Mine Safety Violation Penalties Decreased under Bush

The NY Times reports on a Congressional hearing into the reduction in levying and collecting fines imposed on mining companies for safety violations. As they report:

A data analysis by The New York Times found that the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001 and in nearly half the cases not collected them at all.

The reasons for this appear in the first paragraph of the article detailing the Times' data analysis:

In its drive to foster a more cooperative relationship with mining companies, the Bush administration has decreased major fines for safety violations since 2001, and in nearly half the cases, it has not collected the fines, according to a data analysis by The New York Times. (italics added)

The Bush administration has been falling over itself to ingratiate itself with energy and mining companies from day one, including appointing many executives from these industries to regulatory positions over the same industries. In addition, the range of exceptions companies can claim to have their fines reduced are disturbing (for example, if they are performing poorly, their fines will be reduced; almost a way to keep failing, unsafe mines in business as a policy). The NY Times has an illustrative chart showing that major fines (over $10,000) peaked in 2000 and fell steeply in 2001, recovering somewhat by 2003 and then falling again. This comes close to mirroring the fatality rate over the same period where fatality rate per 100,000 miners was 31 in 1999, 37 in 2001, 24 in 2002, 29 in 2003 and 20 by 2005. However, the percentage of fines that are major rises and falls slightly before the mining fatalities do. While the causation is not clear, it would appear that current year enforcement and imposing higher penalties is associated with lower mining fatalities in the following year. I've put the Excel spreadsheet I used to calculate these numbers up on the web.