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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Senator Graham Speaks Out Against Secrecy

During a recent statement in memory of former senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) spoke out against government actions around secrecy during a floor statement. Moynihan had been a strong opponent of government secrecy through out his 24 years as a U.S. Senator from New York.

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Estate Tax Repeal Supporters Losing Ground

In a move viewed by many as truly outrageous, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) introduced an amendment to the Senate Budget Committee’s budget resolution on March 19 – the day the country committed itself to billions of dollars for the war and its aftermath in Iraq – to accelerate the repeal of the estate tax by one year.

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House Passes Budget Resolution of Huge Tax Cuts, Program Cuts; Senate Votes Weds.

The House passed its FY 2004 budget resolution last week, officially kicking off the Congressional budget debates for the coming fiscal year. The Senate voted to preserve all but $100 billion of the President’s tax cut, but won’t complete work on the budget resolution until Wednesday, March 26. Though the budget resolutions of each chamber reflect much of the President’s own budget proposals, and especially his $726 billion tax cut, neither resolution passed without a great deal of effort among Republican leaders to ensure that Congressional members voted together.

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Model State Bills for Data Quality and Access

Apparently initial efforts have begun to develop data quality and data access legislation at the state level. OMB Watch has obtained model legislation for both bills that was reportedly drafted by the The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE), a strong supporter of both policy efforts at the federal level. Both state level model bills are clearly patterned after federal policies. The state data quality bill borrows heavily from the just recently completed Federal Data Quality Guidelines.

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Administration Denies Documents to Senate

Recently the Bush Administration asserted that numerous documents about changes in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) fill policy being requested by the Senate Permanent Investigations Subcommittee would be withheld citing "deliberative process privilege."

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Senators Use Data Quality Challenge

On March 6, Sens. Jim Jeffords (I-VT), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) a request for correction of information under the Data Quality Act. This is the first data quality challenge submitted by members of Congress. The request addresses a Modification of National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit deadline for storm water discharges by oil and gas construction activity that disturbs one to five acres of land.

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Press, Government "Dialogue" Eases Crackdown on Leaks

The Bush Administration has backed away from a crackdown on government leaks of classified information in part due to occasional behind-the-scenes meetings attended by government officials and press representatives.

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NM House Passes Resolution Boosting Hometown Liberties

New Mexico's House of Representatives this month passed a resolution critical of the federal government's strategies for fighting terrorism, strongly suggesting that the federal government's efforts to make Americans safer unnecessarily infringes on civil liberties and that federal secrecy impedes the state's ability to assess "the effect of federal antiterrorism efforts on" the public.

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NRDC Comments Threatened with Industry Data Quality Challenge

The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (CRE) has submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that threaten to challenge the data quality of comments submitted by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), should EPA use them. The NRDC submitted comments to EPA on its draft risk assessment for land-applied biosolids that stated the draft risk assessment underestimated risks from dioxin and related compounds. CRE claims that the NRDC comments contain substantial inaccuracies, omissions, and biases, and lack reproducibility.

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Government Lied in Landmark Secrecy Case

A recent declassification of documents indicates that the Government lied in a landmark secrecy case. Over 250 pages of declassified documents relating to a 1948 Air Force plane crash have revealed that the accident resulted from poor maintenance and training rather than some other cause that had to be kept secret for national security purposes as the government has claimed. Relatives of several of the men killed in the plane crash filed a lawsuit trying to get information about the crash immediately afterward. The case (United States v.

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more resources

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

Chlorine Bleach Plants Needlessly Endanger 63 Million Americans

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

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

Senator Graham Speaks Out Against Secrecy

Estate Tax Repeal Supporters Losing Ground

House Passes Budget Resolution of Huge Tax Cuts, Program Cuts; Senate Votes Weds.

Model State Bills for Data Quality and Access

Administration Denies Documents to Senate

Senators Use Data Quality Challenge

Press, Government "Dialogue" Eases Crackdown on Leaks

NM House Passes Resolution Boosting Hometown Liberties

NRDC Comments Threatened with Industry Data Quality Challenge

Government Lied in Landmark Secrecy Case

Pages

Living in the Shadow of Danger: Poverty, Race, and Unequal Chemical Facility Hazards

A Tale of Two Retirements: One for CEOs and One for the Rest of Us

Blowing Smoke: Chemical Companies Say “Trust Us,” But Environmental and Workplace Safety Violations Belie Their Rhetoric

Gasping for Support: Implementation of Tougher Air Quality Standards Will Require New Funds for State Agencies

Citizen Health & Safety Topics

Recent Reports

Living in the Shadow of Danger: State Scorecards

Living in the Shadow of Danger: Poverty, Race, and Unequal Chemical Facility Hazards

A Tale of Two Retirements: One for CEOs and One for the Rest of Us