ABA shares recommendations on changes to Administrative Procedure Act

In a July 25 letter [PDF] to Chris Cannon, chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, Eleanor D. Kinney, then-chair of the ABA Section of Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice, outlined the most recent ABA policy relating to the Administrative Procedure Act. The subcommittee was holding a hearing on "The 60th Anniversary of the Administrative Procedure Act: Where Do We Go From Here?"

Kinney wrote that among the items about the Act of most pressing concern to the ABA are: "amendment of the adjudication provisions of the APA, reauthorization and appropriation of funds for the Administrative Conference of the United States and creation of the 'Administrative Law Judge Conference of the United States.'"

While rulemaking, public information and judicial review provisions of the Act apply to all federal agencies, with specific exceptions, the adjudication sections of the APA do not, wrote Kinney. "Some of the excluded hearings involving immigration and asylum, veterans' benefits, government contract disputes, civil money penalties, security clearances, IRS collection disputes and about 80 other hearing schemes." The ABA has adopted policy urging Congress to apply the adjudication provisions of the APA to these types of hearings.

Second, the ABA has adopted policy supporting reauthorization of the Administrative Conference of the United States "with funding sufficient to permit the agency to continue its role as the government's coordinator of administrative procedural reform." Kinney encouraged Cannon and the Subcommittee to continue their efforts to secure funding for the Conference for fiscal year 2007.

Finally, Kinney and the ABA asked Congress to consider establishing the proposed Administrative Law Judge Conference of the United States as an independent agency to assume the responsibility currently held by the Office of Personnel Management with respect to administrative law judges, including their testing, selection and appointment.

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