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FCW.com – “In the wake of landmark workforce legislation giving the Veterans Affairs secretary new authority to fire and discipline employees [H.R.1259 – VA Accountability First Act of 2017], the agency released a list of adverse personnel actions from the past six months. VA isn’t naming names, but the adverse action report released July 3 …
Via POGO: [On July 4, 2017] “the Act quietly turns 51, compared to last year’s celebration at the signing of the FOIA Improvement Act by then-President Obama. The FOIA Improvement Act included some great updates to the landmark access-to-information law, like improved requirements for agencies to proactively post documents online and a new standard of …
In Custodia Legis, Margaret Wood: “Last week, I had the honor to give a gallery talk on the Library of Congress exhibit, Drawing Justice: The Art of Courtroom Illustration. As a co-curator for the exhibit, I had helped in doing legal research for information about the cases portrayed by the drawings in the exhibit. At …
In Custodia Legis – Robert Brammer: “Congress.gov’s release 3.4 was deployed on Monday, June 26, 2017. With this new release, you may have noticed a change in your search results. This is because the default search operator on the global and advanced search form is now AND instead of OR. For example, if you searched national park from …
POGO: “The Project On Government Oversight has long advocated for free and open public access to the publicly funded Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports, and is happy to say that the day anyone can access a CRS report may soon be here. In the proposed appropriations for the CRS released yesterday, the House Appropriations Committee …
U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2016-03522 Doc No. C06306089 Date: 05/11/2017 UNCLASSIFIED – Implementation of Agreement between the United States and China on Science and Technology Public Law 107-314. [via FAS] “Federal agencies continued to advance a range of U.S. objectives during the reporting period between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2015. During …
Follow up to previous postings cited in Senate version of House health care repeal and replace bill eliminates coverage for 22 million Americans – tonight via Dan Balz, the Washington Post – ‘Repeal and replace’ was once a unifier for the GOP. Now it’s an albatross. “After seven years, Republicans’ promise to overhaul the Affordable Care …
Follow up to previous posting – Senate Republicans release draft Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, today via the CBO – “The Congressional Budget Office and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have completed an estimate of the direct spending and revenue effects of the Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017, a …
Center for American Progress – By Topher Spiro and Emily Gee: “This week Axios reported that the emerging Senate bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will allow states to waive coverage of essential health benefits for small employer and individually purchased plans. In waiver states, this cut in benefits would be catastrophic for …
NPR – If Voting Machines Were Hacked, Would Anyone Know? – “As new reports emerge about Russian-backed attempts to hack state and local election systems [Link], U.S. officials are increasingly worried about how vulnerable American elections really are. While the officials say they see no evidence that any votes were tampered with, no one knows …
CRS – Availability of Legislative Measures in the House of Representatives (The “Three-Day Rule”), Elizabeth Rybicki, Specialist on Congress and the Legislative Process. June 12, 2017 [via FAS] “House rules govern the length of time legislative measures must be available to Members before being considered on the floor. For measures reported from committee, the committee …
Nextgov: “For the first time since Congress began composing biannual scorecards ranking agency progress adhering to the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act in 2015, agency grades have dropped. Released prior to [the June 13, 2017] 2 p.m. House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing, 15 agencies held steady, four agencies improved and five fared …
