The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) took an important and long overdue step to improve transparency at the agency when it announced that it will no longer rely upon non-public data as a basis for its rules and regulations. It may come as a surprise that such a common sense action is even needed in the first place. But, in fact, the EPA has long relied on non-public studies to justify a lengthy list of costly air regulations.
Data transparency in the development of rulemaking is not a new idea, and it shouldn't be controversial. In 1983, then-EPA Administrator William Ruckelshaus issued a well-known memo declaring that the agency should operate as if it were “in a fishbowl.” This spirit of openness with respect to the regulatory process is enshrined in statute, and countless White House directives and EPA memosreinforce the principle and detail guidance for implementing it.
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