OSHA Reopens Consideration of Revoking AZ OSHA Plan

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration is reopening the comment period for an additional 60 days on the proposal to reconsider and revoke the final approval of Arizona’s State Plan for Occupational Safety and Health. The agency is also postponing the public hearing tentatively scheduled for Aug. 16, 2022.

Further notice of these actions will be published in the Federal Register within the next few days. OSHA will review all comments on the proposal, including any submitted during the reopening of the comment period. Further decisions about scheduling a hearing are suspended until that time.

In April, the Department of Labor issued the proposal in response to the Arizona State Plan’s nearly decade-long pattern of failures to adopt and enforce standards and enforcement policies at least as effective as those used by the department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The Industrial Commission of Arizona (ICA) and its sub-agency, the Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health (ADOSH), submitted a comment on the proposal on July 5, 2022, the last day of the comment period. ICA and ADOSH stated that they completed a number of measures to address concerns OSHA identified in the proposal, including adoption of the increase in maximum penalty amounts and adoption of standards and enforcement directives that were past due. The Federal Register notice will include a list of Arizona’s completed measures.

The additional 60-day comment period will allow stakeholders the opportunity to comment on ADOSH’s actions and the impact those actions should have on OSHA’s proposed revocation of the State Plan’s final approval. After the Federal Register notice is published, stakeholders will be able to submit comments online using Docket No. OSHA-2021-0012 on the Federal eRulemaking Portal.

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