Federal agencies drown Americans with unreleased regulatory ‘guidance’

The Washington Post cited CEI’s Regulatory Dark Matter

A bill that passed the House by voice vote last March would give Americans a little more transparency into what the Competitive Enterprise Institute calls “regulatory dark matter,” the non-laws and non-rules that make up a growing share of the federal government’s work. The Guidance Out Of Darkness Act, or Good Act, would require agencies to publish all their guidance documents in one place for the public to access.

As the bill’s definition of “guidance document” illustrates, agencies have numerous avenues to regulate outside the rulemaking process. Memorandums, notices, bulletins, directives, news releases, letters, blog posts, no-action letters and speeches by agency officials can all carry policy import.

Many of these documents are public already, but some are not. And they cannot all be accessed in one place. The laws Congress passes are compiled into the U.S. Code. The rules agencies issue are compiled in the Code of Federal Regulations. The Good Act would create an equivalent one-stop shop for guidance documents.

Read more at The Washington Post