Elections are the time when politicians pay the most attention to people and issues, and therefore the best time to ask them questions about how they plan to govern. OMB Watch wants your help in figuring out the best questions on government transparency that can be put to the candidates. Take just a few minutes to answer our survey and vote on your five favorite questions on the issue of government transparency and openness. We will then share the top questions with the news media and other organizations that have direct contact with candidates.

Government openness affects every issue from budget and taxes, to the regulatory process, to non-profit advocacy. The range of questions tries to reflect this breadth so check them and see which are most important to you.

Take the Open Government: What We Need To Know Survey today.

OMB Watch has published a new article titled, "Workers Threatened by Decline in OSHA Budget, Enforcement Activity." OSHA, like many other federal agencies, faces budget constraints that make it more difficult for the agency to achieve its mission. Over the past three decades, OSHA's budget, staffing levels, and inspection activity have dropped while the American workforce has grown and new hazards have emerged.

The article is the first in a series called Bankrupting Government: How a Decades-Long Campaign against Federal Spending Has Undermined Public Protections. In the coming months, the series will examine how long-term resource shortfalls at federal regulatory agencies have affected the ability of those agencies to fulfill their missions.

Read the article here.

In a MarketWatch article published today, reporter Ruth Mantell discusses how agencies are rarely held accountable when they miss statutory deadlines for writing regulations. In one particularly onerous example, EPA has missed a Congressional deadline — by more than 11 years — for a rule that would limit exposure to lead paint during home renovation.

The nonprofit group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) has sued EPA, a tactic that too often must be used to prod agency action, as Mantell points out:

Repercussions are typically light, if they are any at all, for a federal agency or other governmental body that's been late or slow in complying with a mandate, consumer advocates say. In response, a cottage industry in scheduling lawsuits, such as PEER's against EPA, has bloomed, looking to make sure that obligations are met.

Congress sometimes exerts its powers of oversight to push agencies along. However, oversight falls short when considering the scope of the federal bureaucracy (about 2.5 million civilian employees and half-a-trillion dollars in non-defense, discretionary spending) and the decades-worth of federal legislation agencies are responsible for enforcing.

As for the lead renovation rule, EPA plans to finalize the standard in March; but before EPA can do that, the rule has one more major hurdle to clear. The White House is currently reviewing the rule under Executive Order 12866. White House review — one of the many across-the-board government requirements agencies must abide by — certainly does not help agencies move more quickly.

This week, the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs held a closed door meeting to discuss the rule with officials from EPA and representatives of the National Association of Home Builders — an outspoken opponent of the rule.

Yesterday, the Des Moines Register published an op-ed calling for greater online access to government information. The op-ed is written by Jerry Brito, a research fellow at George Mason University's conservative-minded Mercatus Center (the former home of OIRA administrator Susan Dudley).

Brito discusses a few new websites which allow the public to sort through government data more completely and more efficiently than ever before. One of those sites is the federal government's new contracts and grants database, USASpending.gov, which was modeled on OMB Watch's successful FedSpending.org website. Brito also mentions the need for online access to regulatory dockets.

The crux of Brito's argument is that information is vital to democracy and that internet access and technological advances provide new opportunities for the public to be informed. Read the op-ed here: "Put More Government Data Online" (Des Moines Register).