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Mad Dash For New Rules Won't Serve Public, Legacy

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 10, 2008

In the waning days of his administration, President George W. Bush is trying to slip through a number of new rules that would undermine environmental and consumer protections.

Bush is hardly the first outgoing president to make last-ditch changes to federal rules. In his final days, former President Bill Clinton enacted long-delayed environmental protections, many of which were quickly rescinded or weakened when Bush took office.

But mad-dash rule-making is bad public policy because it hinders public review and plays into the hands of special interests.

Among other things, the Bush administration is pushing rules that would allow power plants to operate close to national parks, limit environmental impact studies for commercial fisheries, weaken the Clean Air Act, relax drinking-water standards and make it easier to pursue mountaintop coal mining.

One change would allow current emissions at a power plant to match the highest levels ever produced by the plant, a proposal long sought by the power industry but opposed by environmentalists and some insiders at the Environmental Protection Agency.

Another proposal would permit more pollution from oil refineries, chemical factories and other industrial plants.

All this would significantly increase air pollution and greenhouse emissions.

The rush allows little time to weigh potential long-term consequences to the public's health and the nation's environment.

To be sure, where the rules have already undergone rigorous scrutiny, there may be reason to proceed.

But that is not the case here.

Indeed, the proposal to eliminate environmental impact statements faces overwhelming opposition.

A letter to the president from free-market advocates, environmental organizations and consumer groups puts it best:

"The process of midnight rulemaking - something that presidents of both parties have done with relish - does great damage to the soundness of our regulatory process and, indeed, our democracy. The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 establishes a regulatory process that includes opportunity for public comment, review and investigation of regulations. Ultimately, however, enormous power rests with the regulators themselves. The people, through their votes, provide a check on unwise rulemaking. When you issue regulation as a departing administration, you do so without this check and, in some cases, against the will of the people."

President Bush should recognize that a regulatory rush job benefits neither the American people nor his legacy.

He should leave the adoption of major regulatory changes to his successor.

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