Nothing Certain In Search For 'Regulatory Certainty' At EPA
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Despite the focus on the investigations into his ethics and spending, Scott Pruitt has had a busy first year at the Environmental Protection Agency. He's moved to delay, block or roll back roughly two dozen environmental rules, always citing the same mission.
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SCOTT PRUITT: We're going to provide regulatory certainty.
It truly is regulatory certainty and regulatory reform.
Regulatory certainty is something we need to focus upon at the EPA, and that's what we're...
CORNISH: The idea is that industry does best when it's certain what the rules are. But as NPR's Nathan Rott reports, some argue Pruitt's actions are having the opposite effect.
NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE: The auto industry is perhaps the most glaring example of a marketplace where things have gotten a whole lot less certain lately. For the last few years, automakers had been planning for and working under a set of fuel economy standards that were set by the Obama administration until last month.
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PRUITT: We are determining - I am determining that those standards are inappropriate and should be revised.
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ROTT: Here's the problem, though. California doesn't want to change. Neither do 16 other states. So automakers are left...
SANDRA ROTHENBERG: Trying to figure out, am I going to have to design to California's standards or to these new federal standards?
ROTT: This is Sandra Rothenberg from the Rochester Institute of Technology. And she says this new potential of having two U.S. car markets - one with strict emission standards, another with looser - is not good for automakers.
ROTHENBERG: Because they don't want to make multiple vehicles.
ROTT: Now, this is all assuming that Pruitt's proposed changes actually stick. We still don't know. Automakers have met with President Trump to try to find a middle ground. California says it's willing to negotiate. But there's a chance, Rothenberg says...
ROTHENBERG: This could take years to resolve.
ROTT: Meanwhile, the auto industry, which needs years, if not a decade, to develop new engine programs, new technology and vehicle designs, is left in a state of regulatory uncertainty. The same is true for other industries trying to follow other rollbacks at the EPA.
ROGER JOHNSON: Good example of this is the Waters Rule.
ROTT: Roger Johnson is president of the National Farmers Union, and he's talking about the Waters of the U.S. Rule, another Obama-era regulation that sought to clearly define what waters EPA can regulate. Johnson and other agriculture groups did not like Obama's definition, and they wanted to see the Trump administration change it. Pruitt heard them, delaying the rule for two years, proposing to rescind it. But, as with other rollbacks, Johnson says, little has been offered in its place.
JOHNSON: The spot we're in right now is right back to where we were before that rule was ever even proposed, which is in this state of sort of perpetual uncertainty.
ROTT: Gina McCarthy was head of the EPA under Obama.
GINA MCCARTHY: We cannot have constant changes in the signals we send to business and the public in the United States on what we should be doing to protect public health and the environment.
ROTT: McCarthy also trumpeted the phrase regulatory certainty during her time at EPA, and she says it's a good thing to strive for. But there's a bigger question here.
Do you think regulatory certainty is achievable in this political climate that we're living in where one administration comes in and does one thing and the next administration could come in and just try to upturn everything the last one did?
MCCARTHY: Well, I think you need to look at prior administrations and realize that this administration is very unusual.
ROTT: The current administration strategy, McCarthy says, seems to be just overturning everything Obama did. That's not normal, she says, and she hopes that it doesn't become so going forward. Peter Van Doren, who focuses on regulation at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, shares in that hope. But he's not as optimistic.
PETER VAN DOREN: Knowing what the rules are and that they don't change that often strikes me as something we all should agree to. But it appears that both sides want to gin up their bases to scream and fight and give money and holler.
ROTT: Meanwhile, industry, he says, is stuck in the middle. Nathan Rott, NPR News.
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