2009 Fall Regulatory Agenda

Twice each year, in the spring and fall, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), each Cabinet Department, and independent agency of the Federal Government publish an update of the Unified Agenda and Regulatory Plan in the Federal Register. The OMB publishes an overview of the entire government’s agenda and each department/agency separately list their agenda and plan. In today’s Federal Register that process has started. The OMB’s lengthy overview in today’s Federal Register provides a description of how the Obama Administration views regulatory affairs and a partial list of regulatory actions planned or underway for the next six months. It also includes a brief statement of the regulatory priorities of each of the reporting segments of the US Government. The DHS ‘statement’ from OMB can be found at 74 FR 64213. The DOT ‘statement’ can be found at 74 FR 64283. There is a separate report on the DHS regulatory agenda filed by DHS. DOT also has their separate report. A more complete list regulations; considered, proposed and final, is included in the Regulatory Agenda that can be found at www.RegInfo.gov. Chemical Security on the Agenda I have only been able to briefly review the today’s documents, but one thing stands out; there is very little mention of chemical security issues in the Federal Register entries for OMB and DHS. The separate DHS entry lists no chemical security related regulations that might have a “significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities”. In fact it only lists a total of 18 rules that might have such impact. The OMB lists a total of 30 DHS rules without explaining why they made the cut. There are two rules that affect the chemical security community; both are old requirements that are long overdue. I reported on both of these rules in my blog about the Spring 2009 Regulatory Agenda The first is the ammonium nitrate security rule (RIN 1601-AA52). The NPRM was required to be published in May of 2008. According to www.RegInfo.gov the current plan is to publish the NPRM in April of next year. The second chemical security related rule that makes it into the OMB’s list of DHS rules deals with security training for freight railroad employees (RIN 1652–AA57). The requirement for this rule dates back to February of 2008. Once again www.RegInfo.gov says that TSA intends to publish the NPRM in April. There is a much larger list of DHS pending rules listed on the www.RegInfo.gov website; ten pages worth when the list is transferred to a Word® file. There will be more data and analysis to follow after I have a chance to read the documents in detail.