The Big Picture
On January 8, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) released a final rule that imposes a ten-year sunset date on most regulations that have ever been, or will ever be, issued by HHS and its component agencies, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
1 To preserve a rule past this automatic expiration date, HHS must assess whether the rule significantly affects “small entities”; if so, HHS must publish an analysis of whether the rule ought to be preserved, amended or rescinded, as described below.
The so-called SUNSET rule which stands for “Securing Updated and Necessary Statutory Evaluations Timely” was finalized largely as proposed in November. The most significant difference pertains to the timeline for reviewing the backlog of rules that are already more than ten years old: HHS now has five years to complete these assessments, up from two years in the proposed rule. Other not
A federal court has granted a request from the Alabama Association of Realtors and the Georgia Association of Realtors to temporarily suspend their lawsuit against the Trump administration over a nationwide eviction ban that Congress has extended until the end of January.
The trade groups will revisit the case at the beginning of February after the ban has expired or been extended.
“With the transition to a new administration just days away and the eviction moratorium set to expire on January 31, we acknowledge that policy changes could be forthcoming on this and many other issues,” Georgia Realtors’ 2021 President Dorrie Love told Inman in an emailed statement.
Friday, January 8, 2021
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on January 5, 2021, that it is inviting small businesses, governments, and not-for-profit organizations to participate as Small Entity Representatives (SER) to provide advice and recommendations to two Small Business Advocacy Review (SBAR) Panels.
One Panel will focus on EPA’s development of a proposed rule to address unreasonable risks identified in EPA’s recently completed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) risk evaluation for perchloroethylene. As reported in our December 17, 2020, memorandum, of the 61 conditions of use that EPA reviewed for perchloroethylene, EPA found that 59 present unreasonable risks to workers, occupational non-users (ONU), consumers, and bystanders. The conditions of use that EPA determined do not present an unreasonable risk are distribution in commerce and industrial and commercial use in lubricants and greases for penetrating lubricants and cutting to
HHS Finalizes Unprecedented Regulatory Reform through Retrospective Review
Today, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a final rule to further democratic values of accountability and transparency. Specifically, the Securing Updated and Necessary Statutory Evaluations Timely (SUNSET) rule requires the Department to assess its regulations every ten years to determine whether they are subject to review under the Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA), which requires regular review of significant regulations. If a given regulation is subject to the RFA, the Department must review the regulation every ten years to determine whether the regulation is still needed and whether it is having appropriate impacts. Regulations will expire if the Department does not assess and, if required, review them in a timely manner.
Dive Brief:
The Trump administration on Friday finalized a rule requiring HHS to review existing regulations, with some exceptions, every 10 years based on their real-world impact.
If not reviewed and approved in time, old rules would automatically expire. When proposed in November, the rule sparked concern among providers and other groups concerned it would inject more regulatory uncertainty into the industry, and heap additional administrative burden onto HHS. The incoming Biden administration could look to overturn the rule.
The final version of the rule gives HHS more leniency in its initial review timeline. The government first determines whether a rule has a significant economic impact on small businesses and, if it does, make any changes or withdrawals within five years, instead of the initially proposed two.