Mandate for (conservative) Leadership by the 2025 Project

[HondurasKeiser]

For a complicated and controversial rule like this you will then likely hold a series of public meetings or hearings in native communities around the state so that people have a chance to testify without having to travel the long distance to Anchorage or Seattle. So I'm flying around Alaska visiting a variety of native villages, giving presentations and taking comments and discussion. Explaining what is proposed and how it would affect their community. Some times you spend several days in a remote community depending on flight schedules and weather and maybe have to sleep in the school or church if there is no hotel. So you pack a sleeping bag.

If there are complicated regulatory issues to work out the Council will often form an ad-hoc advisory committee of fishermen and and such to meet and provide input. Usually in Seattle where most of the fishing industry groups are based. So I fly down to Seattle for a series of long meetings with industry to work out regulatory details and such. Depending on what the specific issue is.

Eventually the comment period comes to an end and if it is a controversial rule you might have several hundred paper and email comments to go through which you must do one by one and summarize all of them. Comments can also be on the adequacy of your analytical documents which you might also have to revise. After you have summarized all the comments you set about drafting a final rule which you will probably flesh out through some meetings and conference calls with various higher level bosses if it is something controversial. Then you send your final rule package back up the chain through all the legal and required regulatory review once again until it finally lands on the desk of the head of NMFS for signature. Which might take another month or two or more. And then it finally goes to the Federal Register for publication and then after a required waiting period becomes law. And if it is some complicated program that requires permits and funding and new staff it might take another year to get all of that in place.

So basically you have spent 2-3 years of endless public process and review to get to the point where you have a new Federal regulation related to subsistence fishing of halibut in Alaska.

Ken, thank you for the long explanation, I found it really interesting. I'm curious about the part of the process I quoted above. Does the comment period, although a mandated part of the process, ever actually derail a rule that an agency wants to put into place? That is to say, can agencies railroad through rules even if comments from the public clearly express dislike or concerns about the proposed rule?

[temporal1]

Sounds like I / we should be thankful for the administrative state... a lot of things that we probably wouldn't like or that might adversely affect our communities, the brakes get pumped on and die in the administrative state. Can I say praise God for big gov?

Praise as you will.
Every human entity, even churches, require oversight, accountability, vigilance, as described in scriptures. Sleeping is the problem.

I'm not sure how happy any of us would be with a government with no administrative state with it's by laws and unelected officials. That gives the system a lot of continuity and stability. Just imagine some politician or party you distrust the most coming into office with no checks on their power.

The spirit of the age right now is anger and tearing down. Be careful about giving in to it. Institutions cannot save but they can do some good. After the heat of tearing down has passed, we may discover what is next is not that great either.

Has anyone on this forum suggested anarchy? If so, i missed it.

The central problem is, too much sleeping for too long, scriptures warn about sleeping.
Life on earth isn’t meant to be comfortable.

Every human construct requires oversight. Bar none. Churches, as an example, reflect the importance.
If churched folks fail, and they do, then, no surprise about the rest of it.

[Ken]

For a complicated and controversial rule like this you will then likely hold a series of public meetings or hearings in native communities around the state so that people have a chance to testify without having to travel the long distance to Anchorage or Seattle. So I'm flying around Alaska visiting a variety of native villages, giving presentations and taking comments and discussion. Explaining what is proposed and how it would affect their community. Some times you spend several days in a remote community depending on flight schedules and weather and maybe have to sleep in the school or church if there is no hotel. So you pack a sleeping bag.

If there are complicated regulatory issues to work out the Council will often form an ad-hoc advisory committee of fishermen and and such to meet and provide input. Usually in Seattle where most of the fishing industry groups are based. So I fly down to Seattle for a series of long meetings with industry to work out regulatory details and such. Depending on what the specific issue is.

Eventually the comment period comes to an end and if it is a controversial rule you might have several hundred paper and email comments to go through which you must do one by one and summarize all of them. Comments can also be on the adequacy of your analytical documents which you might also have to revise. After you have summarized all the comments you set about drafting a final rule which you will probably flesh out through some meetings and conference calls with various higher level bosses if it is something controversial. Then you send your final rule package back up the chain through all the legal and required regulatory review once again until it finally lands on the desk of the head of NMFS for signature. Which might take another month or two or more. And then it finally goes to the Federal Register for publication and then after a required waiting period becomes law. And if it is some complicated program that requires permits and funding and new staff it might take another year to get all of that in place.

So basically you have spent 2-3 years of endless public process and review to get to the point where you have a new Federal regulation related to subsistence fishing of halibut in Alaska.

Ken, thank you for the long explanation, I found it really interesting. I'm curious about the part of the process I quoted above. Does the comment period, although a mandated part of the process, ever actually derail a rule that an agency wants to put into place? That is to say, can agencies railroad through rules even if comments from the public clearly express dislike or concerns about the proposed rule?

Yes sometimes, but it also depends on what is driving the rule and how much flexibility the agency has to make changes. If it is a direct Congressional mandate or even an executive order from the president then no, probably not. Or not very much. If it is something that the agency has a lot more leeway with then potentially yes. So, for example, if Congress passes a new law that says all large freight trains need to have both a conductor and engineer on board and the DOT writes those regulations, they aren't going to change it to just one person on board simply because the railroad industry writes lots of comments in opposition. That is something they need to take up with Congress instead. But if it is something the DOT came up with on their own then they might well reconsider big changes or withdrawing the proposal completely if they get a lot of pushback.

You do have to keep detailed records of all public comment and publish accurate summaries of the comments that you received and answer all those comments in the final rule process. But you don't necessarily have to accept all those recommendations. So the final rule might say: "We received 22 comments on topic X which requested that we make these specific changes. Because of this specific mandate from Congress we are unable to make that specific change, but we did change this specific provision to provide industry with more flexibility. Or we postponed this deadline for 6 months or a year to give industry more time to adapt. Etc. All of that is copied and kept as part of the administrative record for the agency action and when there are lawsuits it all comes back out. Or if some group wants to see it all they can request it all under the Freedom of Information Act.

Understand that virtually all of this public process is really interacting with industry and interest groups (environmental groups, unions, etc.) and not random members of the public. And a lot of it is actually pro-forma itself. A business lobbyist writes long and complicated comments on every related rule affecting his industry which he circulates around to industry groups, puts in newsletters and mailings to show "how he is FIGHTING for you" to justify his high-priced lobbying job. And because it is, in fact, his job. Even though he might know the agency's hands are tied and they aren't really going to change that safety regulation or banking regulation to match what his business sponsors really want.

We do get the odd comment letter from Mr. Joe Public but it wasn't really that common in the arcane world of commercial fishing regulations. We did sometimes get hundreds of identical "astroturf" letters from organizations like Greenpeace who would gin up letter writing campaigns, often as part of their fundraising. But frankly few original letters from actual members of the public other than from the odd gadfly type of which there are some who get obsessed with this sort of thing. Some of whom are quite nutty. I expect other agencies that have more direct contact with the general public get a lot more.

Often public comments will result in a second revised proposed rule if the agency decides to make a lot of changes and we go through the process a second time with a new draft set of regulations with a new comment period. And if the proposal is changed enough from the original one it might mean having to prepare new economic and environmental review documents which would add more months as those have their own public review process and you have to publish both draft and final environmental impact statements and take into consideration comments on those. Or you will be sued and a court might put a stop to the process because you are in violation of NEPA or some other process-oriented law.

Sometimes a rule is just withdrawn and they decide to start over or not move forward at all. Especially if this process spans two administrations which it often does. Trump people withdrew Obama-era proposed regulations that were half way through the process. Biden people did the same thing to Trump-era regulations that were half done. And so forth. That is normal in the transition between administrations. And because big regulations take multiple years to implement it basically means that an administration had better make sure they get started on the important ones in their first year or they likely won't get done in time for the next election. Any big regulations the Biden Administration decides to start today are most certainly going to overlap the next administration and will only get finished if they win re-election. Or if the incoming Republican administration wants to see them finished unchanged. Which might well be the case for nonpartisan stuff like commercial fishing regulations. But won't be for any controversial things like environmental or labor regulations opposed by Republicans. Just like some cutbacks to environmental or business regulations proposed but unfinished by the Trump Administration were abandoned or withdrawn by the Biden Administration. Or at least paused until the Biden people could take a look at them.

[Bootstrap]

Just read the DOJ section.

It seems to be saying they should make sure that the DOJ is not in a position to investigate any wrongdoing done by the President and his Administration.

[Jazman]

Just read the DOJ section.

It seems to be saying they should make sure that the DOJ is not in a position to investigate any wrongdoing done by the President and his Administration.

Do they specifically mention current wrongdoings /corruptions (under law) that should be ignored, or is there an assumption by them, that the current laws will have been changed (by them / cohorts) and therefore they won't be holding people accountable anymore because they've made said wrongdoings/corruptions legal in some way?