The Associated Press reported today that the Obama administration plans to ax increased oversight of financial corruption in labor unions:

The Labor Department moved Tuesday to rescind a regulation approved during President George W. Bush's last days in office that would have increased scrutiny of union finances to help root out financial corruption.

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Union officials praised the decision, the latest in a series of pro-labor actions taken since President Barack Obama took office.

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Unions are required to file annual financial disclosure reports to the Labor Department's Office of Labor-Management Standards. The agency's criminal enforcement program uses the information to investigate embezzlement from labor unions and other types of union fraud.

Labor Department figures show that investigations of union fraud from 2001-2008 resulted in more than 1,000 indictments, with 929 convictions and court-ordered restitution of more than $93 million.

The new rule would have required unions to disclose even more information about compensation to union officers and employees, details about buying or selling union assets and additional information about union receipts.

Back in 2007, John Fund of The Wall Street Journal reported on the Democrats' earlier push to cut oversight of Big Labor:

The new Democratic Congress has finally found a government agency whose budget It wants to cut: an obscure Labor Department office that monitors the compliance of unions with federal law.

In the past six years, the Office of Labor Management Standards, or OLMS, has helped secure the convictions of 775 corrupt union officials and court-ordered restitution to union members of over $70 million in dues. The House is set to vote Thursday on a proposal to chop 20% from the OLMS budget. Every other Labor Department enforcement agency is due for a budget increase, and overall the Congress has added $935 million to the Bush administration's budget request for Labor. The only office the Democrats want to cut back is the one engaged in union oversight.

Although Congress has long insisted on copious reporting by corporations, including the burdens of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, lawmakers have been relatively nonchalant about union reporting. Unlike the quarterly filings of corporations, unions must only file once a year with the Labor Department using a free software program. They don't have to get an independent certified audit, are only rarely audited by the government, and don't have to follow standard accounting methods.

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