 Good morning. Welcome to this public meeting of the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission. We have two items on the agenda today. The first item will be our fiscal year 2016 operating plan as drafted by staff and considered by the commission. And the second will be a proposal by Commissioner Mohorovic dealing with GCCs for wearing apparel. I do want to note, as I try to at the beginning of each of these, that our regular hearing room is under renovation. This is not our regular hearing room, thankfully. But even with that, our staff does a tremendous job of getting this room ready every time and making it as accommodating as possible, both for us and, more importantly, for the public who wishes to attend. So thank you again to the staff. We're hopeful within the next month or so to be back home, so to speak, in our hearing room. But in the meantime, we're going to make the best use of this space. So we're going to begin with our operating plan. The first item, as I mentioned, and we'll follow our normal procedures. We'll have five minutes for the commissioners to ask any questions of staff. And at the conclusion of that, we'll turn to any amendments or motions. And so with that, I'm going to begin with questions. I don't actually have any, so I'll turn to Commissioner Adler. Actually, I don't have any either. I submitted a bunch of questions to staff. And staff spent a great deal of time and effort answering them very fully and very thoughtfully. And I want to express my appreciation to all of you who did that. It really helped. Thank you, Commissioner Adler. Commissioner Robinson. I also have had all my questions answered. And I thank staff for all of your effort in doing so. Thank you, Commissioner Robinson. Commissioner Burkle. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, too, submitted a tranche of questions, QFRs. And they were answered very thoroughly and with a lot of helpful information. So I thank the staff for that. I do just have, if it's so soon since this whole thing has come up, the Joint Task Force that's going to address Chrome Rubber, has any that has come up, I mean, since we were here last, has any thought been given to how we're going to proceed? And my understanding is, for at least the first year, the resources will come out of the EXHR's budget? That's correct. In this federal effort, our role in the first year is very modest and certainly falls under our emerging hazards category. We hope in this fiscal year to obtain a better understanding of the manufacturing process of Chrome Rubber as it's associated with its use on playgrounds. So we will be engaging with various manufacturers, looking to understand the source of their raw materials. Their manufacturing process and their distribution chain. We are hopeful that the work that's done by the broader federal task force in characterizing the materials used will then inform our efforts in future years on how we deal with this potential hazard as it's associated with playgrounds. Thank you very much. I just want to say the word engagement really is so nice to hear because oftentimes we wait later on into the process. And if we can get all the stakeholders at the table sooner rather than later to have that discussion, and so we're not duplicating efforts, so we're not reinventing the wheel, I think that's a very, I'm impressed. That's a good strategy. And I look forward to hearing how that all goes. Thank you, Jay. That's all I have. Thank you, Commissioner Berklon. Thank you for Mr. Hall for that response. Mr. Moherova, Commissioner Moherova. No questions. Thank you, Chairman. Great, thank you. So hearing no more questions, we'll now move on to consideration of the underlying package. Are there any amendments or motions? I have an amendment, Mr. Chair. Commissioner Robinson, you may please explain your amendment. Thank you. The content of this amendment that we've labeled the tip over amendment has been distributed, so I'm not going to read the entirety of the proposed amendment. But Commissioner Moherova and I and our staff have worked hard to develop this tip over amendment concerning data. The text of the amendment explains this. But basically, this amendment will ask staff to prepare a briefing package containing data that will help us be better informed on the efficacy of an engineering solution to this intractable problem of furniture and TVs regularly falling on young children and killing and injuring them. Our communications department, specifically Kim Duluk and Scott Wolfson, have done a tremendous job on the educational effort with our anchor effort. But I believe that the educational effort is very limited. We certainly haven't been able to move the needle with respect to injuries and deaths. And so Commissioner Moherova and I are hoping that this will be a beginning for us really coming up with an engineering solution to this problem. This amendment is designed to spur the kind of analysis that we think are needed for that. There are many moving parts that is needed for that. There are many moving parts right now with the effort to prevent tip overs. We have a very minimal voluntary standard, which our staff does not think is sufficient with respect to stability. And CPSC staff in various departments throughout the agency have done tremendous work on a number of issues of analyzing data and making key suggestions for improving the voluntary standard. We have various groups outside of the agency arguing to us both for and against the sufficiency of the voluntary standard. And we have a compliance problem with even this minimal problem knowing that they're at least one of the major players in furniture manufacturers taking the position that it does not have to comply with the standard minimal though it is, because it's a voluntary standard. So Commissioner Moherova and I over the last year and our staffs, particularly our staffs, have spent a lot of time reviewing the voluntary standard for clothing storage units, attending voluntary standards meetings, and I believe that improving this standard is crucial. The briefing package contemplated by this amendment will help integrate the work being done by these various offices and divisions throughout the agency and will foster coordination and prevent silos that may hinder the progress we could make in this. Because the briefing package addresses questions that are already under review by staff, I've been assured by staff that it would not require significant resources to complete nor would it delay their other work in this regard. And I'm hopeful that this briefing package we're asking them to prepare will help us decide as commissioners how to allocate resources to find an engineering solution for this hazard. I wanna thank Commissioner Moherova and his staff for all their work on this and also thank Jonathan Midget from the chair's office. And I'd also like to thank Jay Howell and George Borlase for their suggestions. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Commissioner Robinson. Is there a second for the second amendment? Thank you. Actually, it's your amendment. I'm not quite sure. It's a joint amendment, right? Maybe we'll get a second. Second. Thank you, Commissioner Burkle. Commissioner. It was so kind that it was a joint amendment to put me on this. So Commissioner Robinson, first of all, I do wanna commend you and Commissioner Moherova because you really both have taken the lead at the commission level and really on behalf of the commission to augment the anchor a campaign and the work that you've done, you both have been very public on radio, on TV and in print. And I think it's made a real difference. I really do. The campaign that our staff created is an excellent campaign, but the two of you have put very pretty faces to it and have made a big difference in trying to get the word out. But I really agree with you that this is not enough. Education alone will not do this. And I think if I have the statistics correct, we're talking about every two weeks, a child ends up getting crushed by a TV or a piece of furniture. And in many homes, and I experienced this myself before I came to the commission, it's not something parents intuitively understand. And I believe that furniture can be made more stable without significantly affecting cost and without significantly affecting market availability. But I'm curious to know your views on ultimately, do you see a solution that is affecting standalone or do you feel like anchors have to be part of the ultimate solution? I know that we're pushing anchors and certainly they are important. But honestly, we're seeing such a small number of people who are actually anchoring their furniture. And when we appreciate that a lot of the people who are most at risk will be in rental units, VA housing units, where it's a problem making holes in your walls and the way the anchoring devices are now, you need tools and I just don't think we should rely on that. We should make the furniture stable. Great, thank you for that. And my hope is that this work, and I'm assuming you share that view, this work will really pay dividends in us being able to working with industry and working with the consumer groups find a path forward for more stable furniture and that ultimately if the data warrants it that the standard will catch up to that effort and we will finally be able to solve this problem. That's certainly the hope. This data project was driven by the questions that Commissioner Marjorovic and I heard in the voluntary standards committees because they really want data to show that what they need to do to come up with an engineering solution that's better than what we have. And our staff from the lab has just done a terrific job in terms of working with the voluntary standards committee in suggesting that we need a standard that is applicable in real life situations. And do I have it right that if there's industry out there right now that is working on making their furniture more stable, you encourage them to do that and not wait to see the results of this study? We're encouraging them both to do that, although a lot of the furniture companies are doing that and we are encouraging that. But certainly we're also encouraging them to try to find a solution for those players who are not even complying with the minimal standard to try to do something in terms of certifying the way JPMA does or something along those lines to make their members more compliant with at least that standard. Hopefully that will help if we get a stronger standard in them making sure that they comply with a stronger standard as well. Excellent, thank you so much. I think it's a great amendment and I plan to support it. Commissioner Adler. I don't have any questions, just a couple of quick observations mainly to agree with my colleagues. First of all, I want to thank Commissioner Robinson and Commissioner Mohorovic for working together so effectively on what is a very, very serious problem. I also want to applaud the staff for the superb work they've done in developing an education and a communication plan, but I think we all know that this falls woefully short of what's needed to address the problem. Ultimately, there's got to be a technical fix to this. I don't see a technical fix out there yet that satisfies me that this problem is going to be reasonably addressed. And so this is one where I hope people will get together, will collaborate, will do research to figure out a very effective technical fix, which I just don't see at the moment. I certainly think at the margin the standard can be improved, but I also agree that this is not the world's best standard. It is a serious technical challenge and I applaud all of those who are working on that and I thank my two colleagues for introducing this amendment and I plan to support it. Commissioner Berkel. Thank you. I too want to join in the praise of Commissioner Robinson and Mohorovic. I think what we've established here is a really good model and that is our agency calling attention to an issue and then getting the media's attention with it. And I think also the communications office has done a great job in crafting a campaign that's meaningful and then taking it out and getting it placed and my two colleagues have done a great job, as the chairman said, in being the face of this and getting out and being public about it and raising awareness. And I think that's really a good model that we realize that there's a problem here and we took it out to the public and that's part of our role. I too look forward to and I want to emphasize this that understanding what is enough in the standard, I think there's how do we best approach this issue? And so I really applaud the language of the amendment because it talks about not being tied to one remedy and I think that's very important and we open up to possibilities and let the engineers figure out if there is another way to go here that could be more effective. I think the tip over issue is a fairly complicated one because you have so many models, whether or not there's furniture on top of that model, the age of that model. So it isn't, one might think it's a simple question of the dresser falling over on the child. I think there's many factors and being able to understand what's at play here and how we can best solve this problem is gonna be very helpful as we move forward. So again, I commend both of my colleagues and thank them for this effort. Commissioner Morović. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, I would like to compliment my colleague, Commissioner Robinson, for her leadership on this issue. She has focused significant attention on this issue long before I ever came over to the commission. So I also wanna thank her for the collaboration and especially also thank her staff and mine as well for the collaboration and coming up with this particular amendment. And my interest in this amendment is for the following reasons. And it starts if you can bear with me with a few of the statistics that we've seen related to some of the furniture fatalities as well as the injuries associated. So our staff did a look at the in-depth investigations between 2000 and 2013. And if you can bear with me, about a fourth of the fatalities can be attributed to furniture alone. So that's really where I think we need to be looking at the furniture standard. That standard is ASTM 2057-14. So to look at how the standard is addressing that particular hazard pattern. Again, that's without the encumbrance or the complication of appliance or with TV. But if you look at the injury patterns, furniture only, again, no TV involved, no appliance. Furniture only incidents make up more than half of the emergency department treated, tip over injuries according to our nice data. And that half is a big number. We're averaging 21,000 injury room appearances for furniture only. So if you were looking at how can a performance standard address a hazard pattern, and I'll get off from a positive to a more normative comment in terms of what I feel from a policy perspective is that clothes dressers perhaps should not be made to be safe TV stands and TV councils. But they should be safe to address the relative safety of the product when used properly as a clothes dresser, not encumbered by a TV. So what we're trying to get at with this suggestion and the amendment for additional funding is to really find out how effective the current standard is. Because the performance elements that are incorporated to test whether or not the product is inherently stable or unstable is relatively new. And for any close observer in terms of our IDIs, we don't know exactly what percent of those emergency room visits occurred with product that complied with 2057-14 versus not. So since it was updated in only October 14th, I think it's critical that we arm our staff working in the ASTM F-15.42 Furniture Safety Subcommittee effort to update the standard, have an understanding of the dynamics. And I think we have a very good understanding of the dynamics of furniture and some of the physical properties, but particularly as it relates to the age breakdown and the relative performance according to the established standard where it is. So before staff can credibly recommend further changes to 2057-14, we have to have the data to show whether or how the current standard is effective or ineffective because we really don't know. There's a relatively new performance element and we just don't know. And that's not a fault of anybody, that's tough work and it's gonna take staff time and resources. So that's why I compliment Commissioner Robinson for leading on this effort. I thank for the chairman for making this a co-amendment, but I hope that directing the staff effort to put together a briefing package aimed at the effectiveness of the current standard and its performance element, specifically as it relates to the injuries associated unencumbered by televisions or appliances on top of the product that will have some of the data to better inform our position on a staff level and a commission level with regards to the voluntary standard or any potential mandatory rulemaking. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Commissioner Mohorovic. Are there any additional questions for the amendment sponsor? Commissioner Robinson, would you like to be recognized to address anything that was raised? I think everything's been answered. Great, thank you. So we'll now call the vote. Commissioner Adler, how do you vote? Aye. Commissioner Robinson? Aye. Commissioner Berkel? Aye. Commissioner Mohorovic? Aye. And I vote aye. The yeas are five, the nays are zero. The amendment has been agreed to. Are there any additional amendments? Yes, Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment I'd like to introduce. Please go ahead. Thank you. So this morning I'd like to introduce an amendment to the ops plan regarding TV 117. In 2012, California revised its furniture flammability standard to focus on cigarette ignition. The revised standard is known as technical bulletin 117, 2013, fondly known as TV 117. It can be met without the use of flame retardant chemicals. And for that reason, it's popular with many groups who are concerned with the use of such chemicals. Many different interest groups have encouraged this agency and we commissioners to consider adopting TV 117 as a national standard. These include AHFA, the International Firefighters Association, and the Consumer Federation of America. Senator Blumenthal and several of his Democratic colleagues have also asked CPSC to look at this issue. Last fall, the AHFA filed a petition for rulemaking to adopt TV 117. The petition was not docketed by the OGC on the ground that we already have an open rulemaking on furniture flammability. And that TV 117 is within the scope of that rulemaking. Therefore, according to the Office of General Counsel, the commission could take action on TV 117 without granting the petition. It's no secret that CPSC has been working on this problem and it is a complicated one of upholstered furniture flammability for many years. We proposed a flammability standard in 2008 well before any of we current commissioners took office. The staff will continue pursuing that approach unless we direct them otherwise. So for all of these reasons, I think it makes sense that we look at the TV 117 issue now. My amendment does not direct staff to prepare a final rule adopting the standard, but rather it directs the staff to prepare a briefing package that addresses TV 117 and equips us to decide whether or not it makes sense to adopt this national as a national standard. The amendment also asks staff to evaluate TV 117 in comparison with the approach that was first crafted back in 2008. We were really did attempt to try to be responsive to staff who felt that this could be done but were concerned about the original date that we proposed and so we out of consideration for staff and their timeline and many other issues they have on their plates, we accommodated that date request and so the amendment would, and I apologize I got into my argument before I called your attention to the amendment itself and I won't read it because you all have it in front of you and we've talked about it now for several weeks but it is on page 16 in the description of project 21498 upholstered furniture flammability rulemaking we would insert the following motion language in that underneath that first sentence. So that's, I look forward to any questions my fellow commissioners might have and at that point I hope. Thank you Commissioner Buerkle to hear a second. Second. Having heard a second we'll now turn to any questions on the amendment. Thank you Commissioner Buerkle for offering this. As you mentioned this is a complex issue. Normally when we are dealing with chemical exposure our goal is to eliminate that chemical exposure and there's not an additional hazard that we are trying to address and in the case here and we've talked about this at other hearings most specifically when we had a hearing in December on organohalogens and which are flame retardants on a petition that was brought by a group of a number of consumer groups the challenge is you have an underlying fire hazard and acute hazard that everybody wants to address that the commission has been looking at to try to address for a long time but we don't want to address that hazard by creating chronic hazards especially the children and I think that there was encouragement at least with the movement that California made on the chronic hazard side and taking the flame retardants out which really is my number one priority with anything that the commission does is that we don't end up inadvertently driving companies to use flame retardants to try to address the fire hazard and I know staff has been working on non flame retardant methods to try to deal with both the smoldering stage of fires and the open flame stage of fires and my question to Commissioner Buerkle is where do you recognize in that TB 117 as amended I believe really takes an approach on the smolder stage where do you feel that this fits in or where would you hope that this fits in to a larger commission effort to holistically address all stages of fires that we're aware of but without having to resort to flame retardants to do it. Thank you. Will the chairman yield? Yes I yield. Thank you. Well I do want to just first of all reiterate what the chairman said and what I've already said this is a complicated issue and apparently so rulemaking has gone on for several years now and I think all of this amendment does is it offers staff a way to look at the issue and perhaps a slightly different path not so much in terms of content but in terms of timing we're asking them to consider TB 117 now it certainly doesn't discourage or rule out the open flame issue because we all realize that is a very significant part of this whole discussion and the problem that we face in rulemaking so I think that it doesn't touch whether or not we should be doing the analysis on both sources of fire I don't think that that's at all the issue here it really is just a question of timing I think TB 117 would be something they would consider anyway in the course of this rulemaking and so we're just asking for a date certain when we can expect that analysis I think it's you know we can all agree it's unusual when we have so many different stakeholders coming with the same opinion and I think they've all spoken to us and now I think it's important for us to hear from staff Great thank you commissioner Burkle commissioner Adler Thank you and I want to thank my colleague commissioner Burkle for raising this is an important issue and I guess I just had one point of reassurance that I needed to get from her and I'm pretty sure I know the answer and that is it is my understanding you have run this amendment by the staff and staff has said they have the resources to do it and staff is perfectly willing to engage in this analysis That's correct yes and it doesn't say it explicitly but the one thing that I think I've discussed with you and I know I've discussed with staff is that one of the things that would help me in their analysis would be a re-examination or a closer examination of the discrepancy that I see in the data relating to open flame fatalities staff has one set of data and some of the outside groups have different sets of data and it would help me immensely if staff could come in and give us a very clear picture with respect to the fatality figures both with respect to smoldering but particularly with respect to small open flame and do I understand that this is part or could be made part of your request to staff? Well, I think what we will get from this package is we're looking at both an analysis of TB 117 and are there other options and I think we will get that data and I completely concur with you there is a disparity in the statistics we've seen with regards to injuries and deaths and it is something that complicates this issue and makes it a little bit more difficult to figure out a path forward and I don't think this amendment changes any of that all this amendment does is provide us with a date certain as to when we're gonna have this analysis. And I do wanna commend you for the way you phrased it it's a very neutral examination of the advantages and disadvantages and I do understand staff doesn't have to comment on this now but staff does have some serious reservations about TB 117 and I really hope to see the staff analysis with as much clarity and forthrightness as we've come to expect from staff in dealing with analyses that we've asked them to do. And you couldn't be more right this has been pending before the commission and I say this a lot but it's true. This is a problem that goes back even before the commission was set up. The National Bureau of Standards was working on upholstered furniture flammability back in the late sixties and the commission has been entertaining and addressing upholstered furniture flammability issues since then. There's been tremendous progress but you did use the right word. It's complicated it is exceptionally complicated and I am so thrilled to see the excellent work staff has done in addressing this. So I thank you I commend you for your amendment and I plan to support it. Commissioner Robinson. Thank you and I also would like to thank you Commissioner Buerkle for bringing this amendment. The interesting thing on this issue is that I think all of us are coming from the same place and that we're all interested in finding a way to address both the smoldering fires and the open flame fires and to do so without flame retardants. We all sort of come from that starting point. It's a question of how we do that. And I know when you and I joined the commission almost on the same day. It was two and a half years ago and I know that we've both been following this issue and meeting with the team out at the lab on several occasions and watching chairs burn and so forth and understanding that our staff to their credit even though it's been years they have been putting forth a diligent effort to try the easy thing would be to just adopt a smoldering standard but they've really been trying to find a way without flame retardants to address the open flame fires as well. So that is the complication but I would also I would only differ with the description of different sets of data and I'm virtually certain I'm correct in this because I've really probed on this. I wish there were different sets of data. I think we are all operating from the same data the end first data that is just far from perfect. And the people who come in and argue to me with completely different arguments and percentages that they attribute to smoldering versus open flame when I've probed as to where they're getting their metrics it's all from the end first data. And I don't mean to put down the end first data except that with respect to what actually started the fire open flame or smoldering it's been frustrating and not being able to ferret that out. And as I have commented before we know where that information is it's in insurance companies but none of us have been successful in figuring out how to get it from the insurance company. So those are the frustrations but I very much am also interested as you said Commissioner Burkle this is I don't know another issue we have before us where the consumer groups and industry are all on the same page that we need to be looking at TB 117 and we need to look at whether this is a standard that we should be considering even while we're working on the open flame. I do have one question for you. I know staff is supposed to get to us a final rule in fiscal year 2017 and it was contemplated that the package would come to us in 2017 in our budget request to Congress and I just wanna make sure that if your amendment is approved that you're confident that that is not going to delay the package that will hopefully address the more global issue in 2017. I am confident because the analysis that we're asking for would be handled in the rulemaking process. It's not that we're diverting staff away from the rulemaking. This is an analysis that would be done anyway but we're just providing a date certain for that analysis to happen. And I guess I would just kind of reiterate what my colleagues have said. Our staff has been studying this issue a long time and so I consider them the experts in this analysis and in this subject matter. And so I look forward to hearing when we're approached from various stakeholders about doing something about this why don't you adopt TB 117? I look forward to hearing the staff's expertise on this issue and for doing that analysis now. We need answers. I'm not equipped to answer that. As you can hear there's questions about data. There's questions about many things and so I'll look forward to hearing their analysis. Thank you, Commissioner Mirko. Commissioner Mirkovic. I'm hesitating because I wasn't planning on speaking on the amendment which I fully support but only in the help to aid my fellow commissioner, Commissioner Robinson who mentioned perhaps if I heard correctly I may not know of another issue where consumer groups in the industry agree so wholeheartedly I would offer stop allowing ATVs and ROVs to be used on paved surfaces. It's something that you agree with too I think you would understand that that's also something that the industry and consumer groups agree is just flat out a bad idea before the chairman tables me down because this comment is not germane to the amendment. Are there any further questions of the amendment sponsor? Commissioner Mirko, would you like to address any points that have been raised? No, I think the appropriate questions have been asked. Great, thank you. We'll now move to consideration of the amendment. Commissioner Adler, how do you vote? I. Commissioner Robinson. I. Commissioner Berkel. I. Commissioner Morović. I. And I vote I. The ayes are five, the nays are zero. The amendment has been adopted. Are there any additional amendments or motions? Thank you. Oh, sorry. What do you do? Mr. Chairman, I have a motion. Commissioner Berkel, please proceed. Thank you. My motion that I'd like to introduce has to do with monthly progress reports and you all have the motion in front of you and basically what it asks is that the commission would direct staff to report to the commission in connection with mid-year adjustments to the FY 2016 OPS plan. Yes, it's coming up soon. An estimate of the cost of providing for the electronic submission of monthly progress reports when required as part of a corrective action plan. If the staff believes that other related products must or should be undertaken at the same time as the conversation to electronic filing for these monthly progress reports, the staff should describe the related projects and explain the need or benefits of such projects and provide a separate estimate of the cost and any additional costs that would be incurred by postponing such projects. So as the chairman well knows, last year we sat before the Senate and the topic of recall effectiveness came up. And again, that's an issue that is shared by, a concern I should say, that's shared by many across the political spectrum. And everyone wants to know are the recalls we're doing effective and how do you measure that? And so my motion, I believe, addresses that issue. So as you know, when a publicly announced recall is when a recall is publicly announced, the firm usually is requested as part of their cap to require a monthly progress reports documenting the name of the products that were corrected and other results of the recall. At present time, these reports are sent to the Office of Compliance, which has no system present currently for inputting the data. Instead, the records are maintained in a paper form. This manual system is time consuming for the recalling firm and for the people in the Office of Compliance, quite frankly. And it also, more importantly, I think to the recall effectiveness issue, makes it more difficult to use that data to evaluate recall effectiveness. An electronic system profiling monthly progress reports would make it easier to submit the data and it would make it far easier for us in our agency to evaluate that data and recall effectiveness generally. The Office of Compliance has proposed a project to do this through the business portal associated with saferproducts.gov. Other CPSC offices have other ideas about modifications to the business portal. Some of these might be related to the monthly progress reports and some of them they may not be. My motion seeks to ensure that staff will promptly evaluate the monthly progress report project so that it can be considered in our FY 2016 mid-year ops plan. It is not intended to preclude staff from proposing other projects that involve the business portal. However, it does seek that we would unbundle any costs associated with this effort so that we would have the option of proceeding with this project ahead of others if the commission majority ends up supporting this motion. It goes without saying that the commission may end up funding other projects in preference to this one or they may decide it makes sense to go forward to fund several projects related to the business portal. So I look forward to hearing my colleagues' questions. Thank you, Commissioner Berkel. Is there a second to the motion by Commissioner Berkel? Second. Thank you. Having heard a second, we'll now turn to questions. Thank you, Commissioner, again, for offering this motion and just a few questions about it. And I think you've addressed the first one a few times in your statement about it. I just want to make sure I have it right. There are a number of different areas where as we continue to seek to modernize that with our very limited resources we want to invest in systems. And I just want to make sure that should it turn out that staff and their expert judgment believes there's value to this but that other projects would be better investment either earlier or more robustly or from a stage perspective handling those things first that you're open to that if that's to at least considering that if that's their suggestion. Yes, obviously my preference is that we address this otherwise I wouldn't be addressing the motion but I do rely on IT and I rely on compliance to give us the information if there are other projects they deem more valuable then certainly they should make that case and we may feel the same way but at this point I think this project is very important. Thank you for that. And then in terms of your openness to the value of this data, as you mentioned we did sit before the Senate Commerce Committee last year and members of the committee both during that hearing and afterward expressed an interest in us taking this information and making it public and certainly having it in electronic form as we do our notices of non-compliance which we also refer to as our letters of advice and when Commissioner Adler was acting chairman one of the great steps of many that he did was pushing that data out so that it could be used in the name of transparency it could be used by the stakeholder community both for manufacturers that wanted to look for ways to improve and also retailers that were looking for manufacturers with whom to work or not to work with can you envision or do you envision at some point us being able to push this data out and letting the public have a sense as to in the name of recall effectiveness being able to see how effective or not effective individual caps are. Thank you for the question. I have my concerns about making data public in general with regards to this I think that whole inquiry requires a deeper dive into what the progress report shows and how we would use it I think that's almost the second part of this. My amendment currently just calls for having staff look for this let us know the cost of this separated out from other projects but at least we can count on understanding this piece of the analysis in the mid-year and that's all it calls for you know it's no mystery and I respect our six B process very I hold that very dear that's the law and I you know so I would be concerned how we use data but I think that's the second part of this discussion I think first of all we've gotta have the technology and I concur I think IT has identified and will continue to identify how we move forward to become part of the 21st century when it comes to data and I think you know my frustration was several other programs and the inability to handle data I think it should be our priority. Great thank you Commissioner Berco Commissioner Adler. First of all I wanna thank my colleague for submitting this and I like the care with which she drafted it because although she has clearly got a preference for spending the money in FY 2016 she's not putting that in as a motion and she also I think I wrote this down if other projects the commission prefers to this one because of what the staff advice is that that would be something open for the commission to address. This is another one of those examples of what a tiny, tiny agency has to do with respect to allocating its scarce resources. I don't know if anybody who would object to this in principle it's a great idea it's something long overdue but we've got so many worthy projects before us that we have to make some incredibly difficult decisions and I know the staff labors over this I know they agonize over this as do all the commissioners and now I would like to take a brief second to strongly disagree with my colleague about the benefits of section 6B. I think that is one of the- Surprise. Most misguided provisions in the law it turns out that when they did, Congress did it they thought they were adding something value the only thing they did was punish this agency for some anger they had at the FTC and in the 40 plus years since we've had this provision, surprise no other agency has been saddled with this kind of a restrictive provision it just slows and delay delays the release of critical safety information but that's a discussion for another day I certainly do plan to support Commissioner Burkle's amendment. Thank you Commissioner Adler, Commissioner Robinson. Thank you Commissioner Burkle for bringing this motion and I will also support it. I had a briefing recently from compliance staff with respect to recall effectiveness how we measure it and what we do if the recall is not effective because it's an issue that I'm very very much interested in very dedicated to improving our numbers which badly need improvement. I was interested that there's somebody actually manually reviewing these documents that come in and uploading the data from the monthly progress reports and I understood that this means of automating the system might even be a way of saving us money but certainly would be a better way to monitor what's going on with respect to our recalls and candidly in our briefing when I asked about the compliance operating compliance section to the operating plan on page 23 that said that one of their goal priorities is further enhancement and recall effectiveness I frankly thought this was included in it so I support your motion I very much would like to see what we can do with respect to automating the system because I think it's the first step toward getting us appropriate data so that our compliance people can better look at the recalls that we have in place to see if they're effective. Thank you. If I could just comment on what Commissioner Robinson absolutely mentioned and I want to be clear because we may or may not disagree on recalls and whether I think they're good or bad I think we have a difficult time measuring recalls and so it's I want to be sure this is going to be one tool among many that will address or begin to address the issue of how do we measure recall effectiveness and how do we make sure that the cap addresses the issue as well so I just want to be clear about that and I knew as soon as the word 6B left my lips that I would hear from my fellow commissioner so I thank you always for your insightful comments. Commissioner Mohorovic. No question. Any further questions? Commissioner Buerkle any further comments that are not ATV or 6B related? I do not think so thank you. Hearing no further questions or comments we'll now call a vote. Commissioner Adler how do you vote on the Berkel motion? Aye. Commissioner Robinson. Aye. Commissioner Berkel. Aye. Commissioner Mohorovic. Aye. And I vote aye. The yeas are five the nays are zero the motion has been adopted. Are there any further amendments or motions? Hearing none we'll now turn to consideration of the underlying package as amended via two amendments and one motion. Does anyone wish to speak to the underlying package before I call a vote and as a reminder there will be time for closing statements. Commissioner Adler. Nothing to add. Commissioner Robinson. Nothing further. Commissioner Buerkle. Nothing further. Commissioner Mohorovic. No thank you. Hearing no further questions or comments on the underlying package as amended we'll now turn to vote. The vote before us is a vote on the 2016 operating plan as amended by an amendment, joint amendment by commissioners Robinson and Mohorovic and amendment by commissioner Buerkle and a motion by commissioner Buerkle. Commissioner Adler how do you vote? Aye. Commissioner Robinson. Aye. Commissioner Buerkle. Aye. Commissioner Mohorovic. Aye. And I vote aye. The yeas are five the nays are zero the underlying motion as amended has been adopted and approved by the commission. We'll now turn to closing, sorry we'll not turn to closing statements on this operating plan. Each commissioner have up to 10 minutes to speak. Every year our staff compiles an operating plan that embodies this agency's critical health and safety mission. It is a result of an extremely thoughtful and I believe visionary effort by staff subject matter experts working with their managers all the way up through our office of the executive director about how best to utilize what really is relatively speaking a tiny federal budget for this agency and that is to achieve or at least attempt to achieve a really massive task. We're talking about the safety in terms of consumer products of more than 300 million consumers who interact with those products in our jurisdiction every single day and all of us do. No matter what we're doing it is impossible for anybody to avoid interacting on a day to day basis with something that is within our jurisdiction. So I commend staff for what the work that they put into it and I share my deep admiration for all that they have done to create this plan for our consideration. I also do wanna thank my fellow commissioners for the work that they've put in and their staffs and the staff as we all know the staff really does the day to day and our offices do the day to day back and forth to try to get us to a point where we reach today where all the amendments are proving unanimously everybody's good with them and the underlying package is approved and so I'm very grateful both to my office and to the special assistance in the other commissioners' offices. So this operating plan reflects teamwork and a commitment and a determination across the board of the commission to deliver to the American people a comprehensive and diligent plan of important and necessary safety improvements in many areas of our lives. From durable juvenile products to, as Commissioner Birkel mentioned, playground surfacing to portable generators one of our highest priorities for this year to lithium ion batteries as we're seeing for instance in hoverboards and to window coverings one of the ongoing persistent hazards that we face. We continue our work toward finally addressing some of these persistent hazards that have continued far too long and we are also beginning to tackle emerging ones as well. The challenge for us is to both keep an eye on what we're trying to achieve and address those longstanding hazards while also seeing new technologies that are coming into the marketplace that offer a tremendous promise but do have to come online responsibly. And I think 3D printing is a perfect example of that. We had folks from our staff go up to the Toy Fair in New York earlier this month and they saw an explosion of 3D printers that are coming online and one company apparently is offering for age 13 and up starting the solid day season a 3D printer at $299. Again, tremendous technology, great for an educational tool but we do have concerns about the byproduct or actually the products that are produced by those printers and even the base plastics that go into it. We talked about flame retardant chemicals in a furniture. There's concern about the chemicals that are in that plastic. These are some of the issues that we have to grapple with and as we discussed during our briefing on this operating plan a couple of weeks ago I'm very grateful that staff has responded to my request and has created a 90 day sprint to really look at emerging technologies so that we can have some sense as to how to continue to balance our resources to deal with persistent hazards but also to serve the public properly and not get so far behind as new technologies emerge. So every page of this operating plan speaks to an effort to save lives and prevent injuries. I'll just highlight some of them. Staff will continue to monitor and contribute to 70 voluntary standards this year. Staff will examine or seeks to examine 30,000 import shipments to screen 180,000 individual products in the field to inspect 3000 establishments and to conduct including on TV tip overs 24 public information campaigns and all of these frontline prevention strategies that are being led by our offices of communication, hazard identification and reduction compliance and field and import surveillance are supported by the tremendous efforts from our teams and facilities, legislative affairs, financial management they are inspector general's office the general council's office our EEO office, our IT office and our human resources office. Everyone here at the CPSC contributes to the goal of consumer safety one way or another and everyone's contribution is important to the work that our agency is doing to protect consumers each and every day. I'm very, very proud of our staff. This operating plan is a wonderful road map to save lives and to prevent injuries. That is the agency stated mission and that is why we are so privileged to work here. Thank you, commissioner Ratham. And thank you for that statement. That means I can shorten what I plan to say considerably. I do want to applaud everything you said and associate myself with your comments. I just want to reiterate what a tiny place we are and I've said this before but I'm still amazed that when you look at the budget submissions from the consumer product safety commission versus the budget submission of a sister agency the food and drug administration they ask for an increase in FY 2016 that is larger than the total request by the CPSC. We are really a tiny agency and I would argue we are probably the best bargain in the federal government for consumers and for our taxpayers. I also want to commend my colleagues because these motions and amendments were made unanimously but they required a great deal of discussion and compromise among the commission. And that is one of the things I most delight in and admire about my colleagues. The spirit of openness and willingness to engage in discussion and to seek compromise on some really tough, difficult, challenging issues and I commend my colleagues for that. I did just want to make one observation about something I'm very concerned about and I've had a discussion with the chairman about this. I see Patty Edwards in the audience and I just want to commend the fact that we've hired such a terrific person to be our voluntary standards coordinator. I think that Patty is going to do a bang up job she is extraordinarily proactive, extremely skilled and quite entrepreneurial in the work that she does. To me that means at some point during the year she's going to run up against limited resources and while I didn't put in an amendment to actually give her those necessary resources I've talked to staff and I've talked to the chairman and it's my strong belief that if the resources become necessary they will be made available. You pointed out that we are engaged in 70 voluntary standards proceedings and I think that's a tribute to the fact that the commission works so effectively with the voluntary standards community but there are improvements needed in the voluntary standards community. We do need to focus on best practices for the development of voluntary standards if we're to remain this deeply immersed in voluntary standards activity. On balance this is a really well done operating plan and we've got to thank the two J's and James and Patricia Atkins and all the other wonderful staff who worked on this up plan and again thank you so much for taking the time to answer my many, many questions which probably displayed profound ignorance on my part but you always answered it as though it was an intelligent question and I thank you for that as well. Commissioner Robinson. I am so delighted and proud to be a part of this agency. This is my first fiscal year operating plan in which I participated as my staff so kindly reminded me yesterday the first time around in my defense weeks into my tenure I didn't know what I was doing but I'm starting to learn but one of the things that I have learned in these three operating plans now I know not only the effort that goes in by the people sitting before us but also the tremendous effort that goes on agency wide to put together this operating plan and I just want to thank all of you and also I want to thank staff not only our personal staffs of the commissioners but also the staff within the agency who've helped us in giving us such wonderful feedback with respect to our proposed amendments and I thank you. As we discussed at the briefing I have very serious concerns about the timing of this plan that came to us almost halfway through the fiscal year without any ongoing dialogue as is required and anticipated in our regs and so we are ending up having our input halfway into the expenditure of our resources at the agency and I'm also concerned about the information particularly next fiscal year being presented in a way so that we're making an informed decision but I'm very very optimistic after our discussions both at the briefing since then and also discussions with our executive director and the chair that next year's operating plan will follow the words and the spirit of the reg 10.09.8 with respect to the commissioners being more involved and the plan getting to us earlier. If the budget process is retracted in Congress I strongly encourage an interim operating plan such as we did in 2012 so that we have input before half the year is gone. As to this year's operating plan it's extremely well done. I am very excited about the projects that we have going forward and also I'm excited about having Patty Edward heading up our voluntary standards effort and I also am very pleased and I thank my colleagues for supporting the tip over amendment and I am cautiously optimistic that once we get this data in place we will be in a position to better work with industry in providing more stable furniture to hopefully save our young children from these tragic accidents and again I would like to thank Commissioner Berkel for both the TB 117 amendment and for your motion. I'm looking forward to both seeing what our staff has to say about TB 117 and to their package that's gonna come down in 2017. I also am looking very much forward to seeing if we can put our recall monitoring system into the 21st century so that we can be better informed on how we might improve a recall that is not effective in terms of getting dangerous products off the market. Again, thank you to all of you and thank you to all of my fellow commissioners. Thank you Commissioner Robinson, Commissioner Berkel. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My first couple of comments here, excuse me, address an issue that came up a little bit as we progressed into the ops plan so if you'll bear with me just for a moment I just kinda wanna talk about some of my thoughts with regards to the ops plan and the significance of it and then get into just a little bit of the issues that came up as a result of some of our questions. So I think we all recognize that an operational plan is an annual work plan. It describes our short term goals, it explains how a strategic plan would be put into operation during a fiscal year. Essentially the operations plan is the basis and the justification for budget requests. Last year I sat before Congress and tomorrow the chairman and I will sit again before the Appropriations Committee to justify our 2017 budget. We're held accountable as an agency to Congress with regards to how we spend their money and I do believe, and I've heard Commissioner Robinson say this and I know all of my colleagues feel that one of the most important duties we have as commissioners is to vote on this annual operating plan and to understand for myself whether or not what we're doing is constitutional because we took an oath to uphold the Constitution as well as the will of the Congress who when I say the will of the Congress also known as the American people. So we have some pretty specific directives in how this agency should proceed forward. The operations plan like our strategic plan addresses four issues. Where we are now, where do we wanna be? How do we wanna get there? And how do we measure our progress? Those are big questions for this agency. You've heard a discussion here this morning. We do have limited resources but one of the things I'll talk about tomorrow in front of Congress is the fact that the nation faces a $20 trillion debt and the cost of regulations in this country is close to $2 trillion on an annual basis. So those two factors need to always be in the back of our minds as we proceed forward. One could argue that the ops plan is the first and the last step in considering our budget requests. It reflects resource allocations and may reflect policy decisions. So at this juncture I will just insert here that this is one of the reasons why streamlining the codes concerns me because it may make things less obvious to myself who has an untrained eye. I understand staff deals with this day after day but we don't and so it's a little more opaque for us unless we have explanation and help to understand it. Further I wanna say that the information that was provided to me after a series of QFRs was extremely helpful and very informative and I would like to suggest that perhaps that information could be provided along with the ops plan. That level I would say of information because it kind of gives you the information and need to make an analysis and study the ops plan without adding an extra burden to the staff. And I say all of this as I mentioned earlier as a foundation for understanding with regards to my asking so many questions. I wanna be clear that my inquiries are not meant to be intrusive nor are they meant to put staff on the defensive but rather they're meant for me to understand what it is I'm voting for and why I'm voting for it. I come from a world where you must understand what you are voting for and I think all of my colleagues would agree that's the same standard would apply here at the agency. The timeliness or lack thereof of this year's ops plan coming for the commission was previously discussed at their last public briefing a couple weeks ago and I appreciate the response that we've received with regards to how we're gonna proceed for the FY 2017 budget. As was mentioned, section 109.8 advises that the plan should be as specific as possible with regard to products, groups of products or generic hazards to be addressed and it shall be submitted for approval at least 30 days ahead of the beginning of the fiscal year. And I know that the talk about an interim ops plan would be extremely helpful and kind of calm things down and remove anxiety. Having said all that, I really do want to extend my deepest thanks to Patricia who was the mastermind and who was the manager of this whole issue and that's not easy when you have so many directorates and departments weighing in and their staff weighing in and it's difficult to get all of this into one document. To Jay Howell, to Jay Hoffman, to James Baker and to Dwayne, thank you for all of your efforts and those QFRs were extremely helpful and I don't mean them to be burdensome. I also want to thank the staffs from all of the commissioner's offices. We have a bright idea some day, we're sitting there with a bright idea and then it's up to the staff to make that idea happen. So something like this in these motions that we talk about that take two minutes to talk about require days of discussion. Jana is looking at me like she appreciates it and we appreciate all of what the staff does to make this happen. I want to thank my fellow commissioners for their support to my amendment advancing the briefing package of TV 117 as well as my motion that talks about the electronic filing and monthly progress reports. I don't think there's much more to say about TV 117, I think it's a prudent way for us to go as an agency. I want to thank Commissioner Robinson as well as Commissioner Morhovic for the tip over amendment and for their lead on that issue just in general. I do concur with Commissioner Adler with regards to voluntary standards and let me commend Patricia publicly. We're delighted to have you as the volunteer standards coordinator but that is really Congress's preference for how we proceed. So I think it's important for us to appreciate the resources that are needed and consider that as we go forward as an agency. One of my highest priorities has been to reduce testing burden faced by manufacturers and I will be continued to be vigilant. Some would call it nagging on that ongoing test burden reduction. Last week I had a pretty in-depth briefing from staff on this issue and I remain cautiously optimistic. There's a plan, there is a commitment and I was delighted to hear many of the issues that we, or the way that we are proceeding both with what was in last year's ops plan as well as going forward in the 2017 budget. So there is a commitment and I was delighted to get that level of detail on the issue and what is being done to comply with the will of Congress essentially. It's unfortunate that the 16 ops plan once again promises a final rule for voluntary recall and undesirable changes to 6B. It's difficult to reconcile that. I think it's an issue we need to face as commissioners and resolve to how to move forward with that and my recommendation would be to take it out of the ops plan. The recently announced joint task force on crumb rubber will also be a focus and I was delighted to hear from Mr. Howell this morning that we do anticipate engagement with the stakeholders. I think getting that information up front is gonna prove to be very helpful. Every time we've had a tech-to-tech meeting regardless of the issue and the sharing of expertise, we make progress and so changing the paradigm and changing how we do things here at the agency and getting that information up front, I trust will be a good way forward for the agency. One of the things and I just wanna touch on this briefly before my time expires, one of the things we haven't discussed in the ops plan and not so something that's not real obvious is just the challenge that government agencies and in particular CPSC have in choosing our priorities wisely. Again, tomorrow will be before Congress and we'll talk about what our priorities are as an agency. I want to caution because we've got some really good models the way the agency has proceeded, both with hoverboards and with the tip-over campaigns. That model is very, I think it's very effective. We identify a hazard or a risk and then we go out to the public. I think we need to be sensitive to the media and the hysteria and the hype that can sometimes result from their story. CBS and NBC and any other media want to sell newspapers and stories and we're not in that business. Our statute challenges us to really protect the consumer from unreasonable risks of harm and that's our mission. So they're two very different missions and I think that we should have a confidence in our data and in our scientific inquiries that we do here that we will identify if there is a true problem, we will identify that problem in the course of our work and what our expert staff do and tend to in that exhaustive review of data and of the science. So I think I just want to say and again, the way we handle hoverboards and the way we handled the tip-over issue, we were out in front of it and that's a good way for this agency to go. We have very different missions than the media so I would just encourage our agency to rely on our staff and our data and our science to make our decisions and determine how we're going to proceed. Once again, thank you. Thank you to all of the staff. This is an extremely laborious process to get this ops plan in front of us and we do appreciate all your efforts. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Buerkle. Commissioner Mohorovic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have a closing statement. I'm pleased to be able to support the CPSC's FY16 operating plan. I want to commend the staff who put this plan together and Chairman Kay, my fellow commissioners and their staff on our collective collaboration throughout this process. Each of us have our own priorities for this year's operating plan and overall, I feel what we have passed is a good roadmap for the whole commission's priorities and direction for the remainder of the year but I would like to touch on just two of my priorities that are in the plan. Finalizing the voluntary recall rule and the 6B rule. I'm just kidding. I can't believe there was any. Yeah. Nobody's paying attention to me up here. First with television and furniture tip over. Preventing furniture and television tip over dust and injury has been a top priority of mine since I've joined the commission and I'm pleased to be working with the entire commission as well as our dedicated staff but especially with Commissioner Robinson on this issue. I applaud the office of communications. I don't see Scott Wolfson, Mr. Wolfson here today but the office of communications, our director, its staff and the development of the Anchor It campaign to raise awareness about the dangers of tip overs and how parents can prevent them. Elevating the Anchor It campaign to one of the office of communications for priority programs along with pull safely, safe to sleep and our minority and community outreach is a recognition of the value of the Anchor It campaign and as office of communications director Scott Wolfson stated in our briefing on the operating plan two weeks ago, the Anchor It campaign is funded through the end of the fiscal year but it's such an amount that the services carried out by the public relations firm will decrease significantly starting next month. I recognize funds are tight and allocated towards many worthwhile projects. This is often reminded by my colleague, Commissioner Adler as well with many worthwhile projects in the operating plan we just passed. So I decided not to offer an amendment to fully fund the Anchor It campaign but I urge the staff to include the necessary funding for the campaign in the upcoming mid-year operating plan. I wanna especially again thank Commissioner Robinson but especially to her staff, Boaz Green and Heather Bramble who are always a pleasure to work with and collaborate with in particular with this effort and theirs on the Furniture Tip Over Project amendment and the support of my fellow commissioners for the amendment. As I stated earlier, before CPSC staff can credibly recommend further changes to F2057-14 we must produce the data to show whether or how the current standard is effective or ineffective. Second priority issue, Trusted Trader. In last year's operating plan I worked with my colleagues and staff to increase the profile of our Trusted Trader program to include the resources to begin development of a program consistent with the government-wide efforts to implement and complement the executive order 13659 entitled Streamlining the Export-Import Process for America's Business. I'm pleased that the operating plan we just approved includes the resources to support the continued development of a risk-based Trusted Trader program for the CPSC in coordination with the United States Customs and Border Protection. The Trusted Trader program will allow importers to provide the CPSC with additional information on their compliance, qualify for streamlined procedures, and thereby expedite clearance of their imports through our import surveillance program by facilitating legitimate trade through public-private partnerships for those importers voluntarily willing to subject their compliance processes to greater scrutiny, not unlike similar successful CBP, TSA, FDA programs. We can develop a modernized CPSC import surveillance program where harmful and non-compliant consumer goods are intercepted and deterred while legitimate cargo is identified and rapidly admitted to consumers without disruption. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Commissioner Mohorovic, and I plan to bring up the recording of your closing statement to the Hill tomorrow and just cut it off right after you said the voluntary recall on 6B is your two top priorities. This ends the first agenda item that we have this morning. We're now gonna turn to the second one, and I have to say as a brief opening in the entire time that I've been at the commission, either in a staff capacity or in this current capacity, I've never seen the process occur. Thank you, Mike, Mr. Gentine. I've never seen the process occur the way it is about to occur as we have really this year, first with Commissioner Robinson bringing up a proposal for commission consideration. We did that under closed proceedings because it had to do with how we classify hazards. And now with Commissioner Mohorovic having to do with general certificates of conformity and wearing apparel, and what is extra special about this is not only that a commissioner, as Commissioner Robinson has done and as Commissioner Mohorovic has done, he came up with an idea, but their offices did all of the legwork to see this through, and I cannot overstate how important that part of it is. There was so much thought put into it by both Commissioner Robinson's offices on her proposal and Commissioner Mohorovic's office on this proposal that it is the difference. It bridges the gap from a theoretical idea to really turning something into a meaningful action for the commission. I am going to yield to Commissioner Mohorovic to please explain the pending motion and I look forward to the commission's consideration of it. Commissioner Mohorovic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I do have a motion to make sure our general counsel and secretary is making sure we're crossing the T's and dropping the I's, but I'm sure I speak for Commissioner Robinson as well in thanking you for your very generous comments and opening. Mr. Chairman, I move that the commission exercise enforcement discretion, such that manufacturers and importers of adult wearing apparel, made of fabrics exempt from testing under the Flammable Fabrics Act and subject to no other CPSC regulation do not need to furnish certificates where the sole function of the certificate would be to restate the exemption and direct the staff to send to the Federal Register for publication a notice setting forth this policy. Those fabrics as defined in 16 CFR, 1610.1, paragraph D, are plain one, plain service fabrics, regardless of fiber content, weighing 2.6 ounces per square yard or more. Is that per square yard or per feet or per meter? Does that matter? Is it too early? I apologize. A little lumber liquidators, humor in there too soon. And number two, all fabrics, both plain surface and raised fiber surface textiles, regardless of weight made entirely from any of the following fibers or entirely from combination of the following fibers, acrylic, motocrylic, nylon, olefin, polyester, or wool. My staff has distributed copies to the commissioners, their staffs, the executive director, our general counsel and the secretary, Mr. Chairman, with permission to continue to explain the motion. Absolutely, may I just first ask for a second on the motion? Second. Having heard that, please continue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This motion represents an opportunity for the commission to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in certification, burden relief, in a manner that is not only consistent with assuring compliance, but in fact builds upon decades of expert knowledge at the CPSC regarding products that have been are and will continue to be safe. In 1984, a decade after the commission took over enforcement of the Flammable Fabrics Act, we decided as commission CPSC that a list of fabrics that together make up the vast majority of adult apparel were so inherently safe, so certain to meet our flammability standards under FFA that we didn't think they needed to be tested for any purpose. Three decades have passed since that decision have not done anything to change that perspective. Whatever consumer product problems we face on a given day, we are fully and rightfully confident that excessively flammable adult apparel will not be one of them. In 2008, Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, and among the many changes CPSIA made was to require that adult products also that are subject to any of our rules have to be certified. Unlike children's products, those certificates don't have to be based on third-party testing, but in most cases, they will be based on something that will give us added confidence that the product complies. And in the case of almost all adult apparel, however, we already know that the product complies. So the certificate's only function is to tell us what we decided decades ago. So for almost all adult apparel, certification has little if any value to the commission, but that does not mean that certification doesn't come at a cost. Forcing apparel companies to attest to what CPSIA already carved into federal law cost about $250 million a year. A year. These certificates then don't make any shirt or any pair of jeans more compliant, just more expensive. Mr. Chairman, I propose that we change that. Again, I move that we exercise our enforcement discretion such that manufacturers and importers of adult wearing apparel made of fabrics exempt from testing under the FFA and subject to no other CPSC regulation do not need to furnish certificates where the sole function of the certificate would be to restate the exemption. I further move that we direct staff to draft and send to the federal register for publication a notice setting forth this policy. I hope for, I already have received a second and I'm happy to answer any questions my colleague may have at the motion and I yield back. Thank you, Commissioner Mohorovic. We'll now turn to questions for the motion sponsor. I do want to note and thank I see Mary Toro in the room who runs our regulated products division under the Office of Compliance and I want to express gratitude for her for the work that she's put in to provide feedback to the commission to give us comfort that if we take this step that it's not going to impact safety and that of course the underlying and I'll mention this more in my closing comments that there must be compliance with the underlying provisions and so thank you very much Miss Toro for that. I don't really have any questions of the commissioner so I'm not going to ask any. I will again make comments and closing but I do want to reiterate my appreciation for you and your staff for this work. Commissioner Adler. Thank you very much and I also want to join in thanking Mary Toro for taking the time to talk to me about the motion. I think I'm not sure a day passed before I went running down to her office and said, handed it to her and said, what do you think about this and her feedback was extremely helpful and I really appreciate that. I also really want to commend Commissioner Mohorovic's staff because they have done just yeoman effort in doing the research and helping write up the motion and helping refine it and helped refine it for me in my thinking so I really want to thank you and your staff. Of course I do want to take slight issue with one statement in your otherwise brilliant statement in support of this. I know there are people who have estimated the cost of regulation at the 1.8 trillion figure but that is a number that and I think you acknowledge that in your statement that is not necessarily a consensus figure but it also ignores the tremendous benefits that come from much regulation. I think we all agree that there's also a fair amount of regulation that we could all do without and every time I'm filling out my travel forms and I'm cursing the office it's regulating me. I say, well, this is giving me an insight into some of our regulations and how they affect members of the public but I did particularly want to note something and I want to ask Commissioner Mohorovic if he would just expand on it because I thought this was a terrific piece of research. This $250 million figure is a figure that Commissioner Mohorovic and his staff calculated and I thought they did it in a very thoughtful and very careful manner and I would just ask if you wouldn't mind if you could explain in a little bit more detail how that number was calculated and again, this once again persuades me why it's so important to have an MBA as a commissioner. As I always said, he's a better lawyer as an MBA than I am an MBA as a lawyer but if you wouldn't mind expanding on that I'd appreciate it. Thank you, Commissioner, I'd be happy to. I think, first of all, I must say that this was the evaluation of the impact of potentially exercising our enforcement discretion with regards to these certificates was a jumping off point from some fine economics work that was performed in preparation for the draft 1110 rule. So there was a tremendous amount of fantastic work to look at and the challenge that I faced in this effort looking at that one particular product category was nothing like what our economics department had to do with the 1110 rule in analyzing the impact of that they had to go through every product that's subject to any rule, regulation, standard or ban to consider the amount of certificates and did so in a very quick and a very thorough fashion. I had the luxury of time and perhaps I will say to my friends what I generally call my network externally to be able to tap into the network to dig a little bit deeper. And I won't bore the commission nor you in terms of going through all of the details of how we derived to that number but it first starts with the starting point of what is a very sound figure and our customs data does identify that and this is a very hard number to start with and that is that there are 20 billion products individual imports of apparel coming in in the United States. We don't have that number commensurately for domestically produced apparel but that's a hard number in knowing the marketplace and the amount of apparel through the shift from the Southeast part of the United States to overseas that that's a good place to start. Then one would have to look at for the amount of those products as individual units coming in how can we estimate the amount of units that will be that will be described in one certificate. So in doing so we with the help of the American Apparel and Footwear Association looked at a market breakdown in a level of detail that I think was sufficient for this activity and that is breaking down the industry in terms of small, medium and large importers knowing full well that major importers, retailers, brand names that we all know probably much of the apparel that we're all wearing today. We would imagine and logically conclude that they have huge economies of scale. So for the largest, the biggest importers they can have a certificate representing maybe even thousands of units but the smaller importers that are cutting smaller POs have a much more refined level of units that will be described in a particular certificate. So we started with the 20 billion number and then we made some hopefully intelligent estimations of the and by the way I'm using the staff's model as a very helpful approach refined by some additional input that's been provided by my staff, the association and with many individual external stakeholders as well. Was able to prepare a different unit in terms of certificates per unit and then creating the math came to the conclusion that the amount of certificates for this particular product category after cutting out children's products too, we had to make an estimate of children's products. I think we had that estimate at 17 and a half percent and that was corroborated by staff's activity too. From my staff, Ryan Radford behind me if I get any of these numbers wrong, then we were able to consider the amount of certificates and the number is large, it's 26.6 certificates and since you asked about the dollar figure, while I did do a reevaluation again because of time to be able to look at this one nuanced product category came to a much larger conclusion in terms of the amount of certificates, we stayed with the same staff's approach and consideration and how to monetize that. So I didn't go through, perhaps some might suggest that I didn't go all the way by reevaluating the amount of time it takes or costs to produce a certificate, but I thought that just looking at that one element and keeping the other variable consistent might be most helpful for the purposes that are served today and hopefully I've convinced you commissioner. No, I just, I think it's important for people to see just how thoughtful and how careful and how in depth your exploration was of the issue, which is what makes me feel so confident about and supportive of the motion. So I thank you for that answer. Commissioner Robinson. I also would like to thank commissioner Mohorovic and I think primarily his staff for the incredibly carefully prepared package that came to us and for answering our questions. So I have no questions, thank you. Commissioner Berkel. I have no questions. I too want to commend commissioner Mohorovic and his staff and the analysis that was done in the package that was provided and then the amount of time with any questions we had or inquiries we wanted to make. We had plenty of time to do that. He was very thoughtful and patient in letting the process play out. Commissioner Mohorovic, any final comments on the questions? Not on the questions. I'll be allowed an opportunity to close. Closing statements after the vote. Do you have further comment before closing before we take the vote? I don't think so. Thank you. Hearing no further questions or comments, I'll now call the vote on the motion to approve the policy described in commissioner Mohorovic's proposal to exercise an enforcement discretion such that manufacturers and importers of adult wearing apparel made of fabrics exempt from testing under the flammable fabrics act and subject to no other CPSC regulation do not need to furnish certificates where the sole function of the certificate would be to restate the exemption and direct staff to send to the federal register for publication a notice setting forth this policy. Commissioner Adler, how do you vote? Aye. Commissioner Robinson? Aye. Commissioner Berkel? Aye. Commissioner Mohorovic? Aye. And I vote aye. The a's or five, the nays are a zero. This motion by commissioner Mohorovic has to approve the policy and publish a notice prepared by staff in the federal register has been approved. We'll now turn to closing statements. As I mentioned in the beginning, and I think as everybody has now mentioned, we really want to express tremendous gratitude to commissioner Mohorovic and his staff for really, from my perspective, an unprecedented amount of work that was done by a commission office in the last six or so years that I've seen. It really was a full blown briefing package that had the same depth and quality that we, of course, come to rely on from our staff. And this is no small feat. It takes a lot of work to put this together. Certainly outside stakeholders provided a significant amount of that information and we're grateful for them as well. This has been mentioned already, but this much to commissioner Mohorovic's credit, this could save on an annual basis $250 million by companies who are otherwise complying not having to issue these certificates for these products. This is an opportunity for the commission to provide relief to certifiers while importantly maintaining consumer safety and also permitting more efficient agency operations. Cannot overstate this. The number one concern of this agency is the safety of consumers. We will not be pursuing policies or activities that do not support this goal. And that goal is, and commissioner Birkel mentioned this earlier, protecting consumers from the unreasonable risk of death or injury from consumer products. As commissioner Mohorovic mentioned, the commission spoke decades ago by codifying limited testing exemptions. And based on decades of that testing data came up with a way to still subject the products to performance requirements but not to require testing and now we're not gonna require certification to those exemptions. Couple of points to reiterate. This is not a change to the underlying regulation. I repeat, this is not a change to the underlying regulation. Compliance is still mandatory and failure to comply will result in the normal options for the commission to pursue all relief as necessary. This is very narrow in scope and only relates to those items that qualify for the testing exemption. If your product is subject to any other regulation, this does not apply. And of course, the commission, any commission in any formulation, whether this one or any future one can revoke or modify subject to the provisions that are in this policy, this provision. So with that, again, I want to just applaud the work that was done. This is a, we don't normally call each other first names in this type of setting, but Joe, this is a big deal. As another Joe has said in other occasions, this is a BFD and so you should feel really good about what you have accomplished. This is a major, major feather in your cap. Congratulations. Commissioner Adler. I agree with what the chairman just said. I just want to make two quick points. The first is that in 2011, when Congress passed a piece of legislation we now call affectionately 11228, they directed us to do burden reduction. Now the burden reduction they directed us to do had to do a third party testing of children's products and not with the GCCs under the general worry and apparel standard. But by any measure, this is a tremendous step forward in burden reduction. And I think Joe, you deserve an immense amount of credit for doing this and your staff does as well. And the other point, and it's just a minor one, but it's important and this is something where I think Commissioner Mohorovic really anticipated any of the objections that might be raised about this. There's always an opportunity if we should discover, and I'm sure we won't, that this is simply not working that staff can approach us and the commission can withdraw this in a timely fashion. So I thank you for being that accommodating with respect to that. You've thought through every aspect of the issue and you've just done a superb job. And again, thanks to you and to your staff. And I also want to thank my staff for working so effectively with Commissioner Mohorovic and the other commissioner's staff. So job well done. Commissioner Robinson. Before I go into my thanks and support comments, I would like to just go a little further with what Commissioner Adler mentioned with respect to this figure that commissioners Berkel and Mohorovic have thrown out with respect to the cost of regulations. The number itself is suspect, given its source, but more importantly, I have a real problem with the lumping together of all regulations being something that are viewed in a negative way. It doesn't take much travel to countries where there's no tort liability and where there are not regulations for us to appreciate what we're the degree to which we're very spoiled in this country when it comes to safety. All it takes is seeing a few examples of either no regulations such as with compound drugs that a few years ago were severely debilitating and killing people, and we didn't know that there were no regulations until those things started happening. Or looking at cars today, our sister agency's been dealing with the fact that there are regs, but that people have been ignoring them. So you have the GM's defective switch, the Takata airbags killing scores of people, and without our regulations, without enforcement of those regulations, this would be happening on a much more rampant level. And with respect to this agency, one of the things that I have been hugely impressed with is that whatever people's politics, the people in this agency are very much dedicated to getting it right, both in terms of the regulations protecting people and also making sure their common sense regulations. When I look at the things that happened before me, whether it's taking lead paint out of our children's toys, taking small parts away, making our cribs safer for children, making sure our ATVs are not three-wheelers anymore, which industry would not have done on its own, making sure in my time that children are no longer exposed to high-powered magnets that we're killing and maiming them. These are good regulations, and I'm very much in favor of good regulations. But in this instance, Commissioner Mohorovic, you have brought to our attention, and I thank you, that there was a regulation that just didn't make any sense. And this proposal that you have is a common-sense solution to an administrative burden that from everything I've examined does not appear to serve any real purpose by enhancing safety, and I commend you for that. This proposal, as Commissioner Adler just said, does not change the requirement that adult wearing behavior apparel meet applicable flammability standards, which are critical for protecting consumers from fire hazards. Because of the importance of these standards, I'm pleased that the proposal includes a provision that addresses the Commission's ability to withdraw this if we should learn that unsafe products are entering the market. Candidly, I have no idea what the real numbers are in terms of savings, because I don't know what the actual compliance numbers are. We all hope that people are complying across the board, but I don't know that we really know that, but it really doesn't matter. The savings are important, obviously, but what really matters is that we're removing an unnecessary administrative burden, and I'm always in favor of that when it does not affect safety. I support this proposal, and again, thank you and your staff for the very careful work on it. Thank you, Commissioner Robinson, Commissioner Berkel. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I, too, want to share in the accolades and the really delighted that the Commission decided to approve this public policy, and I want to congratulate my colleague as well as his staff who worked extremely hard, and as I mentioned, came to us months ago with this proposal thoughtfully done and well put together, and it made the analysis easier for us to understand. I think the proposal resulted from many virtues. Commissioner Morozovic understands and has a real familiarity with testing labs and their processes, and his staff carefully researched and had patient interaction with compliance staff, and at this juncture, I'd like to say thank you to Mary Toro, to Jim Jiholsky, to the Office of OGC. They all provided guidance, and they all established the parameters for what was possible, and as always, it's a team effort, and I want to thank our staff for what they did, but it was Ryan and Mike and Bryce who really did the yeoman's work in getting this package together, and they should be commended along with the Commissioner, I can say Joe, I guess in this instance, for all of his efforts and for all of the legwork that this took. Best of all, and I won't make any secret about this, this is burden reduction. This is a huge step forward in burden reduction, and the really good news about this effort is that it cost the taxpayers little or nothing to accomplish. That's remarkable, that is a win-win, and I am very confident it won't affect safety, which of course is our priority, so I really do want to congratulate you on that, and thank you again. I want to urge outside groups, if you have ideas like this that we've not discussed in the agency, to feel free to come forward to the agency and let us know those ideas as well, and finally I want to urge the retailers to do their part to let this burden reduction be realized. If retailers insist on certificates, in these cases, even though we have said we will not enforce the requirement, they will effectively stymie the Commission's will and neutralize the benefits of today's decision. At times I find myself critical of other commissioners getting to the retailers and asking them to sell products, and they actually comply with the applicable standards and have not been proven to be defective, but in this case, I really encourage the retailers not to stymie what is trying to be done here today, and that's provide relief for the manufacturers and the producers of these products. Again, I want to congratulate my colleague and his staff for a job well done, and it will be a nice thing to be able to report this to Congress tomorrow, so thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Berklund. Thank you as well for making the point about outside groups coming to us. I want to echo that for sure. Commissioner Moverovic, the last word. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First, let me begin by thanking the staff for their engagement on this issue. I am 100% sympathetic to the workload that you all have to bear on a daily basis and being confronted in a sense with a new idea and having to spend some real thought into the consideration was critical for the commission to be able to have a sense of confidence behind the worthiness of this particular activity. It's important for me to mention in particular, Stephanie Secomas, our general counsel. You spent an enormous amount of time as did your staff and I very much appreciate that, especially Patty Pollitzer and Mary Boyle and others. Please thank you. I have my complete compliments as well as the Office of Compliance and under Ms. Atkins direction within Executive Director's Office, Jay Howell, Jim Jiholsky as well as Mary Toro. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration of this and providing your unvarnished views to the agency. I think it's very, very critical. And of course, to thank the commission for their consideration and time spent as well as the staff, all of your staffs for their collaboration and cooperation on this particular element that I will consider a success today. And it's my normal course in order to try to take complete and total credit for all of the work that my staff does on a daily basis. But my colleagues have let the cat out of the bag with regards to the efforts of Bryce Dustman on my staff. But behind me and in particular, Mike Gentine and Ryan Radford did an admirable job, has been echoed by my commissioners. So in this case alone, I will share the credit for producing this particular activity. Okay? So bureaucratic red tape is like the old joke about the weather. I mean, everybody complains about it, but like especially on a rainy and somewhat cold day today, but what can you do about it? We've done something about that today. And we've done something, as the chairman said, very, very big. I won't belabor the points in looking at the comparative amount of savings that we've projected here on an annual basis as compared to some of our bigger sister and brother agencies. But it's at the very, very top. And I'll do my best in the future to be able to provide you that moving forward. Before today, adult apparel companies faced a requirement that was the definition of red tape. They had to churn out certificates to say that their clothes were safe, even those CPSC said decades ago and continues to say that their clothes are safe, those that fall within the exemptions that we've just defined today. It would be like the FAA requiring airlines after each flight to certify that the sky is in fact blue. It doesn't do anybody any good whatsoever. And it's making people attest to something that's simply axiomatically true. The FFA prohibits the sale of excessively flammable textiles. And our rule under the FFA establishes standards for what that means, but neither the statute nor the rule requires any testing. And over 30 years ago, CPSC based on years of experience and training put out a list of fabrics that inherently comply with the flammability standards. These fabrics make up the vast majority of adult apparel. So for almost everything everyone in the room is wearing and watching, whether you're here or online, we've already decided primarily that it's safe and that we don't ask anyone to test that fact. But under the CPSIA, the companies that make and import those clothing have to certify based only on the product's intrinsic safety that the product is safe. It might seem an easy job to print up a certificate that repeats the commission's own determination, but it does not come cheaply. The CPSIA required the apparel industry to issue 26.6 million certificates on an annual basis at a cost of nearly $250 million. So a quarter of a billion dollars and nothing burgers served each year. But because they can either drive down the cost of certifying nor buy in volume to drive down the number of certificates, a disproportionate share, about 60% of this burden fell on small businesses. This commission heeding the calls of presidents from both parties across decades, the words of our statutes and the spirit of laws like the paperwork reduction act has decided that it's not worth our time for anyone else's to force companies to tell us what we already know. It's important to note that this action will not have a safety effect. We've said for decades that these products are safe and that's not likely to change. And if something does manage to slip through, it's still subject to enforcement action, as has been mentioned by my colleagues, but that's not likely to happen because physics hasn't changed. I'm very grateful to my colleagues for joining me in this effort and I hope we can take these scissors and go find some more red tape to cut. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Commissioner Mohorovic. Thank you for those who attended in person, who watched online and stay tuned for future hearings where we are back home in our refurbished hearing room. This concludes this public meeting of the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission.