• OMB Builds Record of Rollbacks

  Under the leadership of John Graham, OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) is increasingly using its regulatory review authority to weaken or block health, safety, and environmental standards. In this issue, we document OIRA decisions to gut a proposed standard on diesel emissions from large ships and tankers, and weaken a final rule to protect drinking water from hazardous waste.

• Ignoring Enron's Lessons, Bush Regulatory Rollbacks Continue

  Virtually everyone now agrees that a permissive regulatory environment aided the recent wave of corporate accounting scandals. There were insufficient protections to ensure independent, objective accounting, and little in the way of government oversight, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) woefully underfunded and understaffed. Unfortunately, these same permissive conditions exist in other areas of corporate governance as well, particularly protection of public health, safety, and the environment. Yet in these areas, the Bush administration has continued to exacerbate the problem, stifling new protections, rolling back regulation already on the books, and gutting enforcement.

• Faith-Based Initiative Moves Forward at Agencies

  With Republicans taking control of the Senate, President Bush's stalled proposal to increase federal funding of faith-based organizations likely moves to the front burner. In the meantime, however, the administration is moving forward with administrative reforms of agency grant programs.

• Agencies Finalize Data Quality Guidelines

  Most agencies successfully finalized their data quality guidelines on or about the Oct. 1, 2002 deadline, with few significant changes from draft guidelines produced months earlier. Nonetheless, there were some trends and overall similarities in the changes made from the draft guidelines to the final versions.

MORE ON OMB WATCH'S EXECUTIVE REPORT

The Executive Report, is a bi-monthly online report that takes an in-depth look at a variety of executive branch issues. This includes issues such as electronic government, information policy, the regulatory process, devolution, enforcement of health, safety and environmental protections, as well as other cross-cutting issues dealing with government accountability. We invite you to peruse the contents and if you like what you see, please subscribe here. It is free, but we encourage you to make a contribution of $35 or more, which you can also do on that page. We welcome suggestions for topic ideas, and would appreciate any feedback on the report. Comments can be sent to execreport@ombwatch.org.