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The Revolving Door Between Auto Regulators and The Auto Industry

By Brian Wolfman

Does the close relationship between federal auto regulators and auto industry insiders lead to lax regulation? Does it cause regulators to ignore or react too slowly to safety hazards?  This article in today's Washington Post documents the revolving door and, to a limited degree, explores these questions. Here are a couple paragraphs from the Post article to give you a flavor:

A Washington Post analysis shows that as many as 33 former National Highway Traffic Safety Administration employees and Transportation Department appointees left those jobs in recent years and now work for automakers as lawyers, consultants and lobbyists and in other jobs that deal with government safety probes, recalls and regulations.

The reach of these former agency employees is broad. They are on staff rosters for every major automaker and every major automotive trade group, and they appear as expert witnesses and legal counsel for the industry in major class-action lawsuits over auto safety.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on March 09, 2010 (boomark / email).