John Dunlop, Secretary of Labor under President Gerald Ford, first introduced the idea of formally engaging affected interests in negotiations over federal regulations in the 1970s.
[4] A believer in the effectiveness of neg reg, President Clinton encouraged agencies to use the approach in Executive Order #12866 and in a subsequent Presidential Memorandum.
[5] Although only a small fraction of all regulations have been developed through negotiated rulemaking, a variety of federal government agencies have used the procedure, including the U.S.
Departments of Education, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, the Interior, Labor, and Transportation, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
With the public policy mediator providing focus and managing the negotiations, the committee discusses each issue striving for agreements in concept, which government staff draft as regulatory text.
"[9] In a subsequent paper, public policy mediator Susan Podziba has argued that negotiated rulemaking allows the benefits of face-to-face interaction and cooperation.
[11] Professor Jody Freeman of Harvard Law School argues against this idea and asserts that the phrase "public interest" is far too vague to act as a variable in the assessment of negotiated rulemaking.
[12] In 2006, the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Public co-sponsored a workshop to reflect on lessons learned during past negotiated rulemakings conducted throughout the federal government.
According to background materials prepared for the workshop, more than 30 federal negotiated rulemakings occurred between 1996 and 2005, including the No Child Left Behind Act, Off-Road Vehicle Regulations at Cape Cod National Seashore, and Worker Safety Standards for the Use of Cranes and Derricks in Construction.