President Obama still has not nominated an undersecretary for food safety at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as Congress Daily reports today. Almost a year into his administration, the Food Safety Inspection Service – the federal agency in charge of making sure meat, poultry, and eggs are safe and labeled properly – is still without a leader.

Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a revision to the national air quality standard for ozone, a.k.a. smog. EPA is proposing to tighten the primary standard to a level somewhere between 0.060 and 0.070 ppm (parts per million), down from the current standard of 0.075 ppm set in 2008. Under the Clean Air Act, EPA must set the primary standard at a level protective of public health.

There’s no time like the holidays – when packages are wrapped up tight with paper only to be torn apart – to talk about paperwork. That’s why OMB Watch has submitted to the White House comments on improving implementation of the Paperwork Reduction Act.

As the Washington Post reports today, EPA is temporarily delaying a decision to regulate coal ash, a toxic byproduct formed when smokestack scrubbers capture pollutants otherwise destined for the air. Today is the one-year anniversary of a major coal ash spill that sent a billion gallons of toxic goo cascading across hundreds of acres of land in eastern Tennessee.