The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB)
published a meeting notice in Monday’s Federal Register (on-line today; 80 FR
32339) for a public meeting to be held on June 18th, 2015 in
Washington, DC. The Board will discuss the notice
of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) published last month concerning proposed
changes to Board governance.
This meeting is unusual because it is taking place after the
comment period for the NPRM closes on June 12th. If this is going to
be a discussion by the Board about the public comments it will be one of the
first times (actually the only one that I know of) that a Federal agency has
taken this portion of the rulemaking public. I’m not entirely sure that this is
a good thing because, like making sausage, much of the rulemaking process
probably should take place behind closed doors because it can get ugly.
On the other hand, we have not been able to look at the
public comments received to-date on the NPRM because the Board did not use the
Federal eRulemaking Portal to receive and publish those comments. I would like
to think that they will post the comments on the CSB web site before the
meeting on the 18th.
On a separate note, the timing of this notice is interesting
because yesterday I received an email from a long time reader of this blog
complaining about on-going problems within the CSB. Nothing that I can go
public with at this point, but suffice to say that there are a number of
Washington insiders that don’t think that all of the Board’s problems have been
solved by removing Dr. Rafael
Moure-Eraso.
On a different rumor note, I have heard that Vanessa
Allen Sutherland was not the President’s first pick to be Chair of the CSB.
Rumor has it that the first pick, Scott Berger, was vetoed
by a chemical industry union. Berger has a background in chemical safety and
Sutherland is a lawyer. Nothing specifically wrong with lawyers in government
agencies, but CSB probably should be more of a technical person.
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1 comment:
Half correct. I was to be nominated to replace Mark Griffon when his term expired. I was not told who objected, but if it was the union, it is their loss. I think Vanessa can do a fine job, if she is allowed to. Time will tell.
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