Daily News

EPA and other government economists are facing significant challenges implementing President Donald Trump's order requiring agencies to repeal two rules for every new one, saying the order doubles the workload of regulatory impact analysis and raises other uncertainties, though some economists call such new directives part of the job.

“It's inherently a lot harder problem in benefit-cost analysis,” Al McGartland, director of EPA's National Center for Environmental Economics, told a Sept. 29 Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis meeting in Washington, DC.

Health and environmental groups are urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to consolidate and hear lawsuits filed in several circuits challenging EPA's initial rules for implementing the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), resisting Trump administration efforts to move the litigation to the 4th Circuit, which is slated to hear another one of the suits.

OSHA is declining to start major new initiatives until the Trump administration nominates an agency chief, a senior agency official told a recent health and safety conference, though staff continues to advance certain initiatives from the Obama administration, including updating a product labeling standard and bolstering crane operator requirements.

A federal appellate court has scheduled briefing in environmentalists and a labor union's lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's delay of the Obama EPA's final rule updating the agency's Risk Management Plan (RMP) facility accident prevention program, setting deadlines that will have the court hold oral arguments in early 2018.

Federal appellate judges appear to be backing the Obama administration's rule strengthening limits for worker exposure to silica, criticizing industry attacks that OSHA lacked “substantial evidence” to adopt the standard and even suggesting that the rule could be strengthened after questioning agency reasoning for rejecting further protections unions are seeking.

Senate labor committee Democrats are urging the Trump administration to quickly nominate an OSHA chief with a “demonstrated commitment to worker safety,” suggesting such a nominee is needed to reverse the Labor Department's (DOL) “cavalier attitude” toward worker health and safety, such as its limits on public disclosure of worker fatality data and plans to scrap a worker safety training program.

The Trump OSHA is promising to hold off on enforcing the Obama administration's landmark silica rule, which takes effect Sept. 23, and instead provide compliance assistance for the first 30 days, though the rule's longer-term future is in doubt as a federal appellate court is slated to hear oral arguments in an industry challenge to the measure.

Industry trade groups are urging OSHA to increase resources for the agency's Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) and give employer safety programs, including some incentive programs opposed by the Obama administration, a greater role in VPP, though labor groups say OSHA should evaluate VPP's effectiveness and not take funds from enforcement.

OSHA sought public input through Sept. 15 on improving VPP, which the agency said this summer is not sustainable in its current form given declining resources.

Pointing to the increasing severity of hurricanes and other natural disasters, House Democrats are urging the Trump EPA to do more to limit risks from contaminated sites and industrial facilities as a result of such disasters, including reconsidering its delay of an Obama-era rule updating EPA's facility accident prevention program with new safeguards.

Industry attorneys are outlining a series of hurdles to implementing a controversial Obama OSHA rule updating the agency's worker injury and illness reporting regulation, including House passage of a measure that would gut implementation, uncertainty over state reporting requirements and a looming Trump administration deregulatory rule.

Employers' attorneys have long faulted the Obama administration's May 2016 final rule updating OSHA's worker injury and illness reporting regulation as unnecessary and inappropriately continuing an Obama OSHA practice of shaming employers.

The AFL-CIO is faulting OSHA's narrowing of criteria for publishing worker fatality online as the latest step by the Trump administration to hide information from the public, and countering OSHA's rationale for the decision, arguing failure to cite an employer does not preclude acknowledging a death and calling the removal an insult.

EPA is urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to transfer to the 4th Circuit environmentalists' challenges to the agency's rule for prioritizing chemicals for review under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), arguing the 4th Circuit is already hearing a case over a related rule and moving it there could conserve resources.

But environmentalists oppose the move, though they have not yet provided their reasons for doing so.

OSHA and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) have established a two-year alliance to reduce worker risks from exposure to diisocyanates in the polyurethane industry, an agreement that could bolster industry calls to scale back California efforts to review and possibly regulate products containing the substances.

Concerns over dozens of workplace fatalities attributed to methylene chloride exposures since the 1980s may hamper efforts by some small business owners and their supporters to prevent federal regulators from banning the chemicals' use in some operations.

White House regulatory affairs chief Neomi Rao is urging OSHA and other agencies to propose regulatory cost budget for fiscal year 2018, as required by a Trump administration executive order, that will indicate how agencies plan to reduce regulatory costs in the coming year.

But Rao's call is sparking a new round of criticisms that the executive order, which also requires agencies to eliminate two rules for every new measure issued, will serve in practice as a means to ignore the benefits of workplace safety and other regulations.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is reiterating its claims that labor and other public interest groups lack standing to sue over President Donald Trump's order (EO) that requires OSHA and other agencies to repeal two rules for every new measure issued, urging a federal court to take a broad interpretation of an appellate case that limited such challenges rather than the plaintiffs' preferred, limited view.

Senate appropriators have advanced a draft fiscal year 2018 spending bill that would hold OSHA funding steady at FY17 levels, declining to follow the lead of House appropriators who this summer proposed slashing OSHA's budget and are currently seeking to block enforcement of Obama-era agency rules through riders on their spending bill.

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) is backing a Trump administration plan to limit OSHA's final beryllium rule by scrapping certain provisions from applying to the construction and shipyard sectors, while also calling for restoring an abandoned Obama-era plan exempting some work sites or suspending an exposure limit for the two sectors until further review.

A multidistrict litigation panel has randomly selected the U.S. appellate courts for the 9th and 4th Circuits to hear environmentalists' lawsuits challenging EPA rules for prioritizing and reviewing existing chemicals under the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), though one environmentalist is backing EPA calls that the two suits should be consolidated in a single circuit.

“The hope remains that the two sets of cases will end up in the same circuit,” the environmentalist says.

Lawsuits challenging EPA's initial rules implementing the revised Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) will test the discretion courts are willing to give the agency on interpreting the law's definition of a chemical's “uses” that will determine when a substance is subject to the rules and must undergo a risk assessment, sources say.