President Bush issued an executive order on September 18 that directs federal agencies to speed environmental reviews for major transportation projects.

On September 12, the Federal Communications Commission adopted a notice of proposed rulemaking as part of its biennial review of media ownership rules mandated under the 1996 Telecommunications Act to determine whether the marketplace is sufficiently ensuring the goals of local responsiveness, diversity, and competition with respect to local media, or if existing rules need to be maintained or modified, in order to promote these goals.

Within the next month, the House is expected to vote on a bill (H.R. 4561) -- sponsored by Rep. Bob Barr (R-GA) and cleared by the Judiciary Committee on Sept. 10 -- that directs federal agencies to conduct a “privacy impact analysis” for new regulations. This analysis is to describe:

• the extent personally identifiable information is collected under a proposed or final rule, assuring participation by affected individuals in the rulemaking where the agency finds a “significant privacy impact”;
• whether affected individuals can access this information;

President Bush took the opportunity while Congress was in recess to appoint controversial nominee Thomas Dorr as undersecretary of the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which will allow him to serve for a year without Senate confirmation. Recess appointments are not uncommon for contentious nominees that lack bipartisan support when the Senate and executive branch are controlled by opposing parties. Yet President Bush went even further than most presidents in appointing Dorr, because Dorr did not even have the support of fellow Republicans.