If you were not watching your TV on late on a certain early November Tuesday night, you missed quite a spectacle. From Grant Park in Chicago to the streets of New York, San Francisco, Miami, Atlanta, and countless towns, cities and living rooms across the U.S., millions of Americans who had invested their faith behind a young man from Illinois were leading the biggest electoral celebration in this country since 1932. Amidst the sea of signs and calls, one word was repeated more than any other.

Change.

Next month, President-elect Obama will enter the White House tasked with turning the poetry of his campaign into the prose of governance. And those industries subject to federal environmental regulation, in particular, are anxious to see how the rhetoric of "Change" will translate into federal action across the breadth of highly charged issues.

Meanwhile, down Pennsylvania Ave., as the economy and markets shudder under the weight of unseen market forces, various committees in Congress are calling regulatory and business leaders to the carpet in an attempt to determine how we got in this mess, and how they can help lead us out of it. If the situation were not so serious, it would be uproariously entertaining as fingers are pointing in every direction. However, I think a theme is beginning to take shape as we prepare to take a new road that will impact us all.

The key word that seems to keep coming up in the congressional hearings is "oversight." Certainly, the first government agencies that will be affected will be those dealing directly with financial issues. However, the national regulatory mood that is developing leads me to believe it is likely that the growth of government oversight will spill into many business sectors, including ours very soon.

Whether correct or not, opponents of the Bush administration have repeatedly pointed out that many of our social and economic ills, including environmental shortcomings, are a direct result of a lack of vision and regulation. They are concerned that the administration is using regulation rather than legislation and the results have been failed policies to control environmental and other issues.

For example, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. – who is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform – recently sent a letter to EPA Administrator Steven L. Johnson, admonishing the agency for the number of court cases it has lost as a result of regulations being struck down. Waxman expressed concern that the agency was promulgating rules that continued to be struck down by the courts, thus demonstrating a lack of fiscal responsibility due to the cost of promulgating the rules and then being unsuccessful at defending the actions. The entire letter can be viewed online at http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20081021110039.pdf.

The Government Accounting Office has issued many reports demonstrating weaknesses in decisions made by EPA. PE's staff has reported on some of these reports in the news section of the magazine and in the news updates on our home page. Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. called for Obama to meet with the comptroller general, Gene Dodaro, to learn about ways to reduce costs and determine what agencies may need more oversight.

Most of the indications available to me are that we can fully expect that there will be more oversight by congressional leaders and the new administration's agencies. Expect more laws to be written by the 111th Congress, more goals to be established by the agencies and more paperwork to be involved to satisfy these demands.

Many of our readers have written PE to speak out against additional governmental oversight, legislation or regulation. In a lot of ways, I agree with you. But regardless of our feelings, the national mood has given our newly elected government a mandate for major changes, both from Congress and executive agencies. It will be up to us to 'turn and face the strange.' PE