Not Just Airplanes: Why The Government Often Lets Industry Regulate Itself

from NPR 2019

Since an Ethiopian Airlines aircraft crashed March 10, the Federal Aviation Administration has been under a microscope.

The agency had delegated to Boeing much of the testing of its 737 Max jets. Critics say the FAA let the company basically certify its own plane. But, it turns out, that sort of thing happens a lot in the federal government.

The FAA's model of self-regulation has come under attack from the government's own watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, which criticized the practice as far back as the 1990s.

But James Goodwin of the Center for Progressive Reform, a left-leaning research group, says "the American public would be surprised, and maybe even concerned, if they knew how widespread the practice of self-regulation was."

It's especially prevalent in agencies that regulate single industries, like the FAA with air transport, or the Federal Railroad Administration, which allows self-certification of conductors and engineers on trains.

Professor Thomas McGarity of the University of Texas law school says you can also see it at the Department of Interior's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, known as BSEE or "Bessie." "It's the agency that failed pretty badly with the Deepwater Horizon blowout several years ago," McGarity says.
"It's a single agency regulator and it allows owners of offshore oil rigs to self- certify, do their annual certifications."...

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