Regulatory Dark Matter: Over 22,000 Public Notices Annually

Rule Reviews at OIRA

The president and Congress can assure that OIRA conducts more reviews of guidance and notices. As it stands, while agencies issued thousands of “notices,” only 32 received OMB review during calendar year 2018, up from 24 in Trump’s first year, and down from 45 during Obama’s last. Several dozen notices reviewed have been deemed to have an “economically significant” effect in recent years. Figure 17 presents the number of rule reviews conducted by OMB, by stage and by economic significance, for calendar year 2018. It also shows the number of days OMB took to review rules in 2018, a process that improved during recent years but that can take several months.

A history of the number of rules and notices reviewed annually by OIRA appears in Appendix: Historical Tables, Part D, where a detailed breakdown is presented of numbers of rules reviewed by type and by average days for review from 1991 through 2018. Each category, except prerule reviews, was down significantly between Obama’s last year and Trump’s first two. During the pre–Executive Order 12866 years depicted there, 1991–1993, review times were shorter, although numbers of rules were considerably higher then. During the Trump administration’s first 18 months, OIRA reviewed 70 percent fewer regulatory actions than were reviewed under the Obama administration and 66 percent fewer than in the Bush Administration.[i]

Tracking effects of rules and regulations, executive orders, memoranda, and other regulatory guidance is vital. These alternative regulatory actions should receive more scrutiny and oversight, since they have become powerful means of working around the constitutional system of government envisioned by the Framers: legislation made by elected representatives.