RegState Spring 2005, Section 3, Writing Assignment #3

 

Foundations of the Regulatory State
 Spring 2005, Section 3

Writing Assignment #3

(Posted 3/21/2005)


This memo assignment is designed to reinforce material discussed in class and to help you exercise writing skills in the area of regulatory policy. You must complete at least 3 of the 4 memos assigned during the term. These assignments will not be graded, but will be marked "check," "check-plus," or "check-minus," generally with brief comments. Superior or delinquent performance on the memos will count toward your grade in the same way as contributions to class discussion, but the main way in which the memos influence grades is by providing practice in writing short essays of the same format that will be used on the final exam.

Please submit your memo via e-mail; this will enable us to keep better track of the memos and to provide more timely feedback.  So that files are not overwritten, please give your memo a filename that includes your last name. E.g., if I were submitting a memo in Word format, it would be called katz.memo1.doc.  Please also be sure to include your name in the memo text as well, so that it will show when we print out hard copies.

Because we have had difficulties keeping track of and properly routing all the earlier memos, this time you should submit your memo to my assistant, Joseph McGrath, at jmcgra@law.columbia.edu, and we will forward it to the TA responsible for your panel. Please also indicate your panel number in the subject line of your cover message.

As before, I will presume, unless you tell me otherwise in your cover message, that if we find your essay to be among the best we receive, I have your permission to post it [with your name removed] as part of my feedback to the class, as with last year's memos. If you do not wish to grant such permission, please let me know expressly.  Your decision whether to grant or reserve such permission will not affect your memo score or class standing in any way.

This assignment is due on Monday, March 28, at 5 pm. Extensions will not be granted absent compelling circumstances. You should not do any additional research in preparing your analysis beyond consulting the sources linked below, and you should limit the time you spend on this assignment to not more than four hours.


In 1996, the Office of Management and Budget [OMB] published in 1996 a “best practices” guide to the cost-benefit analysis that is required for executive branch agencies under Executive Order 12866, promulgated by President Clinton. In its discussion of reductions of fatality risks, OMB drew a distinction between two methods for evaluating the benefits of such reductions:

Reductions in fatality risks as a result of government action are best monetized according to the willingness-to-pay approach. The value of changes in fatality risk is sometimes expressed in terms of the value of statistical life (VSL). . . . . Another way of expressing reductions in fatality risks is in terms of the value of statistical life-years extended (VSLY). For example, if a regulation protected individuals whose average remaining life expectancy was 40 years, then a risk reduction of one fatality would be expressed as 40 life-years extended. This approach allows distinctions in risk-reduction measures based on their effects on longevity. However, this does not automatically mean that regulations with greater number of life-years extended will be favored over regulations with fewer number of life-years extended. VSL and VSLY ultimately depend on the willingness to pay for various forms of mortality risk reduction, not just longevity conderations.

Several years later, in the spring of 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] issued a cost-benefit analysis study pertaining to the Bush administration “Clear Skies Initiative," which its proponents claim will reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, and mercury. This study estimated the annual costs of the Clear Skies program to total $6.5 billion by the year 2020, but produced two alternate estimates of the monetary value of projected annual health benefits: a basic estimate of $93 billion per year, and an alternative estimate of $11 billion per year. [It also estimated a separate $3 billion per year benefit from improving visibility at select National Parks and Wilderness Areas.]

An EPA document, entitled Technical Addendum: Methodologies for Benefit Analysis of the Clear Skies Initiative, 2002, explained that the difference in the two alternative estimates derived from, among other things, variations in “the relationship between age and willingness-to-pay for fatal risk reduction,” and “the degree of prematurity in mortalities from air pollution.” Specifically, on the basis of contingent valuation studies, for its alternative estimate the EPA used a willingness-to-pay measure of $3.7 million per VSL for those under 70, and a comparable VSL measure of $2.3 million for those over 70.

The publication of the Clear Skies analysis and similar cost-benefit studies led to a political controversy in which critics labelled EPA’s policy the “senior death discount.” In the face of such adverse publicity, then EPA Adminstrator Christine Whitman disavowed the policy, stating to the New York Times, “The senior discount factor has been stopped. It has been discontinued. EPA will not, I repeat, use an age-adjusted analysis in decisionmaking.”

It is now two years later, and the Clear Skies bill has just failed a crucial vote in a Senate subcommittee, leading both proponents and critics of the bill to pronounce it dead for the near future. In response, however, the Bush administration finalized an administrative regulation that contained similar provisions but that does not have the same national coverage area that the Clear Skies bill would have. This rule, called the Clean Air Interstate Rule, had been readied for issue last December, but the administration delayed it in hopes that Congress would pass the bill instead.


You are a Special Assistant for Policy Analysis at the EPA. Some of the officials in your agency who participated in the 2003 cost-benefit study have suggested that now that the Clear Skies policy is being implemented through regulatory rule rather than legislation, it is appropriate to re-institute their original methodology. The incoming Administrator of EPA, Stephen L. Johnson, who has just been nominated to the position by President Bush and who has served as acting Administrator since January, has asked you to prepare a memo on the issue that explains what the controversy is about, what the good government position should be, and what the potential political fallout might if EPA were now to adopt VSLY or some other age-adjusted analysis. You should limit your memo to no more than 500 words and no more than two pages, and should write it in "bullet-point" format.

In preparing your memo, please keep in mind the following remarks regarding format:  first, remember that when writing in bullet-point format, you still need to explain thoroughly your arguments and logic. For further guidance, please see my feedback remarks for memo #2. Second, although you have been assigned to produce an advocacy document, you should make sure to identify and respond to possible counter-arguments to your position.  Just as in a litigation setting, a good advocate will give due credit to the opposing position before arguing against it.  Ignoring or mischaracterizing the other side's best arguments is generally not an effective strategy in this regard.



For additional factual background, you may wish to consult the following sources: