U.S. PIRG Consumer Blog: CPSC Chief tells Senate safety bill would "harm" its efforts, create "chaos"

(UPDATE: Here is Nord's letter.) The acting chair of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), Nancy Nord, has told Senate Commerce Committee leaders in a letter that large parts of their PIRG-backed CPSC reform bill [S. 2045, the CPSC Reform Act of 2007, sponsored by Sens. Pryor-D-AR, Inouye, D-HI, Durbin-D-IL and others] scheduled for a committee vote next Tuesday are "crippling" and "hampering" to product safety. From Nord:

While Nord makes some useful suggestions on personnel and rulemaking issues raised by the bill, much of the letter reflects her personal view that holding wrongdoers more accountable is the wrong way to go. We disagree.

What disappoints me most is that Nord reserves some of her greatest ire for one of the most important sections of the bill, its provision granting co-enforcement authority of product safety laws to state Attorneys General, saying that it "would invite nothing short of product safety chaos" and "undoubtedly lead to the inconsistent application of federal law." This section of her letter, which incidentally is addressed not only to full committee chair Daniel Inouye but also to subcommittee chair Mark Pryor, the former Arkansas Attorney General, reads like something out of the big-business-backed American Enterprise Institute's anti-state attorney general campaign organizing materials (previous blog has links). It's clear, from the federal government's abdication of its role as a health and safety enforcer, that we need 51 consumer cops, not one.

Annys Shin of the Washington Post also has a story on the letter: Product Safety Chief Sees Setbacks in Senate Bill.