Regulatory Flexibility Act

Inherent Weaknesses May Limit Its Usefulness for Small Governments Gao ID: HRD-91-16 January 11, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed weaknesses in the Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980, intended to limit regulatory burdens on small governments.

GAO found that: (1) due to weaknesses in the act, federal agencies conducted few analyses of their proposed regulations' potential burdens on small governments; (2) the Small Business Administration (SBA) lacked staff with expertise in small-government issues to monitor agency compliance with the act; (3) the act failed to provide a mechanism to ensure that federal rulemaking agencies complied with the act; (4) neither the act nor SBA provided sufficiently specific criteria or definitions to guide rulemaking agencies in assessing the impact of proposed regulations on small governments; (5) the lack of regulatory impact data on small governments did not limit agencies' ability to make decisions on whether to conduct analyses; and (6) legislation proposed in 1989, intended to improve the act's implementation, did not address the lack of specific criteria or enforcement authority.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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