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The U.S. federal workplace safety regulator has opened an investigation into Nevada\u2019s state OSHA agency weeks after Fortune<\/em> reported that three citations the state agency had issued against Elon Musk\u2019s Boring Company were suddenly withdrawn, according to three people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n Nevada OSHA confirmed that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration had received a complaint about the state agency and had opened a federal review into whether Nevada OSHA was at least as effective as the federal agency\u2014a requirement for all state OSHA plans under U.S. law.<\/p>\n The federal inquiry comes about one month after Fortune<\/em> published an investigation revealing that Nevada OSHA had issued three \u201cwillful\u201d and serious citations to Boring Company, the tunneling venture founded by Elon Musk that is digging an underground Tesla tunnel system below Las Vegas and the broader county. The citations were handed to Boring after two firefighters were burned by chemicals in one of its tunnels during a training drill. Shortly after the citations were issued earlier this year, Boring Company\u2019s president called a member of Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo\u2019s Office and set up a meeting with senior state officials, and the state agency rescinded those citations within 24 hours. The removal of the citations was not documented in the case file, and a line item in Nevada OSHA\u2019s case diary that described the meeting was later deleted from a public record, Fortune<\/em> found.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nevada OSHA and the state agencies that sit above it have maintained that Nevada OSHA withdrew the citations after the phone call because it determined that the citations had not met legal requirements, and were therefore not valid. Nevada OSHA has also said that the governor\u2019s office regularly receives complaints from businesses in the state and that this instance only stands out \u201cdue to the high-profile nature of the business because of its affiliation with Elon Musk.\u201d<\/p>\n Lawyers and regulators in the state, however, said the handling of the citations violated OSHA\u2019s standard procedure, and the episode sparked outrage among some politicians, including Nevada Congresswoman Dina Titus, who sent a letter to Governor Joe Lombardo urging him to hold Elon Musk\u2019s tunneling company accountable, make the company\u2019s meetings with Nevada OSHA public, and answer a series of questions about how the investigation was handled. A spokeswoman for Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Masto also told Fortune<\/em> that Cortez Masto\u2019s office \u201csupports inquiries to ensure that the Boring Company was made to follow and comply with all OSHA rules.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear at this time who filed the complaint that sparked the federal investigation, formally called a \u201cComplaint About State Plan Administration\u201d or a \u201cCASPA,\u201d nor precisely when it was filed. The Labor Department\u2019s records office confirmed that a CASPA had been filed against Nevada OSHA, though it declined to provide the complaint because it is \u201cpart of an enforcement proceeding\u201d and \u201ccould interfere with OSHA\u2019s ability to effectively enforce the law.\u201d Separately, a Labor Department spokeswoman said that federal OSHA doesn\u2019t comment on state plan investigations or determinations.<\/p>\n These types of inquiries typically take fewer than 60 days to complete, according to OSHA\u2019s policy manual, which details the process. During an investigation, the regional office will review Nevada OSHA\u2019s case file, interview state plan officials and employees as well as other individuals involved. The regional office would also review the effectiveness of the state plan\u2019s policies and procedures, according to the manual. Nevada OSHA itself will have 30 days to respond to the CASPA, and the state agency\u2019s own determination will be considered in the investigation, the manual shows.<\/p>\n This is not the first time that Nevada OSHA has been under scrutiny from federal OSHA. In 2009, federal OSHA initiated a \u201cspecial study\u201d into the plan after the Las Vegas Sun<\/em> reported on the agency\u2019s handling of fatalities during the construction of the CityCenter project on the Las Vegas Strip. <\/p>\n Jordan Barab, who initiated that study into Nevada OSHA during his time leading the federal agency under the Obama Administration, tells Fortune<\/em> that, because of the high-profile nature of this new inquiry, the top leaders of the federal agency have likely been looped in. \u201cThis would definitely have come to the attention of the Assistant Secretary, and probably beyond, given that it involves Elon Musk,\u201d Barab says.<\/p>\n Barab suggested that, should federal OSHA find deficiencies with Nevada\u2019s state plan, the regulator could direct Nevada to make corrections to this specific case or amend the agency’s procedures. <\/p>\n Since the 2009 special study, Barab said that Nevada OSHA had \u201ccleaned up their act\u201d and \u201cappointed some very responsible, competent people to run the program.\u201d<\/p>\n In OSHA\u2019s latest annual report on the Nevada state plan, which was published in 2024 and is publicly available on the regulator\u2019s website, federal OSHA said that Nevada\u2019s state plan had made notable improvements to its workplace culture and staff retention rates\u2014with 95% of positions filled\u2014but criticized the agency\u2019s documentation process, saying that documents had been missing from its case files.<\/p>\n This story was originally featured on Fortune.com<\/p>\n #Exclusive #citations #Elon #Musks #Boring #Company #suddenly #withdrawn #federalregulatorsare #nowinvestigatingNevada #OSHA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The U.S. federal workplace saf… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[4117,4116,596,885,554,459,4119,796,4120,2505,1759,4024,4118],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}