“It’s very weird because there’s no legal implication to those [comments] being on or off of regulations.gov,” said Stuart Shapiro
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Andrews Testifies on Need for Climate-Resilient Infrastructure Investment in New Jersey
Associate Dean for Research Clinton J. Andrews provided invited testimony before the New Jersey Senate Environment and Energy Committee during a hearing at the Lavallette Municipal Building focused on the need for investment in storm-resilient infrastructure across the state.
Senate Passes Stopgap Funding Bill Blocking OMB Grantmaking Rule
Whether there are hundreds of thousands of comments or tens of thousands of comments for the OMB to review, office staff are facing a daunting challenge, said Stuart Shapiro, dean of the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, in an interview. “OMB’s never had a rule that had this volume of comments before,” Shapiro said, noting that OMB’s staff are already “very, very busy people.”
Prof. Andrews and PhD Candidate Lina Moe: Make Room for Robots
Robot-human interactions are becoming more commonplace in urban spaces. Lina Moe and Clinton Andrews have developed a diagnostic that policymakers can use to find the best existing tools for governance and determine when new ones are needed.
Flood of comments on White House grantmaking overhaul is largely negative, analysis shows
“Public comment periods and regulations are not a plebiscite, they’re not a vote. So it doesn’t officially matter whether it’s 80-20 one way or 70-30 or 51-49. One thing I can assure you, the administration, any administration, will not count up and let those totals affect their final decisions,” said Stuart Shapiro, the dean of the Rutgers School of Planning and Public Policy and a former OMB official who has written about the role public comments play in shaping regulation.
Bulger et al. Release 2026 Update to Historical Timelines of Climate Change Mitigation
This report provides a 2026 update of historical timelines with respect to New Jersey’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (i.e., climate change mitigation) as well as reduce its vulnerability to climate change impacts (i.e., climate change adaptation).
Trump’s Actions to Slash Red Tape Fall Short of Early Promises
“If it holds up in court, it will lead to specific deregulatory actions that will be very significant for the economy and the environment,” said Stuart Shapiro, pointing to the ending of fuel economy standards for cars and emissions rules for power plants…
Dean Shapiro: Two Key Steps to Get Rid of the Sludge
Stuart Shapiro argues that there are two related steps that the administration could take to target sludge across the government. The first would be to reinvigorate and then use the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), and the second (which may be necessary to modernize the statute) would entail building a coalition against sludge that crosses ideological lines.
The Peak of Trump’s Fact-Free Vendetta Against Regulation
As economists got better at measuring the benefits of regulation,” Stuart Shapiro, a onetime OIRA analyst and now professor of public policy at Rutgers, observes in The Regulatory Review, “benefit-cost analysis began to be seen as a tool that supported more stringent regulation of the economy.”
Dean Shapiro: Another Blow to Regulatory Benefit-Cost Analysis
Stuart Shapiro argues that the Trump Administration’s new OIRA memo accelerates deregulation by sidelining rigorous benefit-cost analysis and elevating presidential preferences over economic evidence. He concludes that formally directing agencies to ignore analysis in key situations may signal the end of a decades-long norm that regulatory decisions should be grounded in objective economic evaluation.