Making no recommendations, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) October 14 identified four ideas that are circulating as options to improve CPSC’s response to new and emerging hazards. GAO relatedly found that CPSC and its stakeholders see the agency limited in its ability to react by five constraints: the rare need to seek compliance action via litigation; its mandate to defer to voluntary standards absent showing certain deficiencies; its required rulemaking procedures, its information sharing barriers, especially 6(b); and limited resources. The four ideas to mitigate these challenges:
- Preventative Regulatory Approaches: This area focused on safety faults that can be traced to the design and development phases of products. However, attempted implementation of the two main ideas discussed – the precautionary principle and premarket approval – likely would face opposition from industry. Indeed, even some consumer groups questioned the value of implementing a full precautionary-principle approach at CPSC. Meanwhile, agency officials shied away from getting premarket approval powers but did acknowledge the approach might work if focused narrowly on certain products.
- Expedited Rulemaking: Harking back to the perceived successes of temporary rulemaking shortcuts created by the CPSIA in 2008, proponents of this idea said they believe that the cost-benefit requirements of the CPSA create slower regulations than under just the Administrative Procedures Act. On the other hand, others pointed out that CPSC’s existing requirements force it to consider effects fully. GAO also reported calls for increased CPSC powers akin to CPSIA Section 104, which allows the agency to adopt certain voluntary standards as mandatory.
- Enhanced Authorities: These focused on increasing the agency’s powers at the ports, including the ability to leverage the resources of other agencies. However, there was some question whether such changes would address the concern at hand – new and emerging hazards – as those typically are not identified at the ports. In any event, a top priority would be increasing the agency’s ability to address the practice of attempting reentry at subsequent ports when shipments are stopped at the first ones tried.
- Improved Data Analysis: Extra staff and resources would speed acquisition and review of incident data. This ranges from funding full rollout of the RAM to helping CPSC speed access to data sources like death certificates.
Get the report at www.gao.gov/assets/670/666488.pdf.
