., […]
More than 425 days—-that’s 14 months—-have passed since the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) sent to the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) a draft proposed regulation designed to protect workers who are exposed to respirable crystalline silica. The hazard is one of the oldest known causes of work-related […]
Making a $10,000 bet, insulting people for wearing plastic rain ponchos, and asserting that $374,000 is not much to earn in speaking fees are just a few examples of Mitt Romney being out of touch. The Republican Presidential hopeful doesn’t seem to have a clue either about how federal agencies like EPA and OSHA conduct […]
Celeste wrote last week about the letter from scientists and public health experts urging President Obama to direct the Office of Management and Budget to finish reviewing the Department of Labor’s proposed health standard on crystalline silica. Respirable crystalline silica has been known for several centuries as an occupational hazard — it can cause irreversible […]
A group of 300 scientists, physicians and public health experts are urging President Obama to direct his Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to complete its review of a proposed Labor Department health standard on the carcinogen crystallline silica. OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has been reviewing the proposed rule for nearly […]
A federal advisory committee is urging HHS Secretary Sebelius and Labor Secretary Solis to proceed expeditiously with new worker safety regulations. In letters sent recently to these Cabinet-level officials, the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, (NACOSH) the committee used phrases such as “deeply distressed,” and “concerned and disappointed,” to characterize the Obama […]
When an organization fails to get the little things right, I have difficulty believing they are competent to get the big things right either. That’s the way I feel about the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). OIRA is part of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), was created by the […]