New York State's regulatory agencies are not as transparent as they once were. And many decisions made at the regulatory level that have profound consequences for environmental policy are not publicly vetted, or even publicly acknowledged. The problem is compounded by a number of facts and trends, among them: the growing presence of industry lobbyists when regulatory decisions are being made, an overarching executive policy goal of reducing agency budgets, and a shift of responsibility for environmental protection from the federal to the state level.

While much of the responsibilities of this program now fall under the purview of our Fiscal Policy Program, the Regulatory Watch Program was designed to increase the environmental movement's scrutiny of key state agencies, including:

• Agency Budgets: The creation of New York's annual state budget has increasingly become a battleground, marked by late budgets and major policy decisions being made as part of the bitterly partisan budget process. One arcane result of this trend has been the artful obscuring of what lies behind budget figures.
   
• Agency Staff: Agency staffing has been reduced significantly in the past decade; hundreds of positions have been eliminated in the Department of Environmental Conservation alone. Some of the work that was done by these employees is now performed by outside contractors. But it is clear that the larger percentage of these layoffs resulted in an increasing amount of responsibilities being shared by a continually shrinking workforce.
   
• Enforcement: It has been documented that the strongest impetus for compliance with environmental laws is a strong and reliable enforcement program. As part of its Regulatory Watch Program, assesses the effectiveness of the DEC's enforcement programs, beginning with a case study of one of the more polluting industries regulated by the DEC. From this case study it is our goal to establish a model for rating the success and effectiveness of other enforcement programs.

REPORTS & RESOURCES

• Endangered Agency

• Endangered Agency II

• Muddying the Waters: The Unknown Consequences of New York's Failed Water Pollution Permitting Program

• Wa$ted Green: How State Spending & Lost Revenue Shortchange New York Taxpayers & the Environment

• Permission to Pollute