Two months after the deadline set via President Trump’s Executive Order 13777 directing the departments of the federal government to create Regulatory Reform Task Forces (RRTF), many agencies have still not made public the members comprising the new groups.

Under the Order, the RRTFs are tasked with identifying and eliminating existing regulations, a process that has already begun and for which public comment is currently be accepted.

FOIA requests sent by MuckRock to 16 federal agencies on April 25 - the 60-day mark designated by the E.O. - remain mostly unanswered, and though responses have been received from two agencies - the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as well as the Department of Veterans Affairs - neither have provided a full roster of the new group.

The VA, which has provided the most complete list of RRTF members so far, redacted most of its representatives under the b(6) privacy exemption, arguing that these individuals are not senior-level employees but rather “have been chosen to participate in VA’s regulatory reform effort based on their subject matter expertise on regulatory and policy matters.”

At HUD, the materials received at the end of last month, which list Maren Kasper as the Regulatory Reform Officer in charge of the Department’s Task Force, are already out-of-date.

According to a spokesperson in the Department’s Public Affairs Office, Ms. Kasper, who had served as a Senior Advisor to the White House and is still listed as a member of the Principal Staff at HUD, was replaced by David Eagles over a month ago - she now serves as Chief Operating Officer of Ginnie Mae, the government’s mortgage lending agency.

MuckRock will be appealing the redactions received from the VA and HUD and following up with the rest of the agencies. You can follow all of the requests from the project page.

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