Consumer safety chief is against expansion
WASHINGTON - The nation's top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation intended to strengthen the agency that polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools.
On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency's authority, double its budget, and sharply increase its dwindling staff.
Nord opposes provisions that would increase the maximum penalties for safety violations and make it easier for the government to make public reports of faulty products, protect industry whistle-blowers, and prosecute executives of companies that willfully violate laws.
The measure is an effort to buttress an agency that has been under siege because of a raft of tainted and dangerous products.
Nord's opposition to important elements of the legislation is consistent with the broadly deregulatory approach of the Bush administration over the last seven years.
Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said the administration shared many of Nord's concerns and that Allan Hubbard, President Bush's top economic adviser at the White House, was preparing to send a letter to Congress "that is probably even more forceful than Nord's."
The Senate Commerce Committee is set to vote on the legislation that would more than double the agency's budget, to $141 million, over the next seven years, raise staffing levels by about 20 percent, and give the commission broad new powers to police the marketplace. It would raise the cap on the maximum penalties to $100 million, from $1.8 million.
Nord criticized the measure in letters sent late last week and yesterday afternoon to the committee. She was critical, for instance, of a provision to ban lead from all toys, saying it was not practical. She said that the proposal to raise the potential penalty to $100 million "may have the undesired consequence of firms, as a precautionary measure, flooding the agency with virtually every consumer complaint and incident." Her concern, she said, was that the increase in complaints would so overwhelm the commission that, "true safety issues would go unrecognized in the process." 