WASHINGTON - Saying, ``It's time to add some common sense to OSHA's regulations,'' plastics processor and Rep. Cass Ballenger, R-N.C., June 14 introduced the Safety and Health Improvement and Regulatory Reform Act of 1995. Ballenger and 55 House co-sponsors target redirecting half of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration's funding for consultation, training, education and compliance assistance in the measure. Were the bill now in effect, that would translate to about $100 million in the current OSHA budget, according to Ballenger's staff chief, Patrick Murphy.
Ballenger introduced the bill as workforce protections subcommittee chairman of the House Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee.
Murphy said the measure also includes all the regulatory reform language approved by the full House, making it ``the most comprehensive OSHA reform and regulatory reform measure out there.''
Murphy noted Ballenger's bill could be the House version of a regulatory reform measure that may be combined with a new Senate bill.
That new bill includes risk assessment and cost-benefit analyses requirements of three measures that already have passed Senate committees.
Murphy said Ballenger, founder and president of Plastic Packaging Inc. in Hickory, N.C., ``is the only member of Congress, as a subcommittee chairman, who is involved in the plastics industry who also has direct OSHA oversight.''
An official with the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. in Washington said June 14 that its lobbyists were reviewing a draft Senate risk assessment measure for presentation on the Senate floor that is based roughly on a bill originally sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan.