Introducing the Consumer Rights Regulatory Engagement and Advocacy Project

Hi!  We’re so glad you found your way here.

Diane Thompson, a former CFPB Deputy Assistant Director for Regulations and a longtime legal services attorney in East St. Louis, Illinois, created this project to fill a gap she saw.  Advocates for communities of color and for low-income communities often focus their advocacy on achieving legislative victories, but the work of implementing and maintaining those victories is carried out at regulatory agencies, where advocates tend to have less engagement.  At the same time, regulatory agencies are mandated by law to be responsive to the public and to take into account the impact on the public of their rules.  What would it take to make agencies live up to this mandate? 

We believe that it is possible for advocates to have a greater impact on regulatory agencies than they do currently, with the right support.  Our goal is to help provide that support, so advocates can engage with regulatory agencies more effectively without detracting from their other mission-critical work.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be rolling out short documents to help support regulatory advocacy on behalf of marginalized communities.  We have documents in the pipeline on the Unified Agenda (the federal government-wide listing of upcoming regulatory actions), a one-page check-list on how to comment, working with cost-benefit analysis, and the Congressional Review Act.  We’ve tried to make these documents generic, while bringing to bear our CFPB-specific experience.  We’ve asked other advocates and former regulators to review these documents and incorporated their feedback, in an effort to ensure the materials are both accurate and practical.  We think there is great untapped power in regulatory advocacy for justice and equity, and we hope these documents will help advocates do their essential work better and more easily.

If you subscribe, we’ll send you our blogs and materials as they come out.  And please, let us know what works and what doesn’t.  If there’s something specific you want to see, let us know.  We’re excited to have this chance to work together for change.

–The CRREA Project Team (Diane, Kate, Nikka, and Travis)