An MHARR delegation, including Chairman John Bostick, Immediate-Past Chairman Edward Hussey, President Mark Weiss and Senior Advisor Danny Ghorbani, met on March 16, 2015 with U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency Dr. Kathleen Hogan, representatives of the DOE Office of General Counsel (OGC) and other officials regarding manufactured housing energy rules currently under development at DOE.

The DOE rules, authorized by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA), have been the subject of a prolonged, controversial and fundamentally tainted rulemaking process, which has seen, among other things, the “impermissible” leak of a draft proposed rule to selected interested parties; a directive to DOE by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to start the rulemaking process over from the beginning; and a subsequent “negotiated rulemaking” process (with the recipients of the original leaked rule) that made a mockery of that OMB mandate.

The meeting provided an opportunity for MHARR to communicate directly with senior-level DOE management officials – and stress relevant facts — regarding the illegitimacy of this process and the entire DOE rulemaking from the beginning.  It also allowed MHARR, without waiving any of its objections to DOE’s fatally tainted procedures, to present documents and information to those officials regarding the extreme consumer cost impacts that would result from any rule based on the recommendations of the “Term Sheet” resulting from the DOE negotiated rulemaking process.

Given the urgency of this matter to the industry and consumers and given the fact that the entire DOE process to date appears to be aimed at coercing a specific result and proposal that would be devastating to the industry and consumers, MHARR – in addition to the remedies it previously sought in a November 25, 2014 letter to DOE Secretary Ernest Moniz – is now seeking an expansion of the oversight of this matter, via a full internal investigation of the DOE rule development process, from its start in 2007, up to the present day, by the DOE Inspector General, including an opportunity for MHARR to make a presentation and offer relevant materials at an appropriate time. This new request has been formalized and officially communicated in a March 20, 2015 letter from MHARR to DOE Secretary Moniz (see, copy attached).

MHARR has stated, and reiterated at the meeting, that it will oppose any and all standards based on the tainted DOE process through all appropriate means and venues.

This critical matter will be discussed in greater detail at the Association’s upcoming Board of Directors meeting.