3/29/2021 12:38:31 PM | less than a minute read

President Biden: don't throw out the good stuff the previous administration did simply because it had the name Trump on it!

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Charles A. Samuels

Member/ Co-chair, Retail and Consumer Products

Get in touch

Charles A. Samuels

Member/ Co-chair, Retail and Consumer Products

It's perfectly understandable that a new president, a new party in power, a new and quite different agenda and a government traumatized by often radical and erratic administration by the previous president would want to throw out as quickly as possible much of the previous Administration's regulatory work. But there also is high risk that good government actions will be stigmatized as part of the Trump legacy even though they might be just as useful for progressive government. One example discussed in this piece was the excellent government wide requirement ensuring the transparency, access and ability of the public to comment on guidance which often is used as a substitute for traditional APA rulemakings. In the agencies with which I work I have not seen the new guidance policies abused but rather applied so industry, NGOs and the general public can understand how the agencies interpret and apply the law. It's unfortunate to see this dismantled.

President Biden also bailed on E.O. 13891, which required agencies to seek public input when developing significant new guidance and to make all their guidance available online “in a single, searchable, indexed database that contains or links to all guidance documents in effect.” Law and policy experts have long raised concerns about lack of transparency and potential abuse of guidance and generally supported the Trump initiative. Since Biden’s order directs OMB and agencies to rescind actions “implementing or enforcing” the revoked orders, agencies have already begun to walk back from the transparent practices they had adopted in response to the order, including the posting of guidance documents in a central location.

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