President Trump’s budget proposal eliminates a lot of federal spending, including the Chemical Safety Board.
Now, you usually don’t hear about the Chemical Safety Board until after a catastrophic explosion, like the one in West, Texas, back in 2013 that killed 15 people.
But unlike the Environmental Protection Agency or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the CSB has no enforcement teeth — they are simply the ones to study what went wrong after the fact, sort of like the National Transportation Safety Board’s work after a plane crash.
So why is this agency’s work important to some industry watchers? And if they were eliminated, how would the states step in to do this type of investigative work? With me now to discuss is Sam Pearson, a reporter with Bloomberg BNA.