Opinion: Endangered last-minute rules

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A biologist friend of mine who works at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says everyone is walking around the office these days with big grins plastered on their faces. Once again, science reigns at the EPA--along with things like, you know, the environment.

The grins must have widened a little when the Obama administration neatly undid one of former Presidenti Bush’s last-minute bits of harmful rulemaking, which told federal agencies that engage in construction projects that they didn’t need to bother consulting with actual scientists about the projects’ effects on endangered species before revving up the bulldozers.

There had been some thinking that this particular rule would take time and a good bit of trouble to reverse, but Obama simply called for a new review and instructed staff to follow the old, scientific way of doing things.

Obama has been, piece by piece, working on dismantling many of Bush’s more harmful last-minute changes. Not that Bush is first president to do this kind of hurried ‘I’ll leave the world the way I want it’ rulemaking right before ending his administration. Unsupervised rushing seldom makes for good government. What about some congressional rulemaking at the beginning of the new administration to put curbs on this sort of thing?