Docket Wrench: Exposing Trends in Regulatory Comments by Nicko Margolies.
From the post:
Today the Sunlight Foundation unveils Docket Wrench, an online research tool to dig into regulatory comments and uncover patterns among millions of documents. Docket Wrench offers a window into the rulemaking process where special interests and individuals can wield their influence without the level of scrutiny traditional lobbying activities receive.
Before an agency finalizes a proposed rule that Congress and the president have mandated that they enforce, there is a period of public commenting where the agency solicits feedback from those affected by the rule. The commenters can vary from company or industry representatives to citizens concerned about laws that impact their environment, schools, finances and much more. These comments and related documents are grouped into “dockets” where you can follow the actions related to each rule. Every rulemaking docket has its own page on Docket Wrench where you can get a graphical overview of the docket, drill down into the rules and notices it contains and read the comments on those rules. We’ve pulled all this information together into one spot so you can more easily research trends and extract interesting stories from the data. Sunlight’s Reporting Group has done just that, looking into regulatory comment trends and specific comments by the Chamber of Commerce and the NRA.
An “apparent” transparency offering from the Sunlight Foundation.
Imagine that you follow their advice and do discover “form letters,” horror, that have been submitted in a rule making process.
What are you going to do? Whistle up the agency’s former assistant director who is on your staff to call his buds at the agency to complain?
Get yourself a cardboard sign and march around your town square? Start a letter writing campaign of your own?
Rules are drafted, debated and approved in the dark recesses of agencies, former agency staff, lobbyists and law firms.
Want transparency? Real transparency?
That would require experts in law and policy who have equal access to the agency as its insiders and an obligation to report to the public who wins and who loses from particular rules.
An office like the public editor of the New York Times.
Might offend donors if you did that.
Best just to expose the public to a tiny part of the quagmire so you can claim people had an opportunity to participate.
Not a meaningful one, but an opportunity none the less.
I first saw this at the Legal Informatics Blog, Sunlight Foundation Releases Docket Wrench: Tool for Analyzing Comments to Proposed Regulations