Are you suggesting that only legal arguments or facts are relevant?

So an actual analysis (which would necessarily include predictions that are not certain) of the impact of a decision is irrelevant?

I’m suggesting only that form-letter comments or statements of support or opposition, unaccompanied by substantive facts, analysis, or argument, don’t do much to develop the administrative record, which is the point of taking public comment in rulemaking proceedings.

Agencies must consider the comments, but as 'JumpCrisscross points out, they don’t have to accept the commenters’ views. The outcome is determined not by submitting the most or best comments, but by electing Senators and Representatives to enact statutes defining agencies’ authority and responsibilities, and by electing a President to appoint their officials.

If you’re new to administrative procedure, you might find it interesting to read though the entire dockets in some less-notable proceedings, to get an idea of how it usually works: an agency issues a notice of proposed rulemaking; interested parties make comments (and sometimes reply comments) with their views, data, analyses, and legal arguments; and then the agency issues a final rule, usually explaining how they considered and accepted or rejected the commenters’ positions.

It’s rare for comments to cause a proposed rule to be abandoned entirely, but they often influence the myriad details—definitions, exceptions, compliance deadlines, technical specifications—that make administrative regulations a practical tool of representative government.

Kind of makes actual democracy obsolete I suppose; we seemingly now require technocratic governance and do not require attention towards other public sentiment outside of technical/legal analysis. I get this perspective, but I think it's very exclusionary and dismissive.

Limiting input to that which addresses procedural questions or point-of-order effectively narrows conversation so that other perspectives outside of that window is made irrelevant.

Effectively pushing the public out of policymaking. (Good riddance to all that white noise!)

I mean, there's a reason the US is a republic and not a democracy. Very often the public opinion is just white noise. As the parent comment said, if you don't like the rules, you're supposed to elect new representatives.

> So an actual analysis (which would necessarily include predictions that are not certain) of the impact of a decision is irrelevant?

Political appointees are entirely within their power to ignore such comments.

Are you sure? To change or reverse a rule within the government pretty much every agency has to take into account public comments for a period of time before the change.

They are not within their power to ignore any comments. They don't have to agree with any of the comments or reach the same conclusion that any of the comments argues for, but they are required by law to take all comments into consideration.

An actual analysis, what exactly do you mean?