Imagine the following: A new administration comes into power, promising to unshackle industry from the constraints of unnecessary environmental regulations. Lobbyists arrive with wish lists, and plans are promptly devised to undo undesirable aspects of the prior administration’s legacy. The new administration issues an emergency rule to repeal a recent regulation affecting the chemical industry under the pretext that the regulation poses an urgent public health threat. Lawyers hurry into court and the emergency rule is struck down. Injustice (or at least bad policy) is averted, in the short run.
This scenario sounds awfully familiar today, but the year was 1995, and the new administration was that of New York Governor George Pataki who had just entered the statehouse after defeating three-term incumbent Mario Cuomo on a Republican wave that also swept Congress. Governor Pataki had set up an Office of Regulatory Reform, and one of its first visitors was the Chemical Specialties Manufacturers Association (CSMA), who were unhappy with a recent Cuomo rule that restricted the allowable concentration of the chemical DEET in insect repellants. What made the situation tricky for the new administration was that the restriction (to no more than 30 percent allowable concentration) had already been unsuccessfully challenged by the CSMA, with a final determination issued by the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, just a few months earlier.
