Time for Agency Data Quality Plans Comes and Goes with Little to Show

The Open Government Directive (OGD) issued on December 8, 2009 included a mandate that all agencies create a data quality plan that enhanced the transparency of how agencies spend federal funds.  Two weeks ago, these plans were supposed to be finalized and released to the public but so far we can only find one agency’s plan.

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West Virginia Mine Continues to Flout Safety Laws

Massey Energy is back to work, endangering the lives of miners with its reckless attitude toward safety. Inspectors from the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) have continued to find safety violations at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia where 29 miners were killed in an April explosion, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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DOD IG Finds Private Security Contractors Performing Inherently Governmental Tasks

A U.S. Soldier Meets with Private Security Contractors

Jeremy Scahill, an investigative journalist and contributor to The Nation, blogged this morning about a discovery he made in a recent Department of Defense (DOD) Inspector General's (IG) report. The DOD IG found, in what Scahill mockingly referred to as "a not shocking revelation," that "private contractors working for U.S. Special Forces have been allowed to 'perform inherently governmental functions.'"

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Hearing Considers Counterterrorism Rules and the Effects on Charities

The House Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held a hearing to consider how anti-terrorist financing laws impact charities. This is the first time an oversight hearing considered how Treasury's policies impact charitable groups since 9/11.

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Who Says We Need More C-17s...Oh Yeah, Congressional Missourians Do

A C-17 Globemaster III

As Congress gears up for its annual budget process, parochial-minded members are drawing their customary battle lines around administration-targeted programs. One of those is the C-17 transport plane, which the Pentagon has been trying to kill for several years because it deems the military to have ample airlift capacity. Last week, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch highlighted a press conference held by four congressional Missourians who, claiming to know better than the Pentagon, declared that they were going to fight the plane's proposed cancellation.

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Chances of FY '11 Budget Resolution Slipping Away

In case you hadn't noticed, it's getting late in the year. We're almost to the end of May, and Congress is starting to run out of legislative time. The week-long Memorial Day recess gets rid of next week, July 4th patriotism will consume another week, summer recess erases most of August and half of September, and Congressional leadership is aiming to adjourn in early October. And with Congress' already jammed legislative agenda, when is it going to get around to passing FY 2011's budget resolution? Answer: most likely never.

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DISCLOSE Act May Move to House Floor by Friday

After the House Administration Committee marked up the DISCLOSE Act last week, the House Rules committee is scheduled to meet tomorrow (May 27) to report a rule that would send the bill to the floor. H.R. 5175 may be slated for floor action on Friday, May 28, just before the congressional recess begins.

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State and Local Governments Seek Fees from Nonprofits

NPR reports on the trend where cash strapped state and local governments are looking to tax-exempt groups for funds. "Government officials are proposing new fees on nonprofits to help pay for services. They're also challenging the exemptions these groups get from sales and property taxes."

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Fiscal Responsibility Is More Than Just Cutting

Picking up the thread from yesterday, I want to expand a bit on this term "fiscal responsibility" that is bandied about so often. "Fiscal responsibility" is not simply setting arbitrary limits on federal spending for the sake of reducing the federal budget deficit. Rather, it is an assessment of the current economic and fiscal environments and a determination of an equitable deployment of national resources.

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E-Rulemaking, Contracting on the List of Priorities for New ACUS

The new chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) last week discussed potential research priorities for the conference. Chairman Paul Verkuil outlined for the House Judiciary Committee’s administrative law panel several issues ACUS may address when it is reconstituted.

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