Ensuring Lawful Regulation; Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs

DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <CFR>14 CFR Chapters I Through III</CFR> <CFR>23 CFR Chapters I Through III</CFR> <CFR>33 CFR Chapter IV</CFR> <CFR>46 CFR Chapter II</CFR> <CFR>48 CFR Chapter 12</CFR> <CFR>49 CFR Subtitle A and Subtitle B, Chapters I Through III and V and VI</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. DOT-OST-2025-0026]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Ensuring Lawful Regulation; Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of the Secretary, Department of Transportation. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Request for information (RFI). <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> As part of its implementation of Executive orders issued by the President, including Executive Order 14219, “Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementation of the President's ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Deregulatory Agenda,” issued on February 19, 2025, and Executive Order 14192, “Unleashing Prosperity through Deregulation,” issued on January 31, 2025, the Department of Transportation (DOT) seeks comments and information to assist DOT in identifying existing regulations, guidance, paperwork requirements, and other regulatory obligations that can be modified or repealed, consistent with law, to ensure that DOT administrative actions do not undermine the national interest and that DOT achieves meaningful burden reduction while continuing to meet statutory obligations and ensure the safety of the U.S. transportation system. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written comments and information are requested on or before May 5, 2025. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Interested persons are encouraged to submit comments, identified by “Regulatory Reform RFI,” by any of the following methods: <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Email: Transportation.RegulatoryInfo@dot.gov.</E> Include “Regulatory Reform RFI” in the subject line of the message. <E T="03">Mail:</E> U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of the General Counsel, 1200 New Jersey Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20590. All comments received will be posted without change to <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov,</E> including any personal information provided. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Electronic Access and Filing</HD> This document and all comments received may be viewed online through the Federal eRulemaking portal at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> using the docket number listed above. Electronic retrieval help and guidelines are also available at <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov.</E> An electronic copy of this document may also be downloaded from the Office of the Federal Register's website at <E T="03">www.FederalRegister.gov</E> and the U.S. Government Publishing Office's website at <E T="03">www.GovInfo.gov.</E> All comments received before the close of business on the comment closing date indicated above will be considered and will be available for examination in the docket at the above address. Comments received after the comment closing date will be filed in the docket and will be considered to the extent practicable. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Daniel Cohen, U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of the General Counsel, 1200 New Jersey Ave. SE, Washington, DC 20590. Telephone: (202) 366-4702. Email: <E T="03">Transportation.RegulatoryInfo@dot.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> On February 19, 2025, the President issued Executive Order 14219, “Ensuring Lawful Regulation and Implementing the President's ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Deregulatory Agenda” (90 FR 10583; February 25, 2025). That order stated the policy of the Administration is to focus the executive branch's limited enforcement resources on regulations squarely authorized by constitutional Federal statutes and commence the deconstruction of the overbearing and burdensome administrative state. Pursuant to the order, agencies are required to identify and report to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget on regulations in one or more of the following categories: (i) Unconstitutional regulations and regulations that raise serious constitutional difficulties, such as exceeding the scope of the power vested in the Federal Government by the Constitution; (ii) Regulations that are based on unlawful delegations of legislative power; (iii) Regulations that are based on anything other than the best reading of the underlying statutory authority or prohibition; (iv) Regulations that implicate matters of social, political, or economic significance that are not authorized by clear statutory authority; (v) Regulations that impose significant costs upon private parties that are not outweighed by public benefits; (vi) Regulations that harm the national interest by significantly and unjustifiably impeding technological innovation, infrastructure development, disaster response, inflation reduction, research and development, economic development, energy production, land use, and foreign policy objectives; and (vii) regulations that impose undue burdens on small business and impede private enterprise and entrepreneurship. After receiving this report, OIRA is instructed to consult with agency heads to develop a Unified Regulatory Agenda to rescind or modify identified regulations as appropriate and consider these factors when evaluating potential new regulations. On January 31, 2025, the President issued Executive Order 14192, “Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation” (90 FR 9065; Feb. 6, 2025). The order states the policy of the executive branch is to be prudent and financially responsible in the expenditure of funds, from both public and private sources, and to alleviate unnecessary regulatory burdens placed on the American people. Toward that end, E.O. 14192 requires that: (a) Unless prohibited by law, whenever an agency proposes for notice and comment or otherwise promulgates a new regulation, it shall identify at least 10 existing regulations to be repealed. (b) For fiscal year 2025, all agencies must ensure that the total incremental cost of all new regulations, including repealed regulations, being finalized is significantly less than zero, as determined by the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), unless otherwise required by law or instructions from OMB. (c) Any new incremental costs associated with new regulations must, to the extent permitted by law, be offset by the elimination of existing costs associated with at least 10 prior regulations. Further, Executive Order 14192 requires that for fiscal year 2026, and each fiscal year thereafter, the head of each agency identify, on an aggregated basis, for regulations that increase incremental cost, offsetting regulations and provide the agency's best approximation of the total costs or savings associated with each new regulation or repealed regulation. During the Presidential budget process, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget will identify for each agency a total amount of incremental costs that will be allowed for such agency in issuing new regulations and repealing regulations for each fiscal year after fiscal year 2025. No regulations exceeding the agency's total incremental cost allowance will be permitted in that fiscal year, unless required by law or approved in writing by the Director. The total incremental cost allowance may allow an increase or require a reduction in total regulatory cost. To implement these Executive orders, DOT is taking two immediate steps. <E T="03">First,</E> as described further below, DOT is issuing this RFI seeking public comment on how best to ensure lawful regulation and to achieve meaningful burden reduction while continuing to achieve DOT's legal obligations, safety mission, and regulatory objectives. <E T="03">Second,</E> DOT has created an email in-box at <E T="03">Transportation.RegulatoryInfo@dot.gov,</E> which interested parties can use to identify to DOT—on a continuing basis—existing regulations, guidance, reporting requirements, and other regulatory obligations that they believe can be modified or repealed, consistent with law. Any comments received will be placed in the docket for this RFI on <E T="03">https://regulations.gov.</E> Together, these steps will help DOT ensure it acts in a lawful, prudent, and financially responsible manner in the expenditure of funds, from both public and private sources, and manages appropriately the costs associated with private expenditures required for compliance with DOT regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Request for Information</HD> Pursuant to the Executive orders described herein, DOT is, through this RFI, seeking input, as permitted by law, from the public, particularly entities significantly affected by administrative actions of DOT, including State, local, and tribal governments; small businesses; consumers; non-governmental organizations; transportation system operators and service providers; and manufacturers and their trade associations. DOT's goal is to create a systematic method for identifying those existing DOT regulations, guidance, or reporting requirements that are inconsistent with law or Administration policy, including regulations, guidance, or reporting requirements that are obsolete, unnecessary, unjustified, or simply no longer make sense. Consistent with DOT's commitment to public participation in the rulemaking process, DOT is beginning this process by soliciting views from the public on how best to conduct its analysis of existing DOT regulations, guidance, or reporting requirements. It is also seeking views from the public on specific regulations, guidance, or reporting requirements or DOT-imposed oblig ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 17k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━