Yesterday the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed a set of "Essential Principles" for reforming the nation's severely flawed chemicals management policies. The principles are a helpful and welcome addition to the reform efforts, but they say little about the need for greater transparency. The six principles include calls for greater authority for EPA to set standards and the use of "sound science" to regulate chemicals – even in the face of uncertainty about their health risks.

The EPA hopes that Congress will draw on this list of principles as a guide as it crafts new legislation to reform the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the primary statute covering the more than 80,000 chemicals in commerce.

During a speech announcing the principles, the EPA administrator said, "over the years, not only has TSCA fallen behind the industry it's supposed to regulate – it's been proven an inadequate tool for providing the protection against chemical risks that the public rightfully expects."

The agency's announcement contains little guidance for Congress or the agency on dealing with the transparency of a reformed chemicals management program.

The principles contain a valuable statement calling for narrow application of a company's ability to conceal information from the public. Frequently companies submit data about chemicals that they label as confidential business information (CBI). By claiming the information is a trade secret, companies prohibit EPA from disclosing it to the public. This can deny public access to crucial information about a chemical's potential risks to public and environmental health and how those risks were determined.

The new set of principles includes this statement:

TSCA reform should include stricter requirements for a manufacturer’s claim of Confidential Business Information (CBI). Manufacturers should be required to substantiate their claims of confidentiality. Data relevant to health and safety should not be claimed or otherwise treated as CBI. EPA should be able to negotiate with other governments (local, state, and foreign) on appropriate sharing of CBI with the necessary protections, when necessary to protect public health and safety.

However, EPA's TSCA program already requires businesses to substantiate their trade secrets claims. The concern is that EPA allows non-trade secrets to slip through and information that should be disclosed is instead concealed. In response to a stakeholder's question during a conference call announcing the principles, the head of EPA's toxics office admitted that too much information was being labeled as CBI and EPA needs to make as much information available to the public as possible.

The EPA's new set of principles also declares:

Manufacturers should be required to provide sufficient hazard, exposure, and use data for a chemical to support a determination by the Agency that the chemical meets the safety standard.

This is a vital component of chemicals policy reform and it is good to see it here. Unfortunately the statement does not also include a declaration that such data be easily accessible by the public. Access to these data should be available online and not restricted to requests under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Without such an affirmation of the public's right to know, the program is still susceptible to a lack of transparency.

Much to her credit, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson has already made important statements calling for greater transparency at EPA. But the statements bear repeating. Considering the high priority given to chemical management reform by the administrator, Congress, and numerous public interest groups (and even the chemical industry), the essential principles guiding this reform should not omit another call for greater transparency.

Increasingly, businesses are severing their ties to industry lobbying groups that oppose climate change legislation, according to an article in today’s New York Times by reporters Clifford Krauss and Kate Galbraith.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been the primary target of businesses’ scorn thus far. Electric utilities Exelon and Pacific Gas & Electric have both said they will withdraw from the Chamber. Nike and Johnson & Johnson have been publicly critical of the Chamber, which is lobbying against cap-and-trade legislation currently under consideration in Congress and against EPA efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions through regulation.

Duke Energy, historically no friend of the environment, pulled out of the National Association of Manufacturers, another industry lobbying group, and the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. “It was clear that many influential members would never support climate legislation in 2009 or 2010 no matter how it was written,” Tom Williams of Duke told the Times.

In the debate over cap-and-trade legislation and the ensuing rift between the business community and the lobbyists that purport to serve them, the Chamber and others are showing their true colors: Priority number one is not working in the best interest of American businesses, it’s opposing every legislative or regulatory effort that would bring about even a modicum of positive social change. It’s dogmatic conservatism at its worst.

For years, it was difficult to distinguish between advancing the interests of business and preserving the status quo. The economy was flourishing; business was good; if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

But the present economic downturn has apparently reminded many business leaders of the virtue of long-term stability and sustainability. Climate change is an obvious example. Global warming is no longer perceived as a threat to only fuzzy animals and pretty flowers. Fossil fuel dependence and carbon emissions are unsustainable for everyone – people, businesses, and the American, and even global, economy.

Businesses like Exelon, Nike, and others have seen the writing on the wall. The Chamber hasn’t. Now, the lobbyists are aligned only with Congressional Republicans and many gutless centrist Democrats who are blindly resistant to change.

Even though the status quo crowd says that cap-and-trade legislation would kill the economy, it is not doing the business community any favors. From The Washington Post:

"Inaction on climate is not an option," John Rowe, Exelon's chairman and chief executive, said in a speech at an energy-efficiency conference. "If Congress does not act, the EPA will, and the result will be more arbitrary, more expensive and more uncertain for investors and the industry than a reasonable, market-based legislative solution." 

In the latest issue of OMB Watch’s biweekly e-newsletter, The Watcher, we discuss the current state of greenhouse gas reduction policy including several EPA rulemakings and a recent influential federal court ruling that will allow coal utilities to be sued for creating a public nuisance:

Polluters could increasingly feel themselves pinned between litigation and oncoming federal regulations being developed by the Obama administration. The threat of tort lawsuits and prescriptive requirements imposed by government agencies may compel polluters to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. […]

Congress faces a choice: It could act itself by mandating a comprehensive, market-based, and tightly controlled emissions-reduction regime, or it could let EPA continue with more familiar command-and-control regulations and preserve a role for the courts, both of which would yield less predictable results.

Update (9.30.09): President and CEO Thomas J. Donohue defends the Chamber's position in a statement. 

...(mostly) the same as the old Recovery.gov.

The new Recovery.gov went online this morning, and it is...less than revolutionary. I've spent the morning poking around it and checking out the new features. Even though the really important stuff -- the recipient data -- will not be available until Oct. 15, I was hoping that the new site would significantly change the way Recovery watchers would be able to access Recovery spending data. This version, however, is not that site.

New Mapping Tool Front and center is a new map with which you can enter a ZIP code or click on a state to reveal contract, grant, and loan details for that geographic area. The new map is a great improvement over the previous version, but users are still unable to access or download a list of Recovery projects in their ZIP code (true, they can see them graphically on a map, but that's as far as it goes.)

Agency Spending Data There is still no relationship between the weekly agency reports and the Recovery data in USASpending.gov. Totals on each set of data do not match the other, and while this is explained as a data-entry timing issue, there is still no attempt to reconcile the two reports. I hope that come Oct. 15, recipient data will be tied to at least either USASpending.gov or the weekly agency reports. But, even within the weekly agency reports, users cannot click on a program and drill down to more specific data like contract and grant level data.

Non-Competitive Contracts While there is a special section for awarded non-competitive contracts, the list in a PDF and provides no links to further information about the contracts. In fact, the list that is in the PDF contains only the awarding agency, recipient, amount, and date signed. Without more details, like an award identification number, users are left to wander around Recovery.gov and/or USASpending.gov tracking down details of these contracts.

Contract and Grant Opportunities Contract and grant "Opportunities" are listed on the site, but their listings are only marginally useful. The Grants page contains a list of four open grants with some details, linking users to Grants.gov. (Are we to assume that there are only four Recovery Act grants available?) The Contracts page is similar, except it contains brief descriptions of exactly 50 awarded contracts and exactly 25 "up for bid" contracts (space limitations?). Although each contract listing contains a link to more details on FedBizOpps.gov, the lists are neither sortable nor searchable, not allowing users to narrow them down to save time in their searches.

Download Center There is a "Download Center" from which users can download agency reporting data (and eventually recipient data). This is actually a really nice feature. Technologically savvy users can download XML files of contract, grant, and loan data. (When I tried downloading these data this morning, the grants file was empty.) Also found in the Download Center are the weekly agency reports, but I am chagrinned to report that no improvements have been made in the weekly agency reports: They are still in agency-specific, hyperlink-free spreadsheets, rather than one master list.

The Recovery Board has added a new deck on the back of the house and put in some great landscaping, but the real questions remain: Have they repaired the foundation and fixed the plumbing? Only when recipient data come online and after the first phase of Smartronix contract expires in January will we know if this is the right house for Recovery Act transparency.

After the Federal Election Commission (FEC) formulated a rule on reporting campaign contributions bundled by lobbyists, many were concerned that it was too narrow and would not quite capture very much information. Now, we see those points were not misguided. The situations under which a member of Congress is legally required to disclose a lobbyist's fundraising are limited. A recent analysis from the Associated Press found that only a few members of Congress are disclosing bundled contributions from lobbyists.

As part of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA), lawmakers must report to the FEC lobbyists who have bundled money for their campaigns. A bundler collects contributions from others and then gives the money to a particular candidate.

The Sunlight Foundation has a database, Party Time!, that lists fundraisers hosted by lobbyists. "Lobbyists identified as hosts on at least 195 congressional fundraising invitations have yet to be publicly disclosed as fundraisers by the candidates who benefited, the review found. AP checked invitations that it and the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation independently obtained against campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission and lobbyist registrations compiled by the Senate."

AP reviewed fundraisers held from March 19 through June, the first time period covered in the rules. The analysis found that there a few different ways to avoid the disclosure requirements. For example, the candidate only has to disclosure if they formally recognize the contributor as a fundraiser. In addition, someone could sponsor a fundraiser who are not themselves registered lobbyists.