CLEARING UP THE CONFUSION

National Park Gun and Mountain Bike Rules Not Affected by Obama’s Freeze

By Bill Schneider, 1-26-09

On January 21, a few hours after Barrack Obama walked into the Oval Office for his first day on the job, he issued a freeze on all “midnight rules,” last-minute administrative actions of the ongoing Bush administration. But his executive order did little to freeze the confusion over the impact of his action, such as the real and immediate affect on rules allowing loaded, concealed guns in national parks and park administrators more flexibility to allow mountain biking in national parks.

Today, I talked to Philip Selleck, the man in charge of regulations for the National Park Service (NPS), and here is the true impact of the “midnight freeze” on these two controversial administrative rules.

First, the gun rule. “It (Obama’s freeze) doesn’t affect the gun rule,” Selleck explained, “because that rule went into affect before the new administration began. They can’t pull the rule back. There is no authority to do that.”

That means the Bush administration gun rule, which was implemented on January 9, is still in affect.

“That doesn’t mean it won’t change,” Selleck cautioned, referring to lawsuits filed by park advocacy and anti-gun groups to overturn the rule. A judge could approve an injunction to suspend it or the Obama administration could launch a new rule-making process to change or scrap the gun rule, which would require several months to complete.

The mountain biking rule is also unaffected by Obama’s freeze, but for different reasons.

The Federal Register has published the final gun rule, which allows it to be implemented, but only the proposed mountain biking rule. This means the NPS is still collecting public comments on the proposed rule. Sometime in the future, the NPS and the Department of the Interior will review public input and send the final rule to the Federal Register for publication.

“So nothing has really changed,” Selleck explained, “except new people will be reviewing the comments and then preparing the final rule.”

This all means the mountain biking rule is still not in effect, just as it was when Bush moved back to Texas.

Obama’s new team could decide to significantly change the mountain biking rule, just as Bush’s team could have, and since many key positions in the Department of the Interior haven’t even been filled, this rule will simply sit there until the new officials get around to reviewing public comments and writing the final rule, which will also take months.

The key point for these two rules and many other swept up in Obama’s action is: The freeze--or “a re-direction,” as Selleck calls it--only stops rules that have been sent to the Federal Register but not published. Final rules already published are still final and in effect, and proposed rules under review are still under review won’t be unimplemented without the Obama’s administration’s approval.

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