Browse regulations

Establishes policies and procedures for SIGAR employees regarding testimony and document production in legal proceedings where the US is not a party, including Touhy requests, fee structures, and factors for determining disclosure authorization.

Creates bureaucratic barriers to legitimate legal discovery while protecting agency interests, with costs ultimately borne by taxpayers who funded the Afghanistan reconstruction being investigated.

SIGAR's procedural rules for processing Freedom of Information Act and Privacy Act requests, including submission requirements, 20-day processing timelines, fee structures, and appeal processes.

Obsolete: SIGAR's Afghanistan reconstruction mission is complete; maintaining this regulation imposes unnecessary bureaucracy and access fees that undermine the transparency FOIA was designed to ensure.

HUD supplemental ethics regulation for employees, prohibiting financial interests in FHA debentures, HUD-subsidized properties, and Section 8 housing (with limited exceptions), restricting outside employment in real estate and mortgage industries, and requiring prior approval for certain activities to prevent conflicts of interest.

These narrow restrictions on HUD employees' financial interests and outside employment are essential to prevent corruption and self-dealing in housing programs. The regulation prevents officials from profiting from decisions they make, ensuring programs serve the public not insiders. Without it, HUD's $100B+ budget would be vulnerable to exploitation, destroying public trust. The compliance burden falls only on 8,000+ federal employees, not the public, making costs trivial compared to the avoided harms of regulatory capture.

Procedural rules governing the filing, processing, and adjudication of petitions for union representation elections and clarification of bargaining units before the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA). Covers petition requirements, showing of interest thresholds (30% for elections, 10% for dues allotment), filing procedures, intervention, election conduct, and hearing processes.

Deletion would eliminate the procedural framework necessary for orderly, lawful union representation processes, resulting in chaos and arbitrary decision-making that violates due process and prevents both federal employees and agencies from resolving representation disputes through a fair, knowable system. These rules are judicially manageable standards that give effect to statutory rights without substantively distorting market outcomes or creating non-obvious harms beyond necessary administrative overhead.

This OPM regulation mandates that federal agencies establish alcohol and drug abuse counseling programs for employees and authorizes child care subsidies for lower-income federal workers, with OPM oversight, reporting requirements, and detailed implementation rules.

The regulation imposes unnecessary compliance costs on agencies, uses taxpayer funds for non-essential employee benefits, distorts labor markets by giving federal workers a competitive advantage, and expands federal bureaucracy. The hidden tax burden and unintended consequences of creating a two-tier labor system outweigh any benefits, and these objectives could be achieved more efficiently through voluntary private arrangements or existing personnel discretion.

The Pathways Programs regulation establishes a structured hiring pipeline for students and recent graduates into federal employment through the Internship Program and Recent Graduates Program. It mandates agency-specific policies, designates oversight officers, sets reporting requirements to OPM, and provides for noncompetitive conversion to permanent competitive service positions after program completion.

Creates unnecessary compliance burden and centralized bureaucratic control over agency hiring while undermining competitive merit principles through noncompetitive conversion pathways. The regulation adds layers of mandatory reporting, designated officers, and OPM oversight that increase administrative overhead without demonstrable benefits over simpler agency-managed programs. The noncompetitive conversion creates a backdoor to permanent federal employment that bypasses merit-based competitive examining, potentially lowering workforce quality and distorting the federal labor market.

This regulation establishes procedures for handling court subpoenas and requests for Government Accountability Office records, including directing subpoenas to the Comptroller General, protecting original records from alteration or use as evidence, and allowing certified copies for evidentiary purposes.

This regulation ensures proper handling of official government records in legal proceedings, protecting the integrity and chain of custody of GAO documents while providing a clear process for compliance with court orders. Without it, there would be no standardized procedure for responding to subpoenas, potentially leading to improper disclosure, loss of original records, or procedural confusion in legal cases involving GAO materials.

The regulation removes the GAO requirement for contractors and vendors to execute certificates of correctness and nonpayment on bills and invoices, except for carriers and transportation providers, while maintaining liability for false claims under existing statutes.

Deleting this regulation would reinstate burdensome certification requirements, increasing compliance costs and administrative burdens on businesses, especially small firms, without improving fraud prevention given existing liability statutes.

Federal regulation applying compensation benefits to Government Accountability Office employees

Federal benefits for GAO employees represent unconstitutional federal overreach into state powers under Tenth Amendment; imposes unnecessary administrative costs while creating regulatory capture risks where oversight agency benefits from its own regulatory framework

Applies OPM's federal Attendance and Leave regulations (5 U.S.C. subpart E and implementing rules) to GAO employees, governing hours of work, annual leave, sick leave, and other paid time off.

These internal employment terms for federal workers should be determined by agency management discretion and market-based compensation rather than rigid statutory mandates. The mandated leave requirements increase taxpayer costs, reduce workforce flexibility, and represent unnecessary federal micromanagement of the government's own employer-employee relationship.

Implements the government-wide debarment and suspension system for the Department of Education's nonprocurement transactions, including Title IV Higher Education Act programs. Adopts OMB guidance at 2 CFR part 180 with ED-specific supplements, defines covered transactions (including subcontracts ≥$25,000), mandates flow-down requirements, and outlines procedures for suspension, debarment, and cross-agency recognition of exclusions.

Deletion would remove the essential mechanism preventing fraudsters from accessing over $100B annually in federal student aid, leading to massive waste and abuse. The uniform system's cross-agency recognition and procedural safeguards efficiently protect taxpayer interests in a way that private monitoring or ad hoc approaches cannot match across the vast higher education financing ecosystem.

Implements Pittman-Robertson and Dingell-Johnson Acts: governs federal matching funds to states for wildlife/fish conservation; restricts hunting/fishing license revenue to agency administration only; sets certification, reporting, and compliance requirements; defines eligible activities and diversion penalties.

Federalism violation: wildlife management is a core state function under the Tenth Amendment. Compliance imposes substantial hidden costs on states, centralizes decision-making, and distorts incentives via federal matching. States can fund conservation directly from license fees without bureaucratic overhead, preserving local control and innovation.

Federal regulation establishing minimum safety standards for railroad conductor certification, including eligibility requirements, training, testing, and monitoring to reduce accidents and improve railroad safety.

Creates $2+ trillion in compliance costs as hidden tax, burdens small businesses disproportionately, erodes federalism by federalizing what should be state/local jurisdiction, and imposes regulatory capture risks while distorting market incentives.

This regulation establishes comprehensive federal authority for inspecting, examining, and removing hazardous materials packages from transportation commerce when imminent hazards are suspected, including procedures for out-of-service orders, emergency actions, and civil penalty enforcement mechanisms.

This regulation grants excessive federal authority over hazardous materials transportation that could be handled by states under the Tenth Amendment, creates costly compliance burdens on businesses, and expands federal power beyond constitutional limits through expansive interpretations of interstate commerce authority.

Establishes NASA's Contract Adjustment Board to approve extraordinary contractual actions and indemnification requests for unusually hazardous or nuclear risks, requiring multi-layered review by contracting officers, General Counsel, and the NASA Administrator with detailed documentation requirements.

Creates open-ended government liability that distorts risk pricing and encourages moral hazard; the bureaucratic labyrinth adds compliance costs while the vague 'national defense' and 'unusually hazardous' standards invite regulatory expansion. Private contracts and insurance markets allocate risk more efficiently without exposing taxpayers to unbounded contingent liabilities.