Wednesday, December 16, 2009

To Stay or Not to Stay... Lead Is Still Undecided

The general public may find today's split vote on lifting the stay a tad bit confusing. Let me offer a brief explanation. After working for many weeks to reach a consensus on all but one of the issues regarding lifting the stay on testing and certification, I wanted to be able to vote with the majority on these items. My staff worked with Chairman Tenenbaum's staff to make clear that I would vote in favor of lifting the stay so long as lead content was not included in the vote. There are many outstanding issues to address with testing and certification for lead content, and the Commission needs ample time to do so. However, when I finally received the vote documents at 1:48 a.m. (rather than the required 5 days in advance), I discovered that lead was back in…..we’d be voting on all the issues together, in one vote.

For this reason, I proposed separating the vote on lifting the stay for lead content from everything else proposed in the document. As a result, the Commission voted unanimously today to move forward with a plan for lifting the stay on the bulk of issues and to postpone the lead vote until tomorrow.

Check back later today for updates...

CPSC Votes for Complex Stay Approach

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