Re: Support the Anti-Scofflaw Regulation

[ttweed@wildrockies.org (Tony Tweedale)]

>...would much rather see a law which allows citizen suits and cuts out the
>administration entirely.  In fact I would like to see most environmental
>law written that way.
--

bill--unfortunatelly, as you probably know, things are moving the opposite
direction.  Citizen standing to sue under the fed. env. statutes is badly
eroded & may disappear altogether soon, thanks to Scalia and other
conservative activist judges (not just at the Fed. District Court level).
And agency enforcement is also under attack, what with "audit" (ie
immunity) laws and regs; w/ judges declaring fedaralism doesn't exist
therefore whole federal regulatory scheme statutes like the CAA and
countless others are illegal; and other judges declaring once EPA delegates
an enforcement program to a state (eg RCRA, CWA, etc), EPA loses the
ability to enforce (ie its traditional oversight role that I always thought
was explicit in this statutes).  Things are going crazy, in env. law!!

I  agree w/ the argument that the rule provides the opportunity to focus
attention on a scofflaw's record, and presents some opportunity to engage
it, the scofflaw contracting rule.  Better a little than nothing.  In my
comments I pointed out the hypocracy of Chambers of Commerce supporting
good business practices (sanctioning scofflaw members, etc.), but here (the
US Chamber, anyway) opposing it.  The rule also brings the 'level playing
field' argument into play, which business is always complaining about as to
env. regs that affect different companies differently.  Moreover, large
corporations use unlevel playing fields to keep competition out, something
the GSA should not be promoting (ie, a scofflaw contractor rule would level
the playing field somewhat).
--

(bill, rob):  It takes me 2 to 3 key strokes to select text I want to
respond to and delete the rest.  hitting 'reply' only on a long post is bad
netiquete because the sender's time saving is far outweighed by the extra
time hundreds of readers spend searching for the reply.