By empowering industry interests, better public access to environmental agencies can lead to less stringent environmental regulations

Public participation has become an important part of how US government agencies make decisions about their regulations. In new research, Neal D. Woods assesses the effects of increasing public access to decision makers in environmental agencies on environmental compliance costs. He also examines how public access to elected political officials who review environmental regulations affect these costs. He finds that when agency rule-makers are more open to public participation, then their environmental regulation is much less stringent. Access to reviewing political officials, on the other hand, leads to higher regulatory compliance costs when states have a stronger organized environmental movement, and lower costs when organized manufacturing groups are stronger.