UPDATE–The Southern Environmental Law Center is suing the Office of Management and Budget for failing to release information about efforts to fundamentally reorganize federal agencies responsible for managing federal public lands, including the United States Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land Management and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. SELC filed a request for information related to these reports in November 2017. After initially acknowledging SELC’s request, OMB has failed to provide the requested information or respond to inquiries pertaining to the request. Today’s suit challenging OMB was filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia.
In January, I wrote about Government Reorganization in the dark and recounted the efforts of PEER and Government Executive to find the website that OMB purports to have set up to receive public comments, the 100,000 it alleges it received, and any information about the OMB’s plans for the agencies. The purported website previously at least took one to the bare bones OMB site; now it takes you on a wild goose chase.
That page cannot be found, or is located on an archived web page.
On 2 May, Government Executive reported on the continuing saga.
…Agencies turned over initial versions of their plans to OMB in June of last year and final drafts in September. Lawmakers have not yet viewed the proposals and said they do not know if agencies met their deadlines.
The administration initially said the plans would be made fully available in Trump’s fiscal 2019 budget, though only a handful of agencies offered details in that document. Mulvaney recently told a congressional committee the White House would unveil the complete agency reform plans later this month.
As Gov Exec notes, however, Congress felt the need to mandate consultation on any consolidation or cutting of workforces:
Congress included several provisions in a recently passed governmentwide spending bill to ensure the Trump administration consults with lawmakers before consolidating offices or shedding workers. Several agencies have already risked running afoul of those provisions.
“The fact that the Republican-controlled Congress had to pass legislation to require the Trump administration to show us their secret reorganization plans is indicative of just how extensive the administration’s obstruction of congressional oversight has become,” Cummings said after the omnibus was enacted.