FR regs face delay
By David Perry -- Furniture Today, March 6, 2005
Greensboro, N.C. — The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission will be getting a new commissioner, but officials say they don't know exactly when she will take her place.
Key CPSC initiatives, such as setting a final standard on a national open-flame mattress regulation and possible action on a proposed upholstered furniture flammability standard, apparently will have to wait until the commissioner brings the three-member panel up to full strength.
And the timing for that is uncertain, CPSC official Gib Mullan told Furniture/Today in an interview at a flammability workshop here last week sponsored by the American Home Furnishings Alliance.
Mullan, the new director of CPSC's Office of Compliance, said President Bush has signaled his intent to nominate Nancy Ann Nord, a former director of government relations at Eastman Kodak, to the commission.
Once Nord has been officially nominated, she will have to win Senate confirmation. Mullan said that could take months.
The CPSC seat has been vacant since October.
By law, the CPSC can operate with only two commissioners for as long as six months. That period is up at the end of this month. Starting in April, Commissioners Hal Stratton and Thomas Moore won't be able to implement new regulations until the third seat is filled.
The CPSC won't have time to complete its analysis of comments on its proposed national mattress standard by the end of March, so CPSC won't be able to issue its final rule on mattress flammability until Nord is seated on the commission. The proposed upholstery regulation is not as far along as the mattress initiative.
Bedding observers have been operating under the assumption that a national mattress standard would likely go into effect at the middle of next year. New CPSC rules typically are set to go into effect 12 months after the final rules are published. But some speculated that the latest news from CPSC could push the implementation date into the second half of next year.
Gordon Damant, a consultant to the bedding industry on mattress flammability issues, said it's "very hard to predict" how long the confirmation process will take.
But he said it may take the CPSC staff months anyway to evaluate comments on the commission's proposed open-flame mattress standard. If that is the case, a lengthy confirmation process may have no effect on the timing of possible regulations.
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