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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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.

Report that addresses provisions of federal law and regulation restricting the acceptance of personal gifts by the President of the United States.

This memorandum provides information on federal spending for programs explicitly intended for people with low or limited income.

Report submitted by the Collin County Community College District containing summaries of requests for appropriations and expenditures for the fiscal years 2014 and 2015 with supporting documentation.

Annual financial report of the Employees Retirement System of Texas documenting income, expenditures, and other relevant financial information for fiscal year 2012.

Report submitted by the Texas State Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners containing summaries of requests for appropriations and expenditures for the fiscal years 2014 and 2015 with supporting documentation.

Report submitted by the Texas Commission on the Arts containing background information on the commission, and summaries of requests for appropriations and expenditures for the fiscal years 2014 and 2015 with supporting documentation.

Report submitted by the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles containing background information on the department, and summaries of requests for appropriations and expenditures for the fiscal years 2014 and 2015 with supporting documentation.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Chief Information Officers (CIO) at six federal agencies rated the majority of their information technology (IT) investments as low risk, and many ratings remained constant over time. Specifically, CIOs at the selected agencies rated a majority of investments listed on the federal IT Dashboard as low risk or moderately low risk from June 2009 through March 2012; at five of these agencies, these risk levels accounted for at least 66 percent of investments. These agencies also rated no more than 12 percent of their investments as high or moderately high risk, and two agencies (Department of Defense (DOD) and the National Science Foundation (NSF)) rated no investments at these risk levels. Over time, about 47 percent of the agencies' Dashboard investments received the same rating in every rating period. For ratings that changed, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reported more investments with reduced risk when initial ratings were compared with those in March 2012; the other four agencies reported more investments with increased risk. In the past, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) reported trends for risky IT …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "At the end of fiscal year 2011, GAO identified more than $794 million in funding remaining in expired grant accounts—accounts that were more than 3 months past the grant end date and had no activity for 9 months or more—in the Payment Management System (PMS). GAO found that undisbursed balances remained in some grant accounts several years past their expiration date: $110.9 million in undisbursed funding remained unspent more than 5 years past the grant end date, including $9.5 million that remained unspent for 10 years or more. GAO also found $126 million in grant accounts in the Automated Standard Application for Payments (ASAP) for which there had been no activity for 2 years or more, including $11 million that remained inactive for 5 years or more. However, data from these two systems are not comparable because, unlike PMS, ASAP accounts can include multiple grant agreements between a federal agency and a grantee, only some of which may be eligible for closeout."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Deficiencies exposed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2007 served as a catalyst compelling the Departments of Defense (DOD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) to address a host of problems for wounded, ill, and injured servicemembers and veterans as they navigate through the recovery care continuum. This continuum extends from acute medical treatment and stabilization, through rehabilitation to reintegration, either back to active duty or to the civilian community as a veteran. In spite of 5 years of departmental efforts, recovering servicemembers and veterans are still facing problems with this process and may not be getting the services they need. Key departmental efforts included the creation or modification of various care coordination and case management programs, including the military services' wounded warrior programs. However, these programs are not always accessible to those who need them due to the inconsistent methods, such as referrals, used to identify potentially eligible servicemembers, as well as inconsistent eligibility criteria across the military services' wounded warrior programs. The departments also jointly established an integrated disability evaluation system to expedite the delivery of benefits to servicemembers. However, processing times for disability determinations …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The full spectrum training mile metric is similar in some ways to the tank mile metric and dissimilar in other ways. Both metrics measure training activity of nondeployed units associated with recommended training events based on the Army's approved training strategy. Specifically, they both calculate the average number of miles a unit is expected to drive its vehicles on an annual basis for training that occurs during the reset and train/ready stages of the Army’s Force Generation (ARFORGEN) cycle."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Stakeholders—health care industry groups and experts in antitrust law—had different perspectives on the adequacy of three key aspects of antitrust guidance for health care provider collaboration. First, stakeholders’ perspectives differed on the sufficiency of guidance on clinical integration, which involves integrating clinical activities across providers in a collaborative arrangement. Clinical integration is one way for a collaborative arrangement to satisfy the requirement that the arrangement demonstrate the potential to yield significant benefits, such as reduced costs or improved quality, in order to be able to jointly negotiate prices. Five of the six experts and one of the four industry groups said that agency guidance was sufficient, while one expert and two industry groups asserted that agency guidance on clinical integration was inadequate. Second, stakeholders’ perspectives differed as to whether the agencies should permit greater use of exclusive collaborative arrangements, which restrict the ability of providers within a collaborative arrangement to contract with other arrangements or health plans. The use of exclusive arrangements has the potential to improve or reduce competition, depending on the circumstances. Four of the experts said that the agencies’ guidance on exclusive arrangements was reasonable, …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "NNSA has successfully ensured that the nuclear weapons stockpile remains safe and reliable in the absence of underground nuclear testing, accomplishing this complicated task by using state-of-the-art facilities as well as the skills of top scientists. Nevertheless, NNSA does not have reliable enterprise-wide management information on program budgets and costs, which potentially increases risk to NNSA’s programs. For example, in June 2010, GAO reported that NNSA could not identify the total costs to operate and maintain essential weapons activities facilities and infrastructure. In addition, in February 2011, GAO reported that NNSA lacks complete data on, among other things, the condition and value of its existing infrastructure, cost estimates and completion dates for planned capital improvement projects, and critical human capital skills in its contractor workforce that are needed for its programs. As a result, NNSA does not have a sound basis for making decisions on how to most effectively manage its portfolio of projects and other programs and lacks information that could help justify future budget requests or target cost savings opportunities. NNSA recognizes that its ability to make informed decisions is hampered and is taking steps to …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Applying PHMSA’s new distribution integrity management requirements to low-stress transmission pipelines would result in less prescriptive safety requirements for these pipelines. Overall, requirements for distribution pipelines are less prescriptive than requirements for transmission pipelines in part because the former operate at lower pressure and pose lower risks in general than the latter. For example, the integrity management regulations for transmission pipelines allow three types of in-depth physical inspections. In contrast, distribution pipeline operators can customize their integrity management programs to the complexity of their systems, including using a broader range of methods for physical inspection. While PHMSA officials stated that “less prescriptive” does not necessarily mean less safe, they also stated that distribution integrity management requirements for distribution pipelines can be more difficult to enforce than integrity management requirements for transmission pipelines. Currently, PHMSA can grant special permits to modify requirements for individual pipelines, if merited, but applying the new distribution integrity management requirements to low-stress transmission pipelines would affect all such pipelines."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "While plan representatives GAO contacted generally stated that their hedge fund and private equity investments met expectations in recent years, a number of plans experienced losses and other challenges, such as limited liquidity and transparency. National data indicated that hedge fund and private equity investments were significantly affected by the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and plans and experts GAO contacted indicated that pension plan investments were not insulated from losses. Most of the 22 plan representatives GAO interviewed said that their hedge fund investments met expectations overall, despite, in some cases, significant losses during the financial crisis. A few plan representatives, however, expected hedge fund investments to be much more resilient in turbulent markets, and found the losses disappointing. Given the long-term nature of private equity investments, almost all of the representatives were generally satisfied with these investments over the last 5 years. Some plan representatives described significant difficulties in hedge fund and private equity investing related to limited liquidity and transparency, and the negative impact of the actions of other investors in the fund—sometimes referred to as co-investors. For example, representatives from one plan reported they …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Housing assistance is fragmented across 160 programs and activities. Overlap exists for some products offered, service delivery, and geographic areas served by selected programs—particularly in the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Rural Housing Service (RHS) and Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Federal Housing Administration (FHA). For instance, RHS, FHA, and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) all guarantee mortgage loans for homeowners. According to fiscal year 2009 data (the most recent available), FHA served a larger number of households than RHS in all areas, including a larger number of low- and moderate-income households in rural areas. Although selected HUD, USDA, and Department of the Treasury (Treasury) multifamily programs had overlapping purposes, the products, areas served, and delivery methods differed. For example, HUD, RHS, and Treasury provide financing for development and rehabilitation of multifamily housing for low- and moderate-income households, but RHS-financed properties were more concentrated in rural areas and HUD’s and Treasury’s tax credit properties were more concentrated in urban and suburban areas."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Workforce board officials and their partners in the 14 initiatives cited a range of factors that facilitated building innovative collaborations. Almost all of the collaborations grew out of efforts to address urgent workforce needs of multiple employers in a specific sector, rather than focusing on individual employers. The partners in these initiatives made extra effort to engage employers so they could tailor services such as jobseeker assessment, screening, and training to address specific employer needs. In all the initiatives, partners remained engaged in these collaborations because they continued to produce a wide range of reported results, such as an increased supply of skilled labor, job placements, reduced employer recruitment and turnover costs, and averted layoffs. While these boards were successful in their efforts, they cited some challenges to collaboration that they needed to overcome. Some boards were challenged to develop comprehensive strategies to address diverse employer needs with WIA funds. For example, some boards’ staff said that while their initiatives sought to meet employer needs for higher-skilled workers through skill upgrades, WIA funds can be used to train current workers only in limited circumstances, and the boards used …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In a review of 30 major ATC acquisition programs, all of which will contribute to the transition to NextGen, GAO found that costs for 11 of the 30 programs have increased from their initial estimates by a total of $4.2 billion and 15 programs experienced delays. The 11 acquisitions that experienced cost increases account for over 60 percent of FAA’s total acquisition costs ($11 billion of $17.7 billion) for the 30 programs. The 15 acquisitions that experienced schedule delays, of which 10 also had cost increases, ranged from 2 months to more than 14 years and averaged 48 months."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Given the mobility of money and proliferation of foreign financial institutions (FFI), the potential for U.S. taxpayers to evade taxes on funds held in offshore accounts is greater than ever. To improve tax compliance for foreign accounts and entities, and cross-border transactions, Congress passed the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) as part of the Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act of 2010. FATCA requires certain U.S. taxpayers to report to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) their overseas assets and requires U.S. entities to withhold a portion of certain payments made to FFIs that have not entered into an agreement with IRS to report certain information with respect to the FFI’s U.S. accounts. FATCA is an effort to reduce tax evasion by creating greater transparency and accountability with respect to offshore accounts and entities held by U.S. taxpayers and by providing IRS with tools to further enforce tax laws. IRS believes that implementing these new requirements will increase tax compliance, which will help close the gap between taxes owed and taxes paid. IRS recently estimated a net tax gap of $385 billion for tax year 2006, …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For fiscal years 2009 and 2010, the Fund’s recorded transactions consisted of 136 investment and operating transactions recorded and accounted for by the Library. The Fund’s recorded transactions were authorized in advance, supported by documentation, and accurately accounted for. However, while the Fund’s transactions were generally recorded promptly, we did identify five instances where transactions were not promptly recorded by the Library. We found that all recorded transactions were in compliance with the applicable laws that we deemed significant to the objectives of our audit."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "During our audit of FHFA’s fiscal years 2011 and 2010 financial statements, we identified one internal control issue and a continuing issue related to information systems controls that could adversely affect FHFA’s ability to meet its internal control objectives. We do not consider these issues to represent material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in relation to FHFA’s financial statements. Nonetheless, we believe they warrant management’s attention and action."