The Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is asking the White House to improve transparency during its review of agency regulations.

Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) wrote to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag on May 11 asking him to take up the recommendations outlined in a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. Towns’ letter says, “GAO's findings indicate a troubling amount of interference in agency rulemakings by OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) during the previous Administration and a need for more transparency in OIRA's review of rules.”

Under Executive Order 12866, OIRA must approve proposed and final regulations before agencies can make them public. OIRA often operates in the shadows, in some cases raising questions as to which government officials make crucial decisions about regulations.

Towns reiterated the following:

GAO makes four recommendations to OMB to improve the transparency of its reviews. These include: (1) defining in guidance the types of changes made during OIRA reviews that need to be publicly identified, (2) instructing agencies "to clearly attribute changes 'made at the suggestion or recommendation of OIRA, ' " (3) directing agencies to clearly state in final rules whether substantive changes were made as a result of OIRA's reviews, and (a) standardizing how agencies label documentation of changes to rules in public rulemaking dockets. 

Both Towns’ letter and the GAO report come as the White House prepares to replace E.O. 12866 with a new executive order governing the regulatory process. On Jan. 30, President Obama called on OMB and other federal agencies to present him with recommendations on a new executive order within 100 days. Although the deadline has passed, the administration has given no indication of its plans.

OMB solicited public comment on the existing state of the regulatory process and published the comments online. However, the administration has not been similarly forthcoming with the comments and recommendations submitted by federal agencies.

Image by Flickr user zizzybaloobah, used under a Creative Commons license.