Tens of billions

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s so-called “royalty relief” procedures often result in forgone royalty payments worth tens of billions of dollars. Royalty Relief Procedures Cost Taxpayers Tens of Billions This week, POGO Policy Analyst Tim Stretton testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies on “Increasing Accountability and Transparency for Oil and Gas Royalty Policy.” Offshore drilling and the lease of publicly owned tracts of seafloor together constitute a significant revenue stream for the federal government, bringing in nearly $90 billion between 2006 and 2018. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management administers offshore drilling rights and periodically holds auctions in which successful bidders obtain leases for tracts of the seafloor and rights to explore and drill for the underlying oil or gas deposits. But the bureau’s so-called “royalty relief” procedures often result in forgone royalty payments worth tens of billions of dollars. Watch the testimony or read his written remarks The “Most Abused” Freedom of Information Act Exemption Still Needs to Be Reined In Agencies stretch FOIA Exemption 5 to inappropriately cover records that may paint the agency in a bad light, records that reveal problems, and records that contain embarrassing information. Read more A Primer on Congressional Staff Clearances Access to classified information is important not just to aid Congress in addressing traditional national security concerns, such as military and intelligence matters, but also for election security and cyber threats. Read the report NEW: The Bunker Introducing: The Bunker After nearly 20 years of winless wars following 9/11, and a Pentagon budget that is well above the Cold War average, U.S. national security spending has never been a more target-rich environment. That is why the Project On Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information has launched The Bunker, a precision-guided e-newsletter targeting your inbox most every week. Sign up now! Sign up for The Bunker POGO in the News     The Washington Post Secret Service has paid rates as high as $650 a night for rooms at Trump’s properties   Among them: Why were these payments to Trump’s clubs not listed in public databases of federal spending, such as usaspending.gov? The Secret Service has publicly listed many other transactions related to Trump’s stays at his clubs — rentals of golf carts, tents and portable toilets. But it has not listed any of these payments to Trump’s own businesses. “It is a surprise” that these payments are not listed, said Sean Moulton of the watchdog group Project on Government Oversight. Without public data about payments to Trump, he said, “the public doesn’t even know the questions they should be asking.”       Bloomberg Government Classified Access Opposed by McConnell Gets Renewed Senate Push   The staffers could help lawmakers challenge and hold accountable national security agencies in classified meetings, said Mandy Smithberger, director of the Center for Defense Information at the Project on Government Oversight. Some of the debates may focus on whether the information needed to be classified in the first place, for example when Trump administration officials recently said parts of former National Security Adviser John Bolton’s manuscript detailing actions that led to the withholding of Ukraine aid would be classified. [...] Staffers can help lawmakers engage in a back-and-forth with executive branch officials, but the executive branch and party leaders have little to gain by ceding power to rank-and-file members, Smithberger said in a phone interview. “The executive branch wants to hold on to as much information as they can, and information is power,” Smithberger said. “It’s part of a long-term trend where too much power is concentrated in leadership in the House and Senate. And as far as they’re concerned, their staffers have all the access that they need.” It would be helpful for lawmakers to have staffers with them in classified briefings such as the Jan. 8 meeting following Iranian attacks retaliating for the Soleimani strike, Smithberger said, so that members can “assess the veracity of that information” with the aid of an expert staff member. Murphy and eight other senators sent a letter in January asking Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire for a classified briefing on claims by Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that Soleimani was planning imminent attacks on U.S. embassies. Rank-and-file members of the House are even worse off, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) said in a 2016 letter. While individual members of the Senate Intelligence panel are each given a designee, their counterparts on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence aren’t. Smithberger has previously advocated for each member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and House Armed Services Committee to have a staffer with SCI clearance. Smithberger said that amid increasing debates over the executive branch’s willingness to provide information to lawmakers, “you’re seeing more members wanting to stand up for Congress as an institution.”       Axios Senate acquits Trump   Justin Rood, director of the Congressional Oversight Initiative at the Project on Government Oversight, said the acquittal vote will "forcefully reduce Congress' power to its lowest point in modern history. And it virtually ensures it will stay there for a generation." "It will be a long, difficult, grueling fight for both chambers to regain powers they once had," said Rood, who worked as an investigator for former Republican Sen. Tom Coburn.

The Daily Beast Republicans Hate Surveillance on Trump but Sound Like They’ll Renew the PATRIOT Act   Jake Laperruque, of the Project on Government Oversight, said “concerns about the Carter Page FISA warrants” aided momentum for surveillance reform like the Wyden bill. “If the members talking about Crossfire Hurricane now want their complaints to be taken seriously,” Laperruque said, “this is the type of reform legislation they’ll need to support.”       Politico - Morning Defense Make Room In Your Inbox   Veteran Pentagon reporter and analyst Mark Thompson is launching The Bunker, a weekly newsletter published by the watchdog Project on Government Oversight that aims to keep the rest of us on our toes by training a skeptical eye on national security coverage. “I love the military, I’ve always loved the military, I loved going out with the troops,” Thompson tells us ahead of today’s launch. “But boy, someone has got to speak up when the emperor is wearing no uniform. If you look at a lot of news sites, especially trade-oriented, every morning there are four new wonder weapons. They are going to rewrite the laws of war. Rarely do they come to fruition but we are pumping an awful lot of money into them. You know, lasers are five years in the future and always will be.”       The Center for Public Integrity in partnership with the Texas Tribune Trump Plans to Collect DNAa from Nearly a Million Immigrant Detainees   “There is no reason to believe that asylum seekers or migrant families fleeing violence, persecution, or extreme poverty — many of whom voluntarily surrender to border patrol agents at the first opportunity — present any risk to public safety,” wrote the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group in Washington, D.C.       Government Executive House Passes Bipartisan Bill to Strengthen Presidential Transition Team Ethics Requirements   Sean Moulton, senior policy analyst for the Project on Government Oversight, told Government Executive in August, “POGO is particularly pleased with the requirement for a public ethics plan.” Even though “transition team members are not federal employees,” he said, “their close work with federal agencies, their access to non-public information and their role in structuring a new administration demand that clear ethical standards be set and maintained.”       Military Times The impeachment trial is over. Now can Congress get defense work done?   Open government advocates believe Trump’s clampdown on his administration’s cooperation with the impeachment investigation will mean less transparency. Recent weeks have seen intelligence officials refuse to appear for an annual hearing on worldwide threats for fear of contradicting the president. “I have grave concerns than an acquittal will be read by the executive branch as approval for stonewalling Congress’s constitutional oversight duties,” said Mandy Smithberger, of the Project on Government Oversight.       Federal Computer Weekly At hearing, IGs look to curb reprisals against whistleblowers   Much of the questioning from Republicans mirrored arguments from the Senate impeachment trial, focusing on the intelligence community whistleblower who brought the Ukraine allegations to light and the conduct of House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), one of the lead impeachment trial managers, and his staff. Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) said he wondered what impact the controversy, and in particular Trump's remarks, would have on whistleblowers and federal employers who are considering reporting official misconduct, abuse or fraud. "I would say it has a chilling effect, especially in the intelligence community, where it’s already so hard to enforce legal protections,” Elizabeth Hempowicz of the Project on Government Oversight testified.       Anti-Corruption Digest ‘Disturbing Trend’ in Retaliation Against Whistleblowers   Elizabeth Hempowicz, the director of public policy for the Project on Government Oversight, told the committee that the current system for protecting whistleblower was in dire need of reform. “While inspectors general play an essential role in investigating whistleblower disclosures and retaliation, they are unable to enforce their recommendations for corrective action against the agency that retaliated against the whistleblower,” she said. “The last level of review in an intelligence community whistleblower’s case is a panel of three inspectors general from the intelligence community, referred to officially as an External Review Panel. However, those panels’ decisions are merely recommendations that the head of the whistleblower’s agency can disregard without consequence. Leaving the enforcement of whistleblower protection laws to the agencies responsible for retaliation renders those protections all but meaningless.”       Cato Institute All War Is Darkness   Natalie Dowzicky: All of our service members have a wealth of practical knowledge but in many instances, their pleas fall on the deaf ears of Congress. In fact, at the time of the Vietnam War, three-quarters of the members in Congress were former service members. That ratio has quickly dwindled to 18% for the current Congress. Dan Grazier, was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, he now serves as the Jack Shanahan Military Fellow at the Project On Government Oversight, also known as POGO. Like many veterans, Grazier believe what he did in Iraq was right in making an actual difference. However, six years later, when he landed in Afghanistan, his outlook drastically changed. POGO's Dan Grazier: We were just swatting flies where we could and we weren’t really doing much and at that point, I really believed that any good that we had accomplished in Afghanistan, happened 12 years earlier, in 2001. The war on Afghanistan should have been over in December of 2001, basically and so why we were still there was a big mystery and it was a conundrum, I’ll say it that way. I knew why we were there, we were there because we were told to be there. Mostly because no one had the guts to say, “Look, we can’t accomplish anything else.” Nobody here in Washington wanted to be responsible for pulling us out. POGO's Dan Grazier: The military, it should be prepared to fight the kind of wars that we… To face the kind of threats that we actually face but that’s it, it should be a break glass in time of war tool. It should mostly reside here in the United States and prepare to fight the threats that we actually face. We shouldn’t be scattered all over. The military shouldn’t be scattered all over the world the way it is, it should be a force-in-being should the need arise. Listen to the full podcast       Half Moon Bay Review Sheriff’s Office will use drones by spring   While use of the technology is exploding, some privacy experts and civil liberties advocates warn to be cautious of routine aerial surveillance and worry law enforcement may look to expand the use of their drone programs. “There are a bunch of privacy risks that come from drones, which stem from the fact that the cameras are very good and can home in on and take precise images from a far distance,” said Jake Laperruque, senior counsel at the Constitution Project. The Constitution Project is concerned with threats to civil liberties. Laperruque said these advances in technology go beyond typical policing tools. He also cautioned against allowing law enforcement agencies to draft their own policies regarding drones. “From a privacy standpoint, people should worry,” he said. “Something like surveillance technology, you do not want self-regulation by the entities conducting the policing. You want an independent party, like the legislature or the courts, to set rules they will be subject to and cannot change on a whim.”       Whistleblower Protection Blog Whistleblower advocates have more to say following House hearing   Finally, Liz Hempowicz of the Project on Government Oversight has been on Twitter talking about her back and forth with Ohio Republican Jim Jordan. She argues that motive does not matters when evaluating whether a whistleblower’s information is legitimate. Some members of Congress have called for the unmasking of the Ukraine whistleblower, who they say may be biased against the president.

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