There are a variety of ways to streamline regulations. Some yield large monetary savings, such as reducing required training hours or eliminating gold-plating from the building code. Others cut significant numbers of regulatory requirements, such as removing or streamlining outdated incorporated documents.

Still others may simply involve ensuring that the regulatory code is logically organized and free of duplicative text. These types of changes are no less important: a cluttered regulatory code can be difficult for regulated parties to digest. This week’s Highlights features several examples of routine regulatory clean-up.

 

The Department of Education eliminates regulations that are redundant of statutory code.

In many cases, agencies adopt regulations that merely parrot statutory requirements. Though regulations that clarify statutory mandates can be useful, regulations that simply repeat statutory language make the Code unnecessarily long and can often become outdated.

The Department of Education recently identified two regulations (see Action 6605 and Action 6666) that merely restated statutory text, in both cases inaccurately. Both contained minor components that were still useful, but the relevant language could be moved elsewhere in the regulation. By eliminating these actions, the Department is reducing confusion for regulated parties and saving itself time by avoiding the need to tweak the regulation every time a statutory change occurs.

 

The Department of Transportation consolidates two regulatory chapters.

When two corporations merge, the new company is almost always more efficient since it can eliminate redundant functions. The same principle applies to regulations: if two different portions of the Code cover similar topics, a consolidated regulation can almost always eliminate duplicative provisions.

The Department of Transportation recently applied this concept to its regulation dealing with waysides, rest areas, and parking lots. It consolidated (see Action 6538) two chapters into one, eliminating a lot of redundant text in the process.