Administrator’s Office And Reorganization Responsibility

This will provide executive and logistical support for the EPA Administrator. Its stated purpose is to support EPA leadership and activities. To implement policies that are consistent with a conservative EPA, the agency will have to undergo a major reorganization. The Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy position within the Administrator’s office should be renamed the Deputy Chief of Staff for Regulatory Improvement.

Thiswould oversee a reorganization effort that includes the following actions:

Returning the enforcement and compliance function to the media offices (air, water, land, and emergency management, etc.) and eliminating the stand-alone Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, which has created a mismatch between standard-setting and implementation. Using enforcement to ensure compliance, not to achieve extrastatutory objectives.

Developing a plan for relocating regional offices so that they are more accessible to the areas they serve and deliver cost savings to the American people.

Restructuring the Office of International and Tribal Affairs into the American Indian Environmental Office and returning the international liaison function to media offices where appropriate. Eliminating the Office of Public Engagement and Environmental Education as a stand-alone entity and reabsorbing substantive elements into the Office of Public Affairs.

Relocating the Office of Children’s Health Protection and the Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization from the AO and reabsorbing those functions within the media offices (air, water, land, and emergency management, etc.).

Reviewing the grants program to ensure that taxpayer funds go to organizations focused on tangible environmental improvements free from political affiliation.

Returning the environmental justice function to the AO, eliminating the stand-alone Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.

Resetting science advisory boards to expand opportunities for a diversity of scientific viewpoints free of potential conflicts of interest. Restoring the guidance portal to ensure that regulatory and subregulatory standards are clear to affected entities. Working with Assistant Administrators to implement major reforms in media offices.

Day One Executive Order. To initiate the review and reorganization, a Day One executive order should be drafted for the incoming President with explicit language requiring reconsideration of the agency’s structure with reference to fulfilling its mission to create a better environmental tomorrow with clean air, safe water, healthy soil, and thriving communities. The order should set up “pause and review” teams to assess the following:

Major Rules and Guidance Materials. Identify existing rules to be stayed and reproposed and initiate rule development in appropriate media offices. Pending Petitions. Grant new petitions for rule reconsideration and stays of rules.

Grants. Stop all grants to advocacy groups and review which potential federal investments will lead to tangible environmental improvements. Legal Settlements. Reassess any “sue and settle” cases and develop a new policy to establish standard review and oversight, including public notification and participation.

Employee Review. Determine the opportunity to downsize by terminating the newest hires in low-value programs and identify relocation opportunities for Senior Executive Service (SES) positions. Budget Review. Develop a tiered-down approach to cut costs, reduce the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions, and eliminate duplicative programs. EPA should not conduct any ongoing or planned activity for which there is not clear and current congressional authorization, and it should communicate this shift in the President’s first budget request. Risk Management Policy. Revise guidance documents that control regulations such as the social cost of carbon; discount rates; timing of regulatory review (before options are selected); causality of health effects;

low-dose risk estimation (linear no-threshold analysis); and employment loss analysis.

Personnel

The majority of the political appointee team must be assembled, vetted, and ready to deploy before Day One. To the extent provided by the Federal Vacan- cies Reform Act,15 appointees in consideration for Senate-confirmed positions (excluding the Administrator) should be prepared to serve as a Deputy or Principal Deputy to get into the agency on Day One while their nomination and affiliated confirmation processes proceeds. In addition to a deputy slated for the Assistant Administrator role, each office will need a political chief of staff, senior advisers designated to run suboffices, and energized assistants. Teams should be balanced with technical knowledge, legal expertise, and political exposure. Ideally, they should also be geographically diverse. Appointee positions should also extend to all the regional offices and specialty labs.

OFFICE OF AIR AND RADIATION (OAR)

Issue a rule to ensure consistent and transparent consideration of costs. When doing cost-benefit analysis, use appropriate discount rates, focus on the benefits of reducing the pollutant targeted by Congress, identify “co-benefits” separately, and acknowledge the uncertainties involved in quantifying benefits.

Review and revise Reasonably Available Control Technology (RACT) cost guidance to ensure that calculations are accurate and reflect the actual regulatory burden, including costs of air rules implementation and compliance.

OAR develops national programs, policies, and regulations to control air pollution and radiation exposure. In recent decades, OAR and its statutory respon- sibilities under the Clean Air Act have been reimagined in an attempt to expand the reach of the federal government. The U.S. Supreme Court has stopped and stricken several actions from OAR under liberal Administrations, citing a lack of requisite legal support. A reformed OAR should focus on EPA’s mission of limiting and minimizing criteria and hazardous air pollutants in partnership with the states. Cross-Cutting Reforms. OAR consists of four suboffices with two located in Washington, D.C.; one in Ann Arbor, Michigan; and one at Research Triangle Park in Raleigh, North Carolina. The following reforms should be implemented across all OAR offices:

Obey Congress’s direction in CAA § 32116 to “conduct continuing evaluations” of the employment and plant-closure effects of air regulations. Ensure that all provisions of CAA § 307(d)17 are observed. Congress placed special constraints on air rules, and that intent should be respected. To the extent that the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)18 remains in place, ensure to the maximum extent possible that grants and funding are provided to state regulatory entities and not to nonprofits. Remove any regulations or requirements that confer on third parties any authorities that have been provided to EPA, such as the oil and gas supplemental, which created a Super-Emitter Response Program that allows third parties to act as EPA enforcers.

Policy-Specific Actions

National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS)

EPA adopted by regulation a goal of restoring natural visibility by 2064. The statute does not require this, and EPA should consider whether a longer timeline is less disruptive or more realistic. Regional haze rules should be revised to prevent subsequent “planning periods” from being abused to compel the shutdown of disfavored facilities. Under the Good Neighbor Program/Interstate pollutant transport program, review Biden-era regulations to ensure that they do not “overcontrol” upwind states in violation of the statute as construed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Reverse the program’s 2022 expansion beyond power plants.

Putting guardrails on downwind states is an abuse of the CAA § 126(b)19 petition process. EPA must ensure, in keeping with statutory text, that petitions identify a reasonably discrete “group” of upwind sources alleged to violate the good neighbor provision.

Ensure that the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) considers all of the statutorily charged factors (for example, social and economic effects resulting from NAAQS attainment and maintenance strategies). Ensure that the requirements EPA puts on a state that has achieved attainment status from nonattainment status are limited to those that are statutorily required, and remove any regulatory differences between attainment and maintenance that are not explicitly required by law.

Streamline the process for state and local governments to demonstrate that their federally funded highway projects will not interfere with NAAQS attainment.

Adopt policies to prevent abuse of EPA’s CAA “error correction” authority.20 EPA historically has used this to coerce states into adopting its favored policies on pain of imposition of a Federal Implementation Plan (FIP).

Limit EPA’s reliance on CAA § 30121 general rulemaking authority to ensure that it is not abused to issue regulations for which EPA lacks substantive authority elsewhere in the statute.

If possible, return the standard-setting role to Congress.