Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Refund of cash bail bonds under article 17.02, Code of Criminal Procedure.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether Conservation and Reclamation District Number Three in Brazoria County may conduct operations within the boundaries of another district.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether section 38.007 of the Texas Education Code, section 109.33 of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Code, and the home-rule provision of the Texas Constitution authorize a home-rule municipality with a population of less than 900,000 to enact an ordinance prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages within 1,000 feet of a public school.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether an application by a local organizing committee, endorsing municipality, or endorsing county to a site selection organization is a prerequisite to the expenditure of funds from the Major Events Trust Fund pursuant to section 5A, article 5190.14, Revised Civil Statutes.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Authority of the City of San Antonio, Bexar County, and VIA Metropolitan Transit Authority to use the proceeds of a sales and use tax for a streetcar project in light of certain representations that were made preceding and election to create an advanced transportation district (RQ-1048-GA)

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Although the Departments of Defense, Energy, and Homeland Security utilize various processes to prevent and reduce investment in duplicative programs and systems, potentially duplicative IT investments exist. Further complicating agencies’ ability to identify and address duplicative investments is miscategorization of investments within agencies. Each of the agencies has recently initiated plans to address many of these investments. DHS’s efforts have resulted in the identification and elimination of duplication, but DOD’s and DOE’s initiatives have not yet led to the elimination or consolidation of duplicative investments or functionality. Until DOD and DOE demonstrate progress on their efforts to identify and eliminate duplicative investments, and correctly categorize investments, it will remain unclear whether they are avoiding investment in unnecessary systems. Each of the agencies we reviewed has IT investment management processes in place that are, in part, intended to prevent, identify, and eliminate unnecessary duplicative investments. Even with such investment review processes, of the 810 investments we reviewed,we identified 37 potentially duplicative investments at DOD and DOE within three FEA categories (Human Resource Management, Information and Technology Management, and Supply Chain Management)."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant’s maintenance of effort (MOE) provisions include specified state spending levels and general requirements on the use of funds. For example, these provisions generally require that each state spend at least 80 percent (75 percent if the state meets certain performance standards) of the amount it spent on welfare and related programs in fiscal year 1994, before TANF was created. If a state does not meet its MOE requirements in any fiscal year, the federal government will reduce dollar-for-dollar the state’s federal TANF grant in the following year. In order to count state spending as MOE, funds must be spent on benefits and services to families with children that have incomes and resources below certain state-defined limits. Such benefits and services must generally further one of TANF’s purposes, which broadly focus on providing financial assistance to needy families; promoting job preparation, work, and marriage; reducing out-of-wedlock births; and encouraging the formation of two-parent families. Within these broad goals, states have significant flexibility to design programs and spend their funds to meet families’ needs."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The threats to systems supporting critical infrastructures are evolving and growing. In testimony, the Director of National Intelligence noted a dramatic increase in cyber activity targeting U.S. computers and systems, including a more than tripling of the volume of malicious software. Varying types of threats from numerous sources can adversely affect computers, software, networks, organizations, entire industries, and the Internet itself. These include both unintentional and intentional threats, and may come in the form of targeted or untargeted attacks from criminal groups, hackers, disgruntled employees, nations, or terrorists. The interconnectivity between information systems, the Internet, and other infrastructures can amplify the impact of these threats, potentially affecting the operations of critical infrastructures, the security of sensitive information, and the flow of commerce. Moreover, the electricity grid’s reliance on IT systems and networks exposes it to potential and known cybersecurity vulnerabilities, which could be exploited by attackers. The potential impact of such attacks has been illustrated by a number of recently reported incidents and can include fraudulent activities, damage to electricity control systems, power outages, and failures in safety equipment."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 mandated that GAO examine the costs and benefits of an increased Department of Defense (DOD) role to help secure the southwest land border. This mandate directed that GAO report on, among other things, the potential deployment of additional units, increased use of ground-based mobile surveillance systems, use of mobile patrols by military personnel, and an increased deployment of unmanned aerial systems and manned aircraft in national airspace. In September 2011, GAO reported that DOD estimated a total cost of about $1.35 billion for two separate border operations—Operation Jump Start and Operation Phalanx—conducted by National Guard forces in Title 32 status from June 2006 to July 2008 and from June 2010 through September 30, 2011, respectively. Further, DOD estimated that it has cost about $10 million each year since 1989 to use active duty Title 10 forces nationwide, through its Joint Task Force-North, in support of drug law enforcement agencies with some additional operational costs borne by the military services. Agency officials stated multiple benefits from DOD’s increased border role, such as assistance to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Because of delays and cost increases, the General Services Administration (GSA) canceled the authorized 41-courtroom Los Angeles (L.A.), California, courthouse project in 2006. Since then, GSA and the judiciary have been slow to agree upon how to proceed with the project, for which about $366 million in appropriated funds remains available. In 2012, with the judiciary’s support, GSA issued a request for proposal for contractors to design and build a 24-courtoom, 32-chamber courthouse, which would be used in conjunction with 25 existing courtrooms in the Roybal Courthouse. However, this new plan will not address one of the principal justifications for the original project—that the L.A. Court be centralized at one site. Instead, it would increase the distance between the Roybal Courthouse and the planned second court location and the distance to the federal detention center from which prisoners must be transported."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Our evaluation of the reports MSHA used to support its proposal and the key scientific studies on which the reports were based shows that they support the conclusion that lowering the PEL from 2.0 mg/m3 to 1.0 mg/m3 would reduce miners’ risk of disease. The reports and key studies concluded that miners’ cumulative exposure to coal mine dust at the current PEL over their working lives places them at an increased risk of developing CWP, progressive massive fibrosis, and decreased lung function, among other adverse health outcomes. To mitigate the limitations and biases in the data, the researchers took reasonable steps, such as using multiple x-ray specialists to reduce the risk of misclassifying disease and making adjustments to coal mine dust samples where bias was suspected. In addition to addressing the limitations and biases in the data, researchers used appropriate analytical methods to conclude that lowering the existing PEL would decrease miners’ risk of developing black lung disease. For example, in addition to taking steps to precisely estimate a miner’s cumulative exposure, the researchers accounted for several factors in their analyses—such as the age of the miners, the …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In summary, we identified four groups of states that differed in their use of Medicaid managed care on the basis of the 12 indicators we included in our analysis. A handful of these indicators—namely Medicaid enrollment in MCOs and PCCM programs, HMO penetration rates, and the concentration of low-income individuals that lived in urban areas—had significant influence on how states grouped. In contrast, within the four groups, considerable variation existed among the other indicators we examined, such as states’ primary care capacity and commercial HMO market index. For labeling purposes, we typically describe the four groups on the basis of states’ enrollment of Medicaid beneficiaries in MCOs and PCCM programs—generally the predominant similarity among the states within each group:"