Open, Accountable Government

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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OMB Watch Analysis Finds Obama Administration Slowly Rebuilding Government's FOIA Performance

WASHINGTON, March 16, 2011—Today, OMB Watch released an initial analysis of the Obama administration's performance on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) implementation based on federal agency annual reports under the act. Though some progress has been made, the analysis shows that the federal government is still in a rebuilding phase when it comes to FOIA openness.

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CBO Monthly Budget Review, February 2011

Mar 10, 2011 by Gary Therkildsen*

The Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) Monthly Budget Review (MBR) for February is out and it has piqued deficit hawks around Washington. The thing is, though, February's MBR is just like all the rest of CBO's recent monthly budget reports: it reveals that the country spent a lot more money than it took in over the previous thirty-day period.

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Celebrate Open Government during Sunshine Week

From March 13-19, Americans will commemorate the importance of open government during Sunshine Week. Organized by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and a coalition of groups including OMB Watch, Sunshine Week is observed annually to coincide with the birthday of James Madison, the Founding Father known for his emphasis on checks and balances in government.

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Offshore Drilling Poised to Expand, but Transparency Still Lags

As the Obama administration increases approvals of deepwater oil drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico, environmental advocates have seen little meaningful increase in the transparency of the permitting process. A lack of transparency in the regulatory process was identified as a contributing factor in BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster and the highly criticized response effort.

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Supreme Court: No "Privacy" for Corporations

Mar 1, 2011 by Gavin Baker

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that corporations are not subject to the personal privacy exemption of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The 8-0 ruling in Federal Communications Commission v. AT&T overturned a lower court ruling in AT&T's favor, which transparency advocates had worried could have imposed significant new barriers to public access to information.

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EPA Making Good on Chemical Transparency, But More Is Needed

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is disclosing more information about hazardous chemicals while challenging industry claims that information should be concealed as trade secrets. With major reforms of the nation's chemical law held up in Congress, public health advocates are pushing EPA to take more aggressive action to make chemical health and safety information available to the public.

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What Does the President's Budget Mean for Transparency?

The president's budget request for fiscal year 2012, released on Feb. 14, is the opening bid in a months-long process to decide how much the federal government will spend on everything from the Navy to open government efforts. The administration's budget proposal is difficult to analyze in terms of open government commitments because it doesn’t include line-item categories for transparency activities. However, it does provide some clues about increases and cuts.

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PATRIOT Act Provisions Get Three-Month Extension, But Nearly Lose Funding

Feb 18, 2011 by Gavin Baker

The House voted yesterday to agree to the Senate's three-month extension of expiring PATRIOT Act provisions. The President is expected to sign the bill before Feb. 28, when the current provisions expire.

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House Votes to Stay Uninformed about Greenhouse Gases

Feb 18, 2011 by Brian Turnbaugh*

The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) new program tracking the amount of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution spewing from big facilities is among the victims of a long list of environmental programs attacked in the House this week. The House voted to slash funding for the EPA's new greenhouse gas registry, which requires the biggest GHG emitters to disclose how much planet-warming gas they spew every year, starting with 2010. The registry places no regulations on emissions, but it does collect vital information needed to take any meaningful steps toward reducing GHG pollution. The House clearly wants all of us to remain in the dark about where the pollution is coming from.

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Is our Country Broke?

Feb 16, 2011 by Gary Therkildsen*

Why do I thirst for an Orange Julius when I look at this picture?

At a news conference yesterday morning, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), shrugged off criticism that his party's proposed spending cuts would cost thousands of federal workers their jobs, saying, "In the last two years, under President Obama, the federal government has added 200,000 new federal jobs. If some of those jobs are lost, so be it. We're broke." Boehner has rightly been criticized for the first and second parts of his comments, but what about the last part?

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