Employees of the Environmental Protection Agency are being buried in mountains of paperwork this year, according to a report released by the American Action Forum Tuesday, which claims the EPA's annual paperwork burden currently sits at 188 million hours.
The report argues the Obama administration's increasing regulations on the agency has caused a severe uptick in documentation:
[...] years of regulatory accumulation, especially under the Obama administration have pushed EPA's paperwork burden to its highest level in history. Year after year of new regulatory costs have not only translated into shuttered power plants, but also new reporting and recordkeeping requirements. EPA's paperwork burden now stands at 188 million hours.
To put this in perspective, it would take more than 94,200 employees working full-time (2,000 hours a year) to complete one year of EPA paperwork. The agency's burden has surged 23 percent since 2009 and 34 percent since 2002.
While Obama has pledged to cut down on time spent filling out forms, it appears this has largely not happened in practice. The AAF report says:
The anatomy of record paperwork is a combination of lesser-known new requirements and massive upward revisions of existing paperwork collections. Unfortunately, these records arrive in an era when President Obama pledged to "modify, streamline, expand, or repeal" existing significant regulations. Although there have been instances of streamlining and eliminating burdens, these measures are dwarfed by new regulations that add costs and paperwork.
Additionally, little has been done to speed up the paperwork process, as a large percentage of it still must be filled out by hand rather than easily submitted electronically. According to the report:
The EPA imposes 777 forms from 420 different macro collections of information. Acccording to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), only 67 of those 420 macro collections can be submitted electronically. This translates to 235 forms, or 30 percent, of EPA's regulatory portfolio that must be submitted by hand.
And unfortunately, the report gives no indication the already overwhelming amount of paperwork is going to get smaller. In fact, it says, "With four major rules under review now, it's likely 188 million hours isn't the agency's red tape ceiling." One can only hope someone brings an end to this unabated spiral of unproductive regulation and rulemaking.