On May 23, the late Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) introduced the Chemical Safety Improvement Act of 2013. The bill would amend the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the nation's primary and outdated chemical safety law. Despite being promoted as a significant reform, the proposed legislation fails to improve the health and safety protections missing from current law. As it stands, it represents a significant retreat from the Safe Chemicals Act of 2013 that Lautenberg introduced earlier this year. The earlier bill should be the senator’s legacy.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee unveiled its discussion draft of the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2013 on May 10. This legislation, more commonly known as the DATA Act, is intended to bring unprecedented public transparency to federal spending by requiring more spending data to be published online, in a standardized format, and in a searchable, downloadable database.

On May 16, the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) released a revised proposed rule for hydraulic fracturing on federal public lands (commonly referred to as fracking). The new proposed rule not only ignores concerns about the public health and environmental risks of the natural gas drilling method, it also disregards recommendations by lawmakers and the U.S. Department of Energy's Shale Gas Production Subcommittee, which called for transparency and full public chemical disclosure. The proposed rule suggests the agency has placed industry concerns ahead of public health and safety. It also contradicts the new data standards the Obama administration issued just last week by executive order.