Public access checks against administrative malfeasance, which would ruin the admin state.

Nina Mendelson, “Private Control over Access to Public Law: The Perplexing Federal Regulatory Use of Private Standards,” Michigan Law Scholarship Repository, 03-01-2014, https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/887/

Perhaps to state the obvious, regulatory standards (as well as statutory standards) are among the longest-lasting, highest-impact exercises of power by government. They cover virtually every area of governmental power, apply to entire classes of entities and individuals, and have prospective, legally binding effect until the government takes further action to repeal them. As a group, then, legislative and quasi-legislative actions are the core activities that distribute the benefits and burdens of government.

As with any governmental action, the development of regulatory standards is susceptible to abuse and malfeasance. These problems can range from an agency’s imposition of arbitrary requirements203 to the issuance of rules aimed at benefiting something—or someone—other than the public interest. Accountability is thus critical to deterring agency violations of law and arbitrariness, to safeguarding against “capture” or the undue influence of any particular subgroup,204 to inhibiting reliance on inadequate or biased information, and to addressing a range of other governance problems. In addition, agencies need to be accountable for implementing their statutorily delegated authority, carrying out the programs Congress created. Both regulated entities and regulatory beneficiaries have a stake in proper agency implementation of statutory programs. Finally, accountability mechanisms help ensure that agencies, whose top officials are not elected, nonetheless make democratically responsive decisions.

IBR rules are not formally secret. Their cost and the difficulty of accessing them, however, represent significant impediments to accountability. Assessing whether public access is sufficient to ensure accountability requires considering the nature of the governmental action, how accountability mechanisms should function, and who requires access to invoke those accountability mechanisms. In the IBR setting, several considerations make clear that meaningful access must be broadly available to the public, not simply to those who can afford the cost of the standards charged by the SDOs.