Friday Morning Federal Newscast – April 1st

The Morning Federal Newscast is a daily compilation of the stories you hear Federal Drive hosts Tom Temin and Amy Morris discuss throughout the show each day. The Newscast is designed to give FederalNewsRadio.com users more information about the stories you hear on the air.

• A funding squeeze will force the shutdown of seven open-government web sites launched during the Obama administration. They’ll go dark by May 31 unless Congress coughs up more money. Sources tell Federal News Radio, the IT Dashboard, Data.gov and PaymentAccuracy.gov could all disappear as early as April 20.The administration has requested $35 million in the 2011 budget for the sites. But the government has been operating at 2010 spending levels because of a six-month budget impasse in Congress.
• The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is intensifying inspections at reactors in Nebraska, South Carolina and Kansas. The Wall Street Journal reports, the NRC found problems at all three that could affect safety. They ranked three on a safety scale of one to five. A five rating results in a shutdown order. Since the earthquake in Japan, NRC has stepped up inspections of 104 reactors in the U.S. Chairman Gregory Jaczko tells Congress, U.S. nuclear reactors are safe.
• The financially strapped Postal Service wants to streamline the process for closing local offices. As many as 3,000 offices across the country may be reviewed, postal vice president Dean Granholm said at a briefing. But, he says that doesn’t mean all of those will close. The Postal Service lost 8.5 billion dollars last year and continues to face red ink. It has been looking for ways to cut costs, including a separate proposal to eliminate delivery on Saturdays, and recently announced plans to cut 7,500 employees. The process of closing an office can take more than 18 months, though changes to procedure could cut that to 138 days. The new process could be in place by June.
• Congress heads into the weekend still without a final 2011 budget package. Republican House leaders think they’ve got a budget deal palatable to Senate Democrats. Now the question is whether they can they sell it to fellow Republicans. The deal on the table includes $33 billion in budget cuts. House Speaker John Boehner spent an hour with highly conservative House freshmen. He tried to convince them, and is hoping Senate willingness to curb new EPA regulations will help seal the agreement.
• Republican lawmakers object to Homeland Security’s former practice of requiring secretive reviews of FOIA requests. DHS says it no longer sends the requests to political advisers for review. Mary Ellen Callahan was the senior official in charge of the program. She says there were management challenges and that the scrutiny took longer than anticipated. Rep Darrell Issa (Calif.-R), chair of the House Oversight committee, says the process injects political considerations into Freedom of Information Act decisions. Democrats defended DHS, saying Issa’s accusations were extreme and unsubstantiated. Issa says mandatory vetting of records is improper.
• The Securities and Exchange Commission has given preliminary endorsement to a proposal that would change how executive pay is set. The new rule requires executive pay to be set by independent members of corporate boards. The idea is to make sure the people who approve executive pay packages aren’t beholden to those executives. However, the Washington Post reports, board members decided to leave the details on how to implement the rule to the stock exchanges.
• Senators are taking one more step toward cutting down the number of presidential appointees that need Senate confirmation. Senator Harry Reid has joined forces with Minority leader Mitch McConnell to unveil their bipartisan bill, which would cut the number of executive branch nominations that need Senate approval by about 200. More than 3,000 officer corps appointees would not longer need Senate confirmation also.
• Former Special Counsel Scott Bloch has been sentenced to a month in prison. But he’s not headed to a cell just yet. GovExec reports, Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson is likely to wait for the outcome of Bloch’s expected appeal. Bloch headed the Office of Special Counsel under President George W. Bush. In April 2010, he pled guilty to withholding information from Congress. His sentencing has been delayed nine times.
• As General and as President, Dwight D Eisenhower believed in preservation of historic artifacts. Just after World War II, he gave a speech on the topic at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Art lovers have been reading the speech ever since. But soon, you’ll be able to hear the speech in Ike’s own voice. A Dallas art enthusiast discovered fragile disk recordings of the speech. The recordings have been digitized. They’ll be featured in an exhibit at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

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