Ever since Jimmy Carter became a lame duck after the 1980 elections, outgoing presidents have proposed “midnight regulations” in the final weeks of their term. The Bush Administration is keeping up the tradition, and how. Elizabeth Kolbert at The New Yorker has a partial list that gives us a flavor:

The Administration has proposed rules that would: make it harder for the government to limit workers’ exposure to toxins, eliminate environmental review from decisions affecting fisheries, and ease restrictions on companies that blow up mountains to get at the coal underneath them. Other midnight regulations in the works include rules to allow “factory farms” to ignore the Clean Water Act, rules making it tougher for employees to take family or medical leave, and rules that would effectively gut the Endangered Species Act.

ProPublica is compiling a more thorough list. As Kolbert writes, they are less “regulation” as they are “deregulation.”

Joaquin Sapien at ProPublica points out some helpful tips and Web sites that can help with the usually arduous process of tracking rule changes in the federal bureaucracy. Naturally, he points to OMB Watch as a great resource. He also points to various federal sources, other Web sites and search engines. ProPublica has devised a helpful flow chart to show “how the sausage is made.” And he ends the article with the caveat that the online tools are notoriously cumbersome and not that easy to use.

But all of this begs the question, why is all of this so bloody difficult? These are important rules. It all should be much more open, transparent and easy to use.

Update: Sapien followed up his article with another asking whether the Obama Administration can “turn back the clock on Bush’s midnight rules?” The short answer is yes and no. “The problem with what the Bush administration is doing is that these rules are extremely cumbersome to adopt, and they are every bit as cumbersome to undo,” Sapien quotes David Vladeck, an administrative law professor at Georgetown University. “It condemns the next administration to spend years fighting on the old administration’s agenda.”

The article points to the 12-year old Congressional Review Act, which “allows Congress to vote to disapprove any rule finalized within about six months before Congress adjourns.” But as Sapien reports, it has only struck down only one of the nearly 50,000 rules submitted to Congress since the act has been in effect. Ugh! Those sure aren’t good odds.

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Yesterday, ProPublica announced a set of awards to recognize outstanding investigative work by governmental groups in the United States.  They are calling on people — citizens, elected officials, government employees and journalists — to nominate work by federal or state government entities that expose corruption and hold those in power accountable.

Prizes will be awarded in five categories:

• Federal investigation-executive branch
• Federal investigation-legislative branch
• Federal investigation-independent agency
• State or local investigation-multi-district elective or executive agency
• State or local investigation-legislative branch/independent agency

“Some of the most important accountability information comes from inside government itself and ProPublica wants to recognize that,” said Paul Steiger, ProPublica editor-in-chief. “Our prizes will acknowledge the crucial role these investigators, and the institutions they represent, play in exposing corruption and shining a light down the darker, and too often secret, corridors of our public institutions.”

ProPublica is accepting entries now through January 31, 2009, and will cover work produced during the 2008 calendar year. They will fete the winners at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., next spring.

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Here’s an opportunity for the new Administration. Develop a model system for government transparency in the context of bailout of Wall Street.

ProPublica has been doing an admirable job of providing some transparency for the financial bailout by the federal government, including putting it all in perspective. They are keeping a running tally of the banks that have announced preliminary approval by the Treasury Department for participation in the bailout, along with the dollar amounts to each bank. They are going to update the list as they receive more information. And here’s a chart providing some historical perspective, with a bubble chart representing the size of the 13 U.S. government bailouts of corporations (and one city) since 1970, calculated in 2008 dollars. They’ve also set up another chart listing the results of each bailout.

Others are keeping an eye on what’s going on. Bloomberg News is demanding that the Federal Reserve comply with congressional demands for transparency in the $2 trillion bailout of the banking system (BailoutSleuth.com says that it’s more like $2.5 trillion). In September, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson promised Congress they would open the books. Currently, Congress and the American people have no idea where their money is going or what securities the banks are pledging in return. Bloomberg has filed both a Freedom of Information Act and a federal lawsuit hoping to force disclosure.  We going to dig a bit deeper into this and see if we can figure out what the requirements for transparency are.

This is a real opportunity for the Obama team. Make reporting on the bailout a model of the transparent government that they have so strongly advocated. Daily reporting, online in usable data formats would be a good place to start.

Update: From Columbia Journalism Review.

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If I remember correctly, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson sat in a committee hearing and pledged transparency in the operation of the ongoing bailout of the nation’s financial sector. After initially proposing a plan that would have had no oversight or transparency, Paulson reversed course under committee grilling and promised transparency. That promised transparency must be so good because I sure can’t see it.

Bailout watchers report that bailout contracts written by Treasury are redacted, including how many bailout bucks banks are set to receive. Other contracts for accountants are also riddled with redactions. The Treasury Department needs to fulfill its promise of transparency by not redacting its contracts and loans during this incredibly expensive time for taxpayers.

If you want to follow more about this story, ProPublica and Mark Cuban’s Bailout Sleuth are the best resources for tracking bailout transparency right now.

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Craig sez:

ProPublica launches.

The site has some nice features: Scandal Watch, 7 different RSS feeds, and a nice “breaking on the web” feature. Definitely keeping my eye on this. And I am preparing for Google Reader overload.

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A major new nonprofit investigative journalism effort was announced today — ProPublica — that will certainly have a huge salutary impact on the health of our media, and by extension the health of our democracy. This is a important development.

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that will produce investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work will focus exclusively on truly important stories, stories with "moral force." We will do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.

The new outfit will be staffed by 24 fulltime reporters and editors when it’s fully up and running. It will be the largest single journalism staff, according to their press release, devoted solely to investigative reporting.

Jeff Jarvis worries about "white knights" from foundations riding in to save the media, but he’s a little less worried about foundations whose interest it is to rejuvenate investigative journalism. something about which I think we can all agree needs a major new infusion of resources.

The big backer behind this new effort is the San Francisco based Sandler Foundation which has pledged $10 million a year for each of three years. Other participants are more modest in their contributions. Atlantic Philanthropies and the JEHT Foundation are kicking in one time grants of $25,000 and The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is giving at one time grant of $250,000. Kudos to all of them for having the foresight to launch such an effort.

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