Government Matters Articles

Legality of Campaign Coordination with Nonprofits Questioned

Two presidential campaigns are facing challenges about their ties to nonprofit groups. The Bush campaign's appeals to churchgoers to recruit from their congregations, and the Ralph Nader campaign's office rental agreement with a 501(c)(3) group founded by him, both raise the possibility that charitable or religious resources are being used for partisan purposes. Both are the subject of a complaint filed at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that alleges illegal coordination between the campaigns and two nonprofits in Oregon working to get Nader on the state ballot.

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Scientists Speak Out Against the Bush Administration

Last week the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released updated evidence that the Bush administration continues to manipulate and control science for political reasons. UCS has now collected the signatures of more than 4,000 scientists supporting a statement urging the Bush administration to discontinue these troubling practices, and to restore scientific integrity in federal policymaking. The prestigious list of scientists taking this unprecedented stand includes 48 Nobel laureates, 62 national medal of science recipients, and 127 members of the National Academy of Sciences.

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OMB Watch Uncovers Flaws in OMB's Data Quality Report

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently published a report to Congress that analyzes and summarizes federal agencies' first year of operations experience using the new information quality guidelines mandated under the Information Quality Act (IQA). The guidelines are supposed to ensure the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information disseminated by federal agencies. The report provides OMB's perspective on the first year under the law and the IQA reports submitted to OMB from individual agencies.

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Groups Object to Indian Affairs FOIA Exemptions

Several groups and individuals voiced objections to a Senate Bureau of Indian Affairs reform bill, in a letter delivered to Senators Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-CO) and Daniel K. Inouye (D-HI) July 8.

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Patriot Act Intact but Under Fire in Congress

In a vote reflecting disagreement among Republican leaders and several conservative members of Congress over the USA Patriot Act, the House of Representatives defeated by the thinnest possible margin an effort to reign in the government's power to require libraries and booksellers to reveal the books people are reading. Libraries and booksellers, including the American Library Association and American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, have gathered over 100,000 signatures in a campaign to support the Freedom to Read Protection Act, yet the House deadlocked on the bill.

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SBA Proposes, Withdraws Proposal to Change Definition of 'Small Business'

Last week the Small Business Administration retracted its proposal to alter a powerful federal designation that affects the work of almost every federal agency. Only "small businesses," designated as such by SBA, are eligible for SBA loans and roughly a fifth of federal procurement contracts. But SBA's "size standards" also grant to small business privileges to challenge agency regulations both in rulemaking and rule enforcement periods. Defenders of agency effectiveness have more at stake in the debate over the definition of small business than is immediately apparent.

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SBA Lobbies States for Small Business Role in Regulation

The Small Business Administration (SBA) has been actively lobbying the states to enact legislation that would increase the role of small business in state regulatory processes, promoting in particular a model bill that would force state agencies to review the costs to small business of proposed public safeguards and, ultimately, all existing state regulations.

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Senate Finance Committee to Hold Roundtable on Nonprofit Issues

The Senate Finance Committee recently announced it will hold a roundtable discussion Thursday, July 22, on issues concerning exempt organizations. The two main purposes of the roundtable are to follow-up on the committee's hearing on charities, and to further review the staff's discussion draft regarding proposed reforms to exempt organizations.

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Enforcement Report: A round up of news items related to agency enforcement activity & gaps

As reported in the recent Citizens for Sensible Safeguards report Special Interest Takeover, one of the many threats to our regulatory system is the lack of enforcement of existing regulation. In recent years, the budgets for agency enforcement efforts have been slashed and personnel have been cut. The EPA's Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, for example, has seen a reduction in staff of 12 percent, bringing its staff numbers to the lowest levels since the formation of the agency.

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AmeriCorps Programs Violate Separation of Church and State

On July 6, a federal court judge ruled that AmeriCorps must stop funding programs that place volunteers in Catholic schools.

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