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St. Louis Post-Dispatch
White House seeks control on health, safety
Published:
Sunday, Jan. 11 2004
The Office of Management and Budget wants to have the final
say on releasing emergency declarations to the public.
By Andrew Schneider
Of the Post-Dispatch
[copyright]2004, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The
complete article may be found at -- http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0112-08.htm -- or in many other websites, by searching Google
with the article title.
Excerpt--
WASHINGTON - Under a new proposal, the White House would decide what and when the public would be told about
an outbreak of mad cow disease, an anthrax release, a nuclear plant accident or any other crisis.
The White House
Office of Management and Budget is trying to gain final control over release of emergency declarations from the federal agencies
responsible for public health, safety and the environment.
The OMB also wants to manage scientific and technical evaluations
- known as peer reviews - of all major government rules, plans, proposed regulations and pronouncements. ...
Currently,
each federal agency controls its emergency notifications ."
On Friday, a nonpartisan group of 20 former top agency
officials sent a letter to the OMB asking the White House watchdog agency to withdraw its proposal, saying it "could damage
the federal system for protecting public health and the environment." ...
Andrew Schneider
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