By Caleb Taylor
Federal regulators do read the comments, but are you submitting any?
Former ACRE Research Fellow and UCA Schedler Honors College alum Maleka Momand was a guest at the 鈥檚 Regulatory Transparency Teleforum,, on March 21st to discuss the federal 鈥渘otice and comment rulemaking process鈥� under the Administrative Procedure Act. Federal commenting gives private individuals the opportunity to submit their opinion in favor or in opposition to a federal agency on a proposed rule or regulation before it is implemented.
Momand is currently the CEO and Co-Founder of , a technology platform for government to evaluate and manage regulatory policy. She formerly served as President of , a non-profit in Silicon Valley that researches ways to improve regulatory processes at the state and federal levels.
Momand said:
鈥淢ost people don鈥檛 even know that you can comment on regulations.鈥�
Momand is the co-author of an Argive report published in June, 2017 about how to make the federal rulemaking website more user-friendly. The report notes that federal comments are often submitted by interest groups which tend to favor 鈥渓arge incumbent interests鈥� instead of 鈥渟mall or start-up businesses.鈥�
Momand said:
“Feedback can be distorted when interest groups or other parties trick the system by having thousands of individuals submit a carbon copy comment. It really adds a lot of noise to the document and it is difficult to filter through what has already been submitted versus what is new.”
In the Argive report, Momand and her co-authors suggest that Regulations.gov add 鈥渄ynamic features that encourage user participation鈥� in order to increase the share of non-interest group respondents.
Momand said that federal commenting is a 鈥渉uge check on agency rulemaking鈥� that is 鈥渙ften underutilized and overlooked鈥� by citizens.
You can listen to the between Momand; Donald Kochan, Chapman University School of Law Professor; and Devon Westhill, Director of the Regulatory Transparency Project at The Federalist Society.