Policy Integrity in the News

As Concerns Mount, Environmentalists Seek To Raise Carbon ‘Cost’ Estimate

2013-05-20T19:40:14+00:00

Environmentalists are launching an effort they hope will pressure the Obama administration to raise its default estimate of the social cost of carbon (SCC), believing it will strengthen the case for strict greenhouse gas (GHG) rules and other emission controls just as concerns about irreversible climate change due to the emissions are mounting.

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Environmental Defense Fund and the Institute for Policy Integrity, a think tank based at the New York University School of Law, are developing a web-based platform to foster sharing of data between climate scientists and economists in an effort that proponents believe will help put pressure on the administration to raise its SCC estimate.

Source: Inside EPA

Policy Integrity’s Livermore discusses OMB study on costs, benefits of EPA regulations

2013-05-15T21:18:16+00:00

Has there been a shift in tone on regulation during President Obama’s second term? During today’s OnPoint, Michael Livermore, executive director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, discusses the politics of regulation as Congress works through the confirmation process for several key regulatory positions. Livermore also gives his take on how Howard Shelanski, the president’s nominee to head up the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, could affect the future of regulations coming out of this administration.

Source: E&E TV

Environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis Spreads to Developing World

2013-05-13T19:33:32+00:00

Cost-benefit analysis, while embraced by both political parties over the course of the past three decades, is still feared by many progressives in the United States. But as environmental concerns have spread around the world, this tool is lighting a path in many developing countries toward a new generation of environmental policies to protect public health, climate stability, and natural resources. This new role for cost-benefit analysis challenges the sometimes stale and suffocating way in which discussions over cost-benefit analysis are often framed here at home.

Source: RegBlog

NYU Law School issues report on fair housing law

2013-05-10T19:48:38+00:00

The Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, a non-partisan think tank, issued a report Friday on the implementation of the Fair Housing Act that recommends that the Department of Housing and Urban Development more clearly define fair housing goals and measure the progress of local jurisdictions in meeting the requirements of the law. Click here for the report.

“Decades after the civil rights movement inspired the Fair Housing Act, HUD still has a long way to go before that law’s vision of fair housing is realized,” said Policy Integrity executive director, Michael Livermore, in a statement. “HUD should take steps to improve fairness and equality in housing markets.”

Source: Politics on the Hudson

Director of NYU think tank heads for U.Va. law school post

2013-05-03T20:42:48+00:00

The Institute for Policy Integrity, a New York University-based think tank and advocacy group that is often involved in the nation’s regulatory debates, is losing Executive Director Michael Livermore this summer to a faculty position at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Livermore co-authored the book “The Globalization of Cost-Benefit Analysis in Environmental Policy” with NYU School of Law Dean Richard Revesz before the two founded the institute in 2008. In his new role, Livermore will still be affiliated with the institute, but Revesz will be taking on a larger role as the group’s faculty director.

Source: E&E News

Livermore Brings New Perspective on Cost-Benefit Analysis in Environmental, Administrative Policy…

2013-05-03T17:02:36+00:00

Michael A. Livermore, an expert who has offered a fresh take on using cost-benefit analysis in environmental and administrative policymaking, will join the University of Virginia law faculty in July.

Livermore is currently the executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity and an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law.

Source: UVA Law

Michael Livermore ’06 joins faculty of University of Virginia School of Law

2013-05-03T17:01:31+00:00

Michael Livermore ’06, executive director of NYU Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity, is joining the faculty of the University of Virginia School of Law this July.

Livermore is the co-author with Dean Richard Revesz of Retaking Rationality: How Cost-Benefit Analysis Can Better Protect the Environment and Our Health, which they began working on while Livermore was a student in Dean Revesz’s Environmental Law class. Soon after their book was published, Livermore and Revesz founded the Institute for Policy Integrity, where they served as executive director and faculty director, respectively. Under Livermore’s leadership, the Institute for Policy Integrity has initiated a large number of successful research, educational, and advocacy efforts, in the process becoming a respected voice in often contentious debates over environmental, public health, and consumer regulation.

Source: NYU Law

President Taps FTC Economist Shelanski To Lead OMB Regulatory Affairs Office

2013-05-01T15:34:08+00:00

Michael Livermore, executive director of New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, praised the selection of Shelanski, saying he brings to the job more real-world experience at a regulatory agency than any previous OIRA administrator.

Livermore also called Shelanski a “technocrat in orientation and pragmatic. I don’t think he’s going to come to the position with a lot of ideological baggage or a particular axe to grind.”

Source: Bloomberg BNA

Obama’s Nominee for OIRA Director

2013-04-26T19:59:57+00:00

President Obama announced yesterday his selection of Howard Shelanski as the next Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the White House. OIRA, although not widely known, reviews the regulations that are adopted by nearly all federal agencies: everything from EPA rules to limit mercury pollution from power plants to TSA rules governing airport screening procedures. This will give Shelanski enormous power to shape the remainder of the Obama administration’s regulatory agenda.

Source: The Huffington Post

Obama nominates antitrust expert Shelanski as new regulatory czar

2013-04-26T19:57:10+00:00

“It’s a kind of a thankless job,” said Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law.

“You’re almost guaranteed to have a lot of forces aligned against you and unhappy with you,” said Livermore, who called Shelanski a “balanced thinker” who understands the complex regulatory process.

Source: Thomson Reuters

Obama taps FTC official to head regulatory office

2013-04-26T19:01:26+00:00

“He is a sophisticated legal scholar who is up to date on the most recent research on regulatory economics, but also someone who has an inside view on the real challenges that agencies face,” said Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University.

Source: E&E News

Richard Revesz: End ‘Dinosaur Approaches’ To Regulation

2013-04-18T21:42:28+00:00

We need to pay to repair our roads and bridges; but there is no reason, in principle, for funding to be linked to gas taxes. The government can use income taxes, tolls and other revenue-raising mechanisms to cover the costs.

One advantage of using gas taxes to pay for our roadways is that gas taxes help to “internalize” the price of pollution into a gallon of gas. Without some kind of price signal, gas is cheaper than it should be because no one is paying for the harm caused by emissions of greenhouse gases and other air pollutants.

Source: Wall Street Journal

In Gina McCarthy Hearing, Possible Conversation Over Cap-and-Trade

2013-04-10T14:54:09+00:00

On the eve of Gina McCarthy’s first Senate committee hearing towards her confirmation, we find our work a potential topic of conversation between certain senators and the candidate for EPA Administrator.

Four senators on the Environment and Public Works Committee, including James Inhofe and David Vitter, sent a letter to Ms. McCarthy asking for her take on a petition the Institute for Policy Integrity, which we direct, submitted to the EPA in 2009. There are now reports that they plan to raise the question during tomorrow’s hearing.

Source: The Huffington Post

Gina McCarthy Faces Senate Scrutiny This Week Before EPA Administrator Confirmation Hearing

2013-04-09T19:54:29+00:00

Vitter also said McCarthy and the EPA have worked with left-leaning environmental groups on crafting stringent carbon regulations and hiding this from Congress.
He sent a letter to McCarthy in March to ask her about the intent of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law to threaten litigation as a way to “force a cap-and-trade system on the transportation fuels sector” – a process known as “sue and settle.”

“Such a process is wholly unacceptable, especially considering the administration’s pattern of excluding states and economically impacted individuals and businesses from important rule-making decisions,” Vitter wrote.

Source: Reuters

McCarthy to face barrage of agency criticism

2013-04-09T19:47:38+00:00

Republican panel members are also likely to quiz McCarthy on whether EPA might use the Clean Air Act to implement a cap-and-trade system for transportation fuel, even though the agency has announced no such plan.

The Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University has threatened to sue EPA if it does not consider implementing the rule. The think tank says a market-based program of that kind would be the best way to reduce emissions from the transportation sector while limiting cost. It would ultimately apply to fuels for all motor vehicles and aircraft.

But Vitter, Inhofe and Sens. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) responded late last month by demanding that McCarthy say whether the agency planned to quickly accommodate IPI’s petition (E&ENews PM, March 28).

Source: E&E News

Bankers’ Court Wins Could Come Back to Haunt Them

2013-04-03T16:23:05+00:00

As Michael Livermore of the Institute for Policy Integrity, a group that favors cost-benefit analysis, argues: “the fact that cost-benefit analysis is brought in by the courts for financial reform in a way that is contentious, unclear, without a lot of guidance, and in a politically charged way, entrenches views on opposite sides of the debate.”

Source: Bloomberg

Think tank’s cap-and-trade push spurs Republican warning over EPA lawsuit settlements

2013-03-28T16:43:30+00:00

GOP senators used a New York University-based think tank’s push for a greenhouse gas cap-and-trade system for the fuel sector’s emissions to criticize U.S. EPA as overly eager to settle lawsuits filed by environmentalists seeking more regulations.

Four members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said in a letter to EPA that using the Clean Air Act’s Section 211 to regulate greenhouse gases would “expand environmental regulation beyond original intent of the law and could have detrimental effects on the livelihoods of our fellow Americans.”

Source: E&E News

For Climate Change Solution, Look to Yesterday’s GOP

2013-03-28T15:45:14+00:00

If you don’t believe that human actions are leading to a warming planet, nothing will convince you that carbon controls are useful — if it ain’t broke, as they say, why pay to fix it?

But for the rest of us who know that there is near unanimity among climate scientists that temperatures are rising and humans are the cause, the choice isn’t whether to act but how to most efficiently lower our pollution.

Source: The Huffington Post

Interest Groups Take Novel Approach of Using Cross-Boundary Provisions of Clean Air Act to Prod EPA

2013-03-25T15:10:29+00:00

With climate legislation stalled in Congress, environmental groups have been refocusing their efforts on EPA rulemaking and litigation in efforts to speed up greenhouse gas regulation. In a recent rulemaking petition, the Institute for Policy Integrity (the Institute) seeks to compel EPA rules under three separate sections of the Clean Air Act. The Institute first argues that Section 115 of the Clean Air Act, a never-before-used provision addressing international air pollution, requires EPA to order all 50 states to modify their state-level implementation plans to address greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: Marten Law

Analysis: Obama’s climate agenda may face setbacks in federal court

2013-03-25T15:03:32+00:00

Some legal experts warn that under the status quo – four Republican appointees and three Democratic appointees among active judges – Obama’s plan to bypass a deeply partisan Congress to address climate change using existing authorities will not be easy.

“There is really no moving forward with regulation without going to the DC Circuit and the decision of the court could really have major consequences,” said Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s law school.

Source: Thomson Reuters