Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report presents criminal justice statistics for the District of Columbia and other major cities based on (1) Crime Index data and (2) arrestees' drug testing data. The 1999 Crime Index total rates for these large cities ranged from a high of 10,416 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants in Detroit, Michigan, to a low of 2,944 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants in San Jose, California. For Washington, D.C., the 1999 Crime Index total rate was 8,062 offenses per 100,000 inhabitants. According to a recent National Institute of Justice (NIJ) report, 69 percent of the adult males arrested in the District of Columbia in calendar year 1999 tested positive for at least one type of drug. This figure was five percentage points higher than the median rate (64 percent) of the use of any drug among the adult males arrested that year in the 34 urban sites covered by NIJ's report."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Chemical pesticides play an important role in providing Americans with an abundant and inexpensive food supply. However, these chemicals can have adverse effects on human health and the environment, and pests continue to develop resistance to them. Sustainable and effective agricultural pest management will require continued development and increased use of alternative pest management strategies, such as integrated pest management (IPM). Some IPM practices yield significant environmental and economic benefits in certain crops, and IPM can lead to better long-term pest management than chemical control alone. However, the federal commitment to IPM has waned over the years. The IPM initiative is missing several key management elements identified in the Government Performance and Results Act. Specifically, no one is effectively in charge of federal IPM efforts; coordination of IPM efforts is lacking among federal agencies and with the private sector; the intended results of these efforts have not been clearly articulated or prioritized; and methods for measuring IPM's environmental and economic results have not been developed. Until these shortcomings are addressed, the full range of potential benefits that IPM can yield for producers, the public, and the …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Without adequate transportation, welfare recipients face significant barriers in moving from welfare to work. Three-fourths of welfare recipients live in central cities or rural areas, while two-thirds of the new jobs are in the suburbs. For many of these new jobs, access to public transportation facilities, such as buses or subways, is limited or nonexistent. To address this issue, the Department of Transportation (DOT) implemented the Job Access and Reverse Commute program. GAO's previous reviews of this program found that, although it would help support the reform of the welfare system by providing transportation resources to welfare recipients, DOT needed to improve several aspects of the program. GAO made several recommendations to enhance DOT's evaluation of the program and to promote coordination with other agencies. GAO reported that in 1999 and 2000, DOT had implemented the recommendations and had taken steps to refine its grant selection process. GAO plans to issue a report on the Job Access program in December 2001, and, in 2002, GAO expects to report on grantees' experiences in implementing their Job Access projects."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) submitted a legislative proposal that would modify Medicare's contracting authority. This report examines (1) the current law and practice in Medicare claims administration contracting, (2) provisions in the proposal that would increase HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) contracting flexibility, and (3) the provisions that deviate from standard federal contracting requirements for full and open competition and indemnification of contractors. Because of statutes and long-standing practices, Medicare claims administration contracting does not follow standard federal contracting rules in several ways. For example, federal agencies can generally terminate a contract at any time, but CMS cannot terminate contracts with Medicare claims administration contractors at the federal government's convenience. The proposed legislation would give CMS the same authority as other federal agencies to retain or terminate contractors. These provisions would increase the agency's flexibility to promote the contractor's performance and accountability. GAO is concerned, however, that the provisions would also allow CMS to bypass federal contracting rules for full and open competition. In addition, the proposal includes a provision that would require CMS to indemnify claims administration contractors from certain …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States have been the major providers of bilateral development assistance to the Pacific Island nations since 1987. The Asian Development Bank and the European Union have been the major multilateral donors. The donors' main development objectives, according to the planning documents, have been to alleviate poverty and to set the Pacific Island nations on the path to economic self-sufficiency. To achieve these objectives, these donors focus their assistance in key areas, such as education, policy reform, and infrastructure. The United States could draw several lessons from the donors' experiences for providing assistance as well as the strategies and approaches the donors have adopted. These lessons could provide valuable insights for the United States as it negotiates additional economic assistance to the Federal States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. On the basis of the donors' experiences, GAO observed that (1) assistance strategies may involve trade-offs in expectations of aid effectiveness if other objectives for providing assistance take priority over development objectives; (2) assistance strategies may involve trade-offs between effectiveness and accountability, on the …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report reviews the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) fiscal year 2000 performance report and fiscal year 2002 performance plan to assess the agency's progress in achieving selected key outcomes that are important to the agency's mission. GAO found that although USAID reported progress toward achieving the selected outcomes, the extent of the progress is unclear because the agency based its support on disaggregated and, in some cases, out-of-date and selective data. Unlike past years when USAID issued separate performance reports and performance plans, the agency issued a performance overview supplemented by more detailed data in the fiscal year 2000 budget justification to Congress, both of which incorporated elements of performance reporting and planning. In the fiscal year 2000 Performance Overview, USAID based its statements of progress on self-reported fiscal year 1999 performance data provided by individual USAID missions. In addition, USAID reported progress toward achieving agency goals and objectives by relying on selected information about an individual country's missions' performance. Although USAID reported detailed fiscal year 2000 performance data at the operating unit level in its budget justification, those data were not aggregated to …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report reviews the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) expenditures on business systems modernization. IRS obligated and expended available Information Technology Investment Account (ITIA) appropriations in fiscal years 1999 and 2000 to pay for external business systems modernization costs. In fiscal years 1999 and 2000, IRS expended about $12.8 million and $120.2 million, respectively, of ITIA appropriations and, as of September 30, 2000, had an additional $66 million of ITIA appropriations obligated to modernize its external business systems. IRS' use of ITIA appropriations appears to be for no purposes consistent with the fiscal year 1998 and 1999 appropriations acts and within the $249 million approved ITIA expenditure plans. IRS used its information systems (IS) appropriations and other appropriations to fund both internal and external business systems modernization costs. IRS paid its internal business systems modernization costs from its appropriations for IS; Tax Law Enforcement; and Processing, Assistance, and Management. However, the amount of these costs is unknown because IRS did not have a cost accounting system in place to track its internal costs for business systems modernization. IRS initiated actions in fiscal year 2000 to begin tracking …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Internally displaced persons--those forced to flee their homes because of armed conflict and persecution but who remain within their own country--are among the most at-risk, vulnerable populations in the world. Although some protections have been provided to internally displaced persons, international organizations have been unable to fully meet their needs in most locations, partly because of the danger in operating in conflict zones, the presence of personal security risks to aid workers, and the decline in budgetary resources, but also because international organizations have not taken a proactive approach toward protection. Also, international relief workers have not received training on how to incorporate protection considerations and interventions into their assistance activities. In the three countries GAO visited, international organizations do not coordinate their protection actions within the countries in which they operate. Without such coordination, international organizations are unable to share basic information on the location of their protection officers and effective approaches to protection interventions. The U.N. Security Council is one forum in which these matters can be addressed in the context of underlying political and security factors. The U.S. government has no overall policy …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Rising prices for natural gas, electricity, and other fuels have made it even harder for low-income families to pay their utility bills. By the end of fiscal year 2000, the Office of Community Services had awarded $30 million in Residential Energy Assistance Challenge Option (REACH) program grants to 24 states and 12 tribal organizations to fund 54 separate projects to help meet the home energy (heating and cooling) needs of low-income households. These grants ranged from $50,000 to $1.6 million. Most of the 54 REACH projects have educated low-income clients about home energy efficiency through group workshops or on individual home visits. Many REACH projects have involved energy-related repairs to homes and budget counseling, and three state REACH projects are developing consumer cooperatives to purchase electricity or bulk fuels, such as heating oil. However, some REACH projects have included social services not directly related to meeting home energy needs. The legislation authorizing REACH identifies the following three performance goals for individual REACH projects, (1) reduce the energy costs of participating households, (2) increase the regularity of home energy bill payments, and (3) increase energy suppliers' contributions …

Weekly newspaper from Sulphur Springs, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Clifton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story.

Weekly newspaper from Dell City, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Document of an email from Brett Gray to Steven K. Cox. Gray is asking in the email for Cox to send files to Don Klausmeyer at a specific address.

Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story.

B-roll video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story.

Daily newspaper from Sapulpa, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Dallas, Texas that includes local, state, and national news and advertising of interest to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community.

Semi-monthly newspaper from Corpus Christi, Texas published by the Diocese of Corpus Christi that includes news of interest to Diocese members along with advertising.