Jim Tozzi

Dr. James J. "Jim" Tozzi (born 1938) is a lobbyist in Washington, D.C.; he is head of the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness, a watchdog group that specializes in data quality, and is a former regulatory official of the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Jim Tozzi got his Ph.D. in Economics and Business Administration from the University of Florida. After some time playing jazz as a self-described “bottom-tier” musician in New Orleans, Tozzi began working in Washington in 1964 at the Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary of the Army, where he worked on budget and strategic response issues. Tozzi served as an officer in the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Work at OMB's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)

Tozzi was instrumental in the passage of the Paperwork Reduction Act and the establishment of the OMB Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in 1980. Under his directorship, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs was the gatekeeper for virtually all proposed regulations dealing with public health and safety. It quickly became known among watchdog groups as a bureaucratic “black hole” where proposed regulations disappeared.

Tozzi was the Deputy Administrator of OMB in charge of the OIRA (and therefore of the regulatory agencies) when he left the organization in 1983 at age 45. He had also been the head of the Federal Ad Hoc Group on Toxic Torts, and had earned the nickname 'Stealth' for his ability to sneak in quietly and bomb agency attempts at regulation.

Between 1983 and 1986 he was employed as a 'consultant economist' by Beveridge & Diamond, the law firm of William Ruckleshaus, ex-administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, and now contracted to the chemical industry. The firm's key lobbyist was J Marshall Coleman (ex State Attorney General) who was counsel to Dow Chemical and working in close relationship with the Chemical Manufacturing Association's American Industrial Health Council (AIHC), along with Edison Electric Institute, and the Society of the Plastic Industry.

Lobbying Firms

In 1986 Thorne Auchter (ex head of the OSHA) and James Tozzi founded the lobbying company Multinational Business Services (MBS), and its not-for-profit Federal Focus, Inc, (a 501(c)(3) non-profit 'foundation') which was funded largely by Philip Morris. Federal Focus successfully blocked the federal government from gathering data related to deaths from secondhand smoke.

Federal Focus spawned dozens of 'non-profit' policy institutes and business-oriented think-tanks, among them were:• Center for Epidemiological Studies (CES - after 1993)• Institute for Regulatory Policy (IRP - before 1994)• Health Policy Institute (HPI - before 1994);• Center for the Study of Environmental Endocrine Effects (CSEEE - in 1994).• Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE in 1994) which appears to be his current major organisation (although payments are still funneled through MBE).

Federal Focus was the vehicle by which the tobacco industry tried to change the rules for the science of epidemiology and the political rules behind risk-management. (See Good Epidemiological Practice "(GEP) and the "London Principles".)

Tozzi has been a member of the Environmental Financial Advisory Board (EFAB) since 1992 and currently serves as chairman of the International/Energy Workgroup. The EFAB provides advice to the Administrator and Program Offices of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on "how to pay" questions for environmental protection.

Role in Passage of the Data Quality Act

Tozzi was a major behind-the-scenes architect of the Data Quality Act (DQA) which he helped to become law in December 2000 as a stealth rider to the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001. Since 2001 he has lobbied for regulated industries through the use of DQA. Among his accomplishments was the successful recertification of an herbicide, atrazine, by the EPA, despite laboratory and field studies showing that the chemical is an endocrine disruptor that causes frogs to become hermaphroditic.

Personal life

Today Tozzi resides in Alexandria, Virginia with his main office in Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. He is currently working on many projects, including nationwide medical marijuana legalization. His personal "apprentice", as he calls him, and financial advisor, Taylor Phelps, is currently being trained to be Tozzi's successor.

External links

* [http://www.thecre.com The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness] , firm website
* [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3733-2004Aug15.html "'Data Quality' Law Is Nemesis Of Regulation", by Rick Weiss, Washington Post, August 16, 2004.]