At the 59th Plenary Session of the Administrative Conference of the United States on December 5-6, 2013, John Cooney presented two Recommendations to the ACUS membership in his capacity as Chairman of the Committee on Administration and Management:
- A Statement setting forth six Proposals to reduce the extraordinary delays experienced during President Obama’s first term in obtaining clearance of major regulations submitted by the rulemaking agencies for White House approval through the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs of the Office of Management and Budget, pursuant to Executive Order No. 12,866.
Complaints by public interest groups about lengthy delays in White House reviews of agency rules have been common in Republican Administrations, which are often accused of trying to scuttle rules that would protect the public health and safety because they would impose costs on regulated entities. However, the delays experienced under the Obama Administration have greatly exceeded the delays under Republican Administrations. The ACUS report identified two principal reasons: the inability of the White House inter-agency dispute resolution mechanisms to establish policies in a timely manner; and a directive issued to rulemaking agencies not to issue controversial rules in advance of the 2012 elections. The ACUS Statement suggested new management tools to avoid recurrence of the delay problem. - A Recommendation containing seven Proposals on how the agencies could better utilize, during the forthcoming era of budget stringency, the authority granted by the Government Performance and Results Modernization Act of 2010 to better coordinate the use of their separate statutory powers and their separate appropriations where their mandates to serve the public interest overlap.
Both Recommendations were adopted after spirited debates.