Tag: The Bill

A bipartisan pair of lawmakers want to stop government leaders from manipulating the security clearance process for political purposes. Sens. By codifying those steps, the Integrity in Security Clearance Determinations Act aims to make the system “more fair and transparent,” Collins said in a statement. The bill would forbid government leaders from making decisions based on the person’s exercise of constitutional rights like free speech or other factors like race, gender and nationality. Leaders would also be barred from revoking or approving clearances as an act of “retaliation for political activities or beliefs.” Under the legislation, government employees would have the right to appeal security clearance decisions, and agencies would need to make the results of any appeals public. The bill comes as a thinly veiled rebuke of the Trump administration’s handling of security clearances. The New York Times last month reported the president personally intervened to grant his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner a top-secret clearance against the recommendations of the intelligence community. In August, Trump also revoked the clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan, who’s been an outspoken critic of the current administration. “Americans should be able to have confidence that the security clearance process is being used only to protect our nation’s greatest secrets,” Warner said in a statement. Today agencies are crushed under a backlog of some 551,000 pending background checks, roughly double what security professionals consider to be a baseline “steady state” of 220,000 to 250,000 investigations in process at any given time.

Republican legislators, in an extraordinary push before their party surrenders full control of state government, want to restrict the incoming Democratic attorney general’s and governor’s powers and the state’s timeline for early voting in a lame-duck session early next week. More than 40 proposed changes in state law on a variety of subjects were unveiled Friday at about 4:30 p.m. in five bills up for a public hearing in the Legislature’s budget-writing committee Monday. One bill would fundamentally change the role of the state attorney general, giving lawmakers broad new powers to constrain the state’s top law-enforcement official. It may bar Gov.-elect Tony Evers from taking what he said would be one of his first actions in office: ordering Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul to withdraw Wisconsin from a multi-state legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, according to Madison lawyer Lester Pines, a Democrat. The bill would allow lawmakers to appoint special counsel to effectively replace the attorney general on specific litigation if a legislative panel determines it would ensure “the interests of the state will be best represented.” Another key bill would bar early voting from starting earlier than two weeks before an election — despite a federal judge’s ruling two years ago that struck down similar restrictions as racially discriminatory. One bill would give GOP lawmakers more power over Walker’s job-creation agency, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., which Evers has sought to dissolve, and strip the governor of the power to appoint the agency’s CEO. “The Legislature is the most representative branch in government and we will not stop being a strong voice for our constituents,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said in a joint statement. In 2016, U.S. District Judge James Peterson struck down a host of early voting restrictions in state law, including one imposing a 10-day pre-election window in which early voting could occur. The extraordinary session is scheduled to open Monday morning. Also on the agenda is a bill that passed the Assembly last year, but stalled in the Senate, that would help people with pre-existing conditions get health coverage if the federal Obamacare law is repealed or struck down in court.

Republican legislators, in an extraordinary push before their party surrenders full control of state government, want to restrict the incoming Democratic attorney general’s and governor’s powers and the state’s timeline for early voting in a lame-duck session early next week. More than 40 proposed changes in state law on a variety of subjects were unveiled Friday at about 4:30 p.m. in five bills up for a public hearing in the Legislature’s budget-writing committee Monday. One bill would fundamentally change the role of the state attorney general, giving lawmakers broad new powers to constrain the state’s top law-enforcement official. It may bar Gov.-elect Tony Evers from taking what he said would be one of his first actions in office: ordering Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul to withdraw Wisconsin from a multi-state legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, according to Madison lawyer Lester Pines, a Democrat. The bill would allow lawmakers to appoint special counsel to effectively replace the attorney general on specific litigation if a legislative panel determines it would ensure “the interests of the state will be best represented.” Another key bill would bar early voting from starting earlier than two weeks before an election — despite a federal judge’s ruling two years ago that struck down similar restrictions as racially discriminatory. One bill would give GOP lawmakers more power over Walker’s job-creation agency, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., which Evers has sought to dissolve, and strip the governor of the power to appoint the agency’s CEO. “The Legislature is the most representative branch in government and we will not stop being a strong voice for our constituents,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said in a joint statement. In 2016, U.S. District Judge James Peterson struck down a host of early voting restrictions in state law, including one imposing a 10-day pre-election window in which early voting could occur. The extraordinary session is scheduled to open Monday morning. Also on the agenda is a bill that passed the Assembly last year, but stalled in the Senate, that would help people with pre-existing conditions get health coverage if the federal Obamacare law is repealed or struck down in court.