On May 2, OMB Watch Board Chair Paul Marchand announced that Katherine McFate will become the new executive director of OMB Watch as of July 1.

Having been here since the start of OMB Watch in 1983, I know what it takes to run the organization, and I’m excited about the Board’s decision to hire Katherine. I have known Katherine for many years and have seen her skills up close, and I consider her an expert on government accountability and social equity issues. OMB Watch is fortunate to have someone with Katherine’s talent, experience, and vision leading the organization into the future.

Over the past few years, I’ve worked with Katherine on several important issues. She played a leadership role in helping OMB Watch and a colleague organization build advocacy coalitions to demand transparency and accountability in the implementation of the Recovery Act. In another situation, she provided useful advice as OMB Watch coordinated a process for developing recommendations for strengthening government transparency. And in yet another situation, she helped provide research guidance on the impact of the regulatory failures that led to the Wall Street meltdown.

Katherine has a strong passion for social justice and an equally strong commitment to improving the way government operates. I’ve been most impressed by her ability to identify emerging issues and create smart strategies to address social problems. Her success in building collaborations between policy groups and grassroots organizers at the national and state levels will serve her well at OMB Watch.

Since the Board’s selection, Katherine and I have been working closely together to chart a smooth transition. I’ve been impressed by her intelligence, professionalism, creativity, and capacity to juggle so many items simultaneously. Most of all, I’ve been impressed by her humor under pressure and openness to new ideas and approaches to social problems.

When I leave OMB Watch at the end of June, I will be greatly comforted in knowing that the organization will be in good hands with a great Board and staff – and now a great new executive director.

Two days ago, I posted a message about my meeting with President Obama to acknowledge his commitment to transparency and to give him an award for that commitment. During that meeting, the president reaffirmed his belief in transparency and demonstrated a nuanced understanding of the issues involved. I left the meeting assured I had an advocate for transparency running the government, even as we talked about ways of strengthening transparency.

Yesterday, I learned that the meeting was not listed on his public calendar. There is no good excuse for this.

I hope that this blunder falls into what I call the "klutz" category of governing. This meeting occurred after an earlier scheduled meeting was postponed. That earlier meeting was listed on the president’s calendar, so why wasn’t the March 28 meeting also listed? I hope it is as simple as a screw-up, since the president took time to quickly reschedule the meeting upon his return from an overseas trip and in the middle of some pressing issues – Libya, the budget stalemate, and Japan. The White House also erred in not blogging about the meeting or finding other ways to draw attention to it. (Of course, there are those who would criticize the president for taking credit for receiving an award.)

When the White House makes mistakes, there are consequences. We have a president who made a strong commitment to transparency and openness on Day 1 of his administration. A president who, in two years, has shifted the debate from encouraging government secrecy to encouraging disclosure, from trying to convince government that openness is good to focusing on how best to implement government openness. A president who has taken policy positions in favor of reducing national security classification, protecting federal employee whistleblower rights, encouraging proactive dissemination of government information, and much more. In other words, we have a president who not only gets it but has been the leader of the band.

Yet when it came to the first meeting with transparency advocates that any of us have known to occur in the Oval Office, the White House didn't proactively disclose the event or even post it on the president's calendar. By not posting it on the president’s calendar, there was no way for reporters and others to know about the meeting. What irony: a meeting on transparency that was not disclosed beforehand.

Now, instead of the story being about what the president had to say during the meeting and about the substance of the administration's openness policies, the narrative has become about a secret meeting. That's a real shame, but it's a consequence of not addressing the optics and not ensuring that the meeting was transparent.

Five of us representing members of the openness community met with President Obama on Monday. We asked for the meeting to be open, which means that the press would be invited, and we were told it would be. Immediately prior to the event, we were told that the meeting would be private, meaning no press. Though this was disappointing, we moved forward and had a frank discussion with the president about what he has done well and what more we think needs to happen for his to be regarded as the most open and transparent administration in history.

I will defend giving the president an award for his commitment to transparency. He has made a huge difference – and that should be acknowledged. I believe in the carrot-and-stick approach. You can reward someone for the positives and still criticize him or her for the negatives. And we all know there are plenty of ways that government transparency still needs to be improved.

But I cannot justify, nor will I try, a White House decision to not proactively disclose a meeting where the president receives an award for his commitment to transparency.

Despite this shortcoming, my hope is that the storyline about the meeting can move back to a substantive discussion about how to improve government transparency and hold the president accountable on these issues.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published as a comment in response to "Turning Rule Writers Into Problem Solvers: Creating a 21st Century Government That's Open and Competent by Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review" on Cairns Blog. Additionally, a correction was made in this version regarding the number of comments EPA received in response to its TRI rollback rule during the Bush administration.

The three ideas for reforming participation in the rulemaking process in Beth’s Noveck's blog post, "Turning Rule Writers Into Problem Solvers: Creating a 21st Century Government That's Open and Competent by Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review," may or may not be useful. They certainly can and should be tested empirically. But the focus on these participation issues must be complemented by reform of the rulemaking process itself.

There are numerous problems with the process. A mainstay of our current rulemaking approach involves comparing costs and benefits. Yet most often, federal agencies end up relying on the regulated community’s estimate of its compliance costs. When cost estimates originate from the regulated community, they are likely to have biased outcomes – especially when there is no way to verify them. Since all decisions about the regulation start with these numbers, we are building a house on a faulty foundation. Moreover, these cost estimates are never tested once the regulation is put into place, even though there is ample evidence that implementation costs go down with technological innovations and other market-based solutions.

If rulemaking is guided by cost and benefits, why is there no assessment for the cost of delay? Not looking at the cost of delay harms the public but benefits the regulated community. If we don’t look at the cost of delay, there is little incentive for action.

Under today’s rulemaking approach, participation is skewed. Small businesses and state/local/tribal governments get special access to discuss proposed rules before the public does. When there is an opportunity for selected audiences to interact with agencies at the expense of other audiences, such as beneficiaries, it raises questions of fairness. It also contributes to a perception that special interests have taken over the rulemaking process – and if not a takeover, then certainly a cozy relationship, such as the relationship that existed between the former Minerals Management Service and the energy industry.

The amount of analysis and paperwork associated with a rulemaking that an agency must go through has become absurd. Through organic statutes, Congress often requires analyses – and each administration tends to add more analytical requirements (often without eliminating old ones). The result is what some experts call “paralysis by analysis,” which, of course, tilts the regulatory playing field in favor of inaction.

I could go on listing the problems with the rulemaking process, not to mention the lack of public education in our schools about administrative government and civic participation. Technology may play some role in making things better, but fundamental policy reform is even more essential.

Additionally, technology solutions skirt the reality that politics play in rulemaking decisions. During the Bush administration, EPA received more than 122,000 comments opposing efforts to reduce data collection under the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) and only a handful supporting EPA’s effort. Yet EPA moved forward with its proposed gutting of the TRI program. Why participate in a rulemaking process that may be rigged from the start? It fosters disenchantment and discourages meaningful participation.

Beth’s third idea raises concern about who would participate in providing alternative ideas with empirical data to support the idea. Certainly average citizens do not have the technical expertise for such efforts, and most nonprofits don’t either. Most likely, it would be Big Oil, Wall Street, and other regulated special interests that would have the resources to provide the empirical support for ideas. They already do that now. While there should be pilot projects to test Beth’s ideas, let’s not get giddy about technology suddenly changing all power dynamics. Technology may provide tools to help, but it is not necessarily the solution.

Maybe it is coincidental that 2012 is an election year, and it appears that President Obama is suddenly using the rulemaking process as a tool to reach out to the business community. But since last week’s new regulatory policy directives that Beth describes, we’ve seen decisions on regulations that seem to benefit corporate interests. For example:

• On Jan. 18, rules under the H-2B Visa Program, a program that improved the process for setting wage rates employers must pay to temporary foreign workers, came out. But the implementation was delayed until at least 2012.
• On Jan. 19, OSHA backed off a proposed workplace noise rule in response to complaints from major business groups.
• On Jan. 21, FDA withdrew its draft guidance on menu-labeling regulations and instructed states and localities to hold off on enforcement until a final federal rule is published.
• On Jan. 25, OSHA suspended its proposed rule to restore a tracking mechanism on employer injury and illness logs for work-related musculoskeletal disorders.

In each of these cases, there may be legitimate – even rational – reasons to slow down or scotch the regulation. But if a perception grows that the Obama administration is capitulating to business interests over public interests, the best public participation approaches in the world are not going to result in a stronger democracy.

President Obama's tax cut deal with congressional Republicans, if enacted by Congress, will achieve what President George W. Bush could not get done: create a path to effectively kill the estate tax.

Some elements of the "compromise" reached Dec. 6 that would extend the expiring Bush tax cuts are well worth the increase in the federal budget deficit, as they help struggling families cope with the worst economy since the Great Depression while simultaneously providing a boost to the economy. At the top of this list are the 13-month extension for unemployment insurance benefits and a two percent cut in the payroll tax for employees for all of 2011. Indeed, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates these two policies could provide up to $1.90 and $0.90, respectively, in additional economic activity for every budgetary dollar put into them. Similarly, extensions of a more generous child tax credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit – also part of the tax cut deal – are much-needed pocketbook buffers that help the economy.

But this aid to working families comes with a price. Specifically, Obama would write a $163 billion check to the nation's richest families and reverse himself on his campaign promise to let the tax cuts for the wealthy expire. There's no shortage of commentary on the extension of the lower tax rates for those earning more than $250,000, but what deserves special attention is how Obama inexplicably gave away the store to Paris Hilton and other heirs to vast fortunes through the evisceration of the estate tax.

Temporarily repealed in 2010, the estate tax is ready to spring back to life in 2011 with its former vigor, returning to the parameters of 2000 with a 55 percent rate on inheritances above a $1 million exemption ($2 million for couples). In 2009, the year before the estate tax was temporarily put on hold, there was a 45 percent tax on estates greater than $3.5 million ($7 million for couples). At the 2009 levels, less than one quarter of one percent (0.25 percent) of estates with people passing away would incur any estate tax liability. In fact, as a compromise on the estate tax, Obama has been calling for extending the 2009 levels in his annual budget requests. Progressives, however, had been calling for smaller exemption levels ($1 million to $2 million ($2 million to $4 million for couples)) and higher rates (45 percent to 55 percent, and even higher for the super-wealthy). Conservatives and some like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have argued that the estate tax, the nation's most progressive tax, should be eliminated. However, it has been clear that Obama would not agree to permanently repeal the estate tax.

So it would seem that, as Obama agreed to temporarily extend the Bush tax cuts, he would also agree to temporarily extend the estate tax at 2009 levels. But that isn't the deal he struck. Instead, he went with a proposal being pushed by conservatives to lower the tax rate to 35 percent and to increase the amount exempt from any tax to $10 million for couples.

Read the rest of this piece at The Huffington Post