Michael Karl McNeil, REP, RIH, EPP, QSD, says state-run OSHA programs, including Cal/OSHA, are falling short of the federal requirement for adequately trained and qualified enforcement staff, and that citations are being written and approved by personnel who were never trained in the hazards they cite.
SAN GABRIEL, Calif., Nov. 12, 2026 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Michael Karl McNeil, a former Fire Battalion Chief and the principal of McNeil Safety Consulting, today called for urgent reform of the state-run occupational safety and health programs that operate under Section 18 of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act. McNeil, who holds the REP, RIH, EPP and QSD designations and defends employers against OSHA and Cal/OSHA citations, said the state plans are not meeting the obligations federal law places on them, and that the gap is showing up in the citations employers receive.
Federal law allows a state to run its own program only if that program is at least as effective as federal OSHA, under 29 U.S.C. 667(c). The federal criteria for state plans, at 29 CFR 1902.3, require a state to assure that its enforcement agency has a sufficient number of adequately trained and qualified personnel. When federal OSHA evaluates a state plan under 29 CFR 1902.37, the factors it considers include whether the state has adequately trained and competent personnel and whether its inspections are conducted in a competent manner.
"The federal standard is not just that a state has inspectors. It is that the state has enough of them, and that they are trained and qualified for the work they do," McNeil said. "That is the condition every state plan accepted in exchange for running its own program. Right now that condition is not being met."
The public record supports the concern. In July 2025, the California State Auditor issued Report 2024-115 on Cal/OSHA's enforcement program. The audit reported that nearly one-third of Cal/OSHA positions were vacant in the prior fiscal year, that the large majority of valid safety complaints were handled by letter rather than by an on-site inspection, and that some complaint inspections took more than a month to begin where state law required them to start within three working days. Federal OSHA's own FY 2023 Comprehensive Federal Annual Monitoring and Evaluation report for California noted that the state had not been able to fill staff vacancies in a timely manner, most notably in its enforcement and consultation programs. Federal evaluators raised compliance officer training as far back as the FY 2009 evaluation, which found that Cal/OSHA had not established a core curriculum for newly hired compliance officers or a method to plan and track each officer's training.
McNeil said the vacancy figures describe only half the problem. In his citation defense work, he sees compliance officers issuing citations under standards they were never trained to evaluate. "I see inspectors cite process safety, confined space, respiratory protection, industrial hygiene exposure and electrical violations without the technical training those standards demand," he said. "An inspector who has never been trained to take or interpret an air sample should not be the person deciding an employer overexposed its workers. An inspector who has never been trained on energized electrical work should not be classifying an electrical violation as serious. When that happens, the citation is built on a guess, and the employer has 15 working days to appeal it or accept it."
The same gap, McNeil said, runs up the chain of review. Citations are reviewed and approved by district and regional management before they are issued, and that review is meant to catch an unsupported classification or a misapplied standard. "If the manager signing off on a citation has no more training in the hazard than the inspector who wrote it, the review is a formality," he said. "Management has to be held to the same qualification standard as the field staff. Otherwise a deficient citation passes through two people and leaves the office looking like it was checked."
McNeil said the consequences fall on both sides of the workplace. Employers absorb penalties, abatement costs and appeal expenses for citations that do not hold up, while workers lose the protection of a competent inspection when the hazard that actually matters goes unrecognized. "A poorly founded citation does not make anyone safer," he said. "It costs the employer money and it tells the worker the hazard was handled when it was not."
McNeil is calling for four reforms across OSHA state plans. First, that federal OSHA enforce the trained-and-qualified-personnel assurance in 29 CFR 1902.3 as a measurable condition of state plan approval, rather than a statement in a plan document. Second, that each state plan publish the training records that qualify a compliance officer for each category of standard the officer is authorized to cite, so that inspectors cite only within their documented competence. Third, that district and regional managers who approve citations meet the same technical training requirements as the inspectors whose work they review. Fourth, that federal monitoring reports evaluate whether citations were issued by personnel trained in the cited hazard, and treat a pattern of out-of-scope citations as a finding that requires corrective action.
"These programs were given authority on a promise," McNeil said. "Every state plan told the federal government it would put trained, qualified people in the field. Employers and workers are entitled to that promise being kept."
Michael Karl McNeil served 25 years in the fire service with a federal fire agency, rising from Fire Prevention Captain to Fire Battalion Chief, and holds California State Fire Marshal and NWCG credentials and federal law enforcement training through FLETC. He is a Registered Environmental Professional, Registered Industrial Hygienist, Emergency Planning Professional and Qualified SWPPP Developer, a member of ACOEM, AIHA, ACGIH and NAFI, and a contributor to the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. He has been deposed more than 60 times.
About McNeil Safety Consulting: McNeil Safety Consulting provides environmental health and safety, industrial hygiene, OSHA and Cal/OSHA citation defense, and forensic and expert witness consulting to employers and attorneys. The firm works directly with its clients. To request a consultation, call (626) 546-9384, email [email protected], or visit https://mcneilsafetyconsulting.com.
Media Contact
Michael Karl McNeil, McNeil Safety Consulting, 1 (626) 546-9384, [email protected], https://mcneilsafetyconsulting.com
SOURCE McNeil Safety Consulting
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