Government Performance

Feb 8, 2016

Top 400 Taxpayers See Tax Rates Rise, But There’s More to the Story

As Americans were gathering party supplies to greet the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released their annual report of cumulative tax data reported on the 400 tax r...

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Feb 4, 2016

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

Chlorine bleach plants across the U.S. put millions of Americans in danger of a chlorine gas release, a substance so toxic it has been used as a chemical weapon. Greenpeace’s new repo...

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Jan 25, 2016

U.S. Industrial Facilities Reported Fewer Toxic Releases in 2014

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data for 2014 is now available. The good news: total toxic releases by reporting facilities decreased by nearly six percent from 2013 levels. Howe...

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Jan 22, 2016

Methane Causes Climate Change. Here's How the President Plans to Cut Emissions by 40-45 Percent.

UPDATE (Jan. 22, 2016): Today, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released its proposed rule to reduce methane emissions...

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more news

CBPP Report on Proper Disclosure of State Tax Expenditures

Apr 14, 2009 by Adam Hughes*

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published a fantastic, in-depth report this month examining the state of disclosure of state level tax expenditures. The report reviews the best (OR, MN, and CT) and worst (AR, MD, and RI) state reports and outlines the best practices for the ideal tax expenditure disclosure. CBPP makes a strong case that increased disclosure of tax expenditure data by states would improve policies and accountability:

If properly designed and implemented, a tax expenditure report makes tax expenditures more transparent by telling policymakers and the public how the state is spending its money and what it is accomplishing through those expenditures. A tax expenditure report also encourages accountability by enabling policymakers and voters to evaluate individual tax expenditures and decide whether to continue them. In addition, a tax expenditure report saves money by enabling policymakers to monitor the costs of tax expenditures and rein in their cost if necessary.

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Lack of Audits of Financial Services Firms Distressing

Apr 9, 2009 by Adam Hughes*

Despite the news from last week that the IRS is staffing up and hiring thousands of additional revenue agents and officers, there is new data out from the IRS that is a bit depressing. The Transactional Records Access Clearninghouse (TRAC) released a new report today that shows the IRS continues to do too little to audit financial services firms, particularly those with over $250 million in assets.

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Signs of Salmonella Date Back to 2007

Apr 7, 2009 by Matthew Madia

The latest salmonella scare, this one tied to contaminated pistachios from California, has, thankfully, not proven to be a major public health crisis like the months-old peanut scandal. But an examination of the facts can be just as frustrating.

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Failures in OSHA Program Linked to Workplace Fatalities

A new Department of Labor report is highly critical of a Bush administration program designed to improve workplace safety. The report links poor enforcement to the deaths of workers at high-risk facilities – the specific targets of the special program. Poor quality data and inadequate training, inspections, and enforcement plagued the program.

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If At First You Don't Succeed...

Apr 1, 2009 by Adam Hughes*

The "virtual" border fence project is back in the news today, as the Wall Street Journal reports that the Department of Homeland Security has announced a new $30 million project to install cameras on the U.S./Canada border near Detroit, MI and Buffalo, NY.

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Wage and Child Labor Violations Often Ignored, GAO says

Mar 25, 2009 by Matthew Madia

The federal agency responsible for investigating employers who employ children, fail to pay proper wages, and violate other fair labor laws is riddled with inadequacies, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released today.

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Obama Pledges Food Safety Reform

Mar 16, 2009 by Matthew Madia

Ensuring the safety of the food and drug supply is something “only a government can do,” President Obama said on Saturday. Obama used his weekly address to shine a bright spotlight on food safety, focusing on government’s role in fixing the problems that have led to recent high-profile foodborne illness outbreaks like the current peanut contamination scare.

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IRS Ends Private Debt Collection Program

Mar 6, 2009 by Craig Jennings

An IRS press release brings us some good news this morning.

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Fixing OSHA in the Obama Administration

Feb 19, 2009 by Matthew Madia

Hard Hat Area The New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH) has released a report titled, “Can OSHA be fixed? What must be done.” The report consists of short articles written by dozens of occupational safety and health experts from around the country. The articles share ideas for getting the regulatory system back on a path that protects workers.

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On Food Safety, Who’s Failing Us?

Feb 10, 2009 by Matthew Madia

The ranks of both federal and state food safety inspectors are dwindling, leaving food processing plants to police themselves, according to an Associated Press investigation.

The recent salmonella outbreak, traced back to a derelict peanut plant in Georgia, has once again thrust the nation’s food safety shortcoming into the spotlight. A different salmonella outbreak was traced to another Georgia peanut butter plant in 2007. The two peanut butter incidences sandwiched other high profile food-borne illness outbreaks, including last summer’s mysterious salmonella episode that was ultimately traced to jalapenos.

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