A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In September 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau told Congress that it had at least $305 million in budget savings out of its $4.5 billion fiscal year 2000 no-year appropriations for the 2000 decennial census. Of the $4.5 billion appropriated to the U.S. Census Bureau in fiscal year 2000, lower-than-expected expenditures and obligations resulted in available balances of at least $415 million. A lower-than-expected support staff workload reduced salary and benefit costs by about $348 million. Enumerator workload is largely determined by the initial mail response rate for returned census questionnaires. The initial mail response of 64 percent meant that Census enumerators did not have to visit more than three million American households. However, the available balances from the higher mail response rate and the lower support staff workload were partially offset by about $100 million of higher salary and benefit costs for enumerators, including a higher workload for unanticipated recounts. According to Bureau data, enumerator productivity did not significantly affect budget variances for the 2000 decennial census. The Bureau reported the national average time to visit a household and complete a census questionnaire was about the …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Section 212 of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act requires agencies to publish compliance guides for each rule or group of related rules for which the agency is required to prepare a final regulatory flexibility analysis. GAO found that Section 212 has had little impact, and its implementation has varied across and sometimes within the agencies. None of the agencies in GAO's review provided GAO with guidance documents that met all of the statutory requirements for all of their 1999 and 2000 final rules. The agencies indicated that they tried to put their compliance guides in plain language--just as they have for all their regulatory materials. The guidance documents that the agencies gave GAO were often published on the agencies' web sites. Direct mail, electronic list servers, agency/regional offices, and workshops were also used for distribution."

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.