WASHINGTON - The White House systematically delayed enacting a series of rules on the environment, worker safety and health care to prevent them from becoming points of contention before the 2012 election, according to documents and interviews with current and former administration officials.

Some agency officials were instructed to hold off submitting proposals to the White House for up to a year to ensure they would not be issued before voters went to the polls, the current and former officials said.

The delays meant that rules were postponed or never issued. The stalled regulations included crucial elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, what bodies of water deserved federal protection, pollution controls for industrial boilers and limits on dangerous silica exposure in the workplace.

The Obama administration has said that any delays until after the election were coincidental and such decisions were made without regard to politics. But seven current and former administration officials said the motives behind many of the delays were clearly political, as Obama’s top aides focused on avoiding controversy before his re-election.

The number and scope of delays under Obama went well beyond those of his predecessors, who helped shape rules but did not have the same formalized controls, said current and former officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

Those findings are bolstered by a new report from the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent agency that advises the federal government on regulatory issues. The report is based on anonymous interviews with more than a dozen senior agency officials who worked with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which oversees the implementation of federal rules.

The report said internal reviews of proposed regulatory changes “took longer in 2011 and 2012 because of concerns about the agencies issuing costly or controversial rules prior to the November 2012 election.”

Emily Cain, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement that the administration’s “approach to regulatory review is consistent with long-standing precedent across previous administrations and fully adheres” to federal rules.

Administration officials said they issued a number of controversial rules during Obama’s first term, including limits on mercury emissions for power plants and Medicaid eligibility criteria under the Affordable Care Act.

But Ronald White, who directs regulatory policy at the advocacy group Center for Effective Government, said the “overt manipulation of the regulatory review process by a small White House office” raises questions about how the government writes regulations. He said the amount of time it took the White House to review proposed rules was“particularly egregious over the past two years.”

The recent decision to bring on Democratic strategist John Podesta as a senior White House adviser is likely to accelerate the number of new rules and executive orders, given Podesta’s long-standing support for using executive action to achieve the president’s goals despite congressional opposition.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Oversight, Federal Rights and Agency Action, said he’s concerned about the real-world impact of the postponements in the first term.

“Legal protection delayed is protection denied,” Blumenthal said.

The officials interviewed for the Administrative Conference of the United States report, whose names were withheld from publication by the study authors, said that starting in 2012 they had to meet with an Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs desk officer before submitting each significant rule for formal review. They called the sessions “Mother may I” meetings, according to the study.

The accounts were echoed by four Obama administration political appointees and three career officials during interviews.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, a former official said only two managers had the authority to request a major rule in 2012: then-administrator Lisa Jackson and deputy administrator Bob Perciasepe. Perciasepe and the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs’ director at the time, Cass Sunstein, would have “weekly and sometimes semi-weekly discussions” to discuss rules that affected the economy because they had political consequences, the person said.

Several significant EPA proposals were withheld as a result of those meetings, officials said, including a proposal requiring cleaner gasoline and lower-pollution vehicles that had won the support of automakers but angered the oil industry.

Other EPA regulations that were delayed beyond the 2012 election included rules on coal ash disposal, water-pollution rules for streams and wetlands, air emissions from industrial boilers and cement kilns and carbon dioxide limits for existing power plants.

“The agenda certainly did slow down, but it doesn’t change,” said Ross Eisenberg, who serves as vice president of energy and resources policy at the National Association for Manufacturers.

The administration also was slow to handle rules pertaining to its health-care law. Several key regulations did not come out until after the 2012 election, including one defining what constitutes “essential health benefits” under a health plan and which Americans could qualify for federal subsidies if they opted to enroll in a state or federal marketplace plan.

The Office of Management and Budget has reduced the length of time that rules are pending this year. The agency has cut the number of rules that were under review for more than 200 days by more than half.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 12/16/2013