Experts testified last month at a subcommittee hearing of the House Government Reform Committee that agencies still have a long way to go toward improving their handling of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Their testimony, along with troubling findings from a congressional report on FOIA, may help move reform legislation forward.

The House Homeland Security Committee is scheduled to mark up chemical security legislation later this week. The Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006 (H.R. 5695), introduced by Rep. Daniel Lungren (R-CA) last month, currently has ten cosponsors. Critics of the bill, including a number of environmental and public interest groups, charge that it would actually lead to less security for our nation's chemical plants.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory Board (SAB) recently sent a letter to the agency expressing concerns over its plans to reduce information collected under the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). The SAB maintains that the proposed cuts would "hinder the advances of environmental research used to protect public health and the environment." SBA sent the letter detailing its concerns to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson on July 12.