Yesterday, the White House announced that President Biden will nominate Professor Richard Revesz to be Administrator for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the White House Office of Management and Budget, a position often referred to as "regulatory czar." It is, by some accounts, the most government important job you may may not have heard of before.
This is a long-awaited, and quite significant, announcement. OIRA is the White House office that oversees the development and promulgation of new federal regulations and ensures that federal agencies comply with applicable Executive Orders on the issuance of regulations. Among other things, OIRA makes sure agencies conduct adequate cost-benefit analyses and consider the likely consequences of proposed regulations, and that agency regulations are as consistent with administration policy as relevant statutes allow.
Given OIRA's responsibilities, Revesz was always an obvious choice for this position. As the former Dean of the NYU School of Law and Director of the American Law Institute, he is immensely well respected, and much of his scholarship has honed in on issues central to OIRA's responsibilities. Among other things, he co-authored two books making a progressive defense of cost-benefit analysis (which I reviewed here and here), and he founded NYU's Institute for Policy Integrity, which focuses on many regulatory process issues and hosts conferences and produces reports buttressing the analytical case for more aggressive federal environmental regulations.
