Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service: Information on the Time Spent on Major and Significant Rules

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the time spent by the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Forest Service developing rules as provided by the Administrative Procedure Act, as amended, focusing on: (1) from October 1988 through 1997, the number of rules the Forest Service and BLM initiated or completed and how many were considered major or significant as defined by Executive Orders 12291 and 12866; (2) the amount of time BLM and the Forest Service spent on those rules identified as major or significant; and (3) what factors contributed to the amount of time spent on the major and significant rules.