On June 30, the Department of Labor announced that civil citation penalties issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will go up for the first time since 1990.
 
The increase is the result of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015, signed into law Nov. 2, 2015. The act was a compromise reached by Congress to avoid a default on the nation’s debt. Tucked deep into it, however, was a provision known as the Inflation Adjustment Act, which allowed OSHA and certain other federal agencies to annually adjust their civil penalties for inflation, with a one-time adjustment ...