Have a Problem? Convene a Panel!

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 5, 1999 | by Jennifer G. Hickey

Federal advisory committees pop up like bumps on a Md with the chicken pox, Taxpayers end up paying twice -- for bureaucracy and then also for bureaucracy advisers.

If every volcano in the world hurled ash and molten lava into sunless skies, oceans suddenly began to swallow coastal cities and frenetic Christians heralded as imminent the second coming of Christ, odds are that official Washington would convene a Commission to Study the Effects of the World Coming to an End on the Migratory Patterns of the Black-Footed Albatross. In a town where the auditors are audited and investigators are investigated, it comes as no surprise that politicians are prone to create endlessly redundant panels to advise the advisers of federal agencies and administrators concerning everything that eats, breathes or moves. If it exists, politicians can create another panel to advise themselves about it.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with seeking advice. But many wonder why taxpayers should be paying millions of dollars a year for such panels when huge bureaucracies already exist ostensibly to solve or otherwise figure out how to do the same job.

Although George Washington is credited (or blamed) for bringing together the first such advisory panel in 1794 to help deal with the Whiskey Rebellion, the Congressional Research Service, or CRS, notes in a 1997 report that it wasn't until this century that such panels proliferated. The Federal Advisory Committee Act, or FACA, stipulates that an advisory panel may be created by the president's use of an executive order, by an agency pursuant to general agency authority or when Congress by law directs or authorizes a president or agency to establish a committee. The only true prohibitions are against naming a panel entirely from among full-time government employees or one which has an operational rather than advisory function.

Despite FACA having been created to reduce the burgeoning number of committees, by 1993 more than 1,300 existed when President Clinton issued Executive Order 12838, directing the agencies to reduce the number of these panels by one-third before the end of the year, and Vice President Al Gore's program to reinvent government took on the task. The Office of Management and Budget had set ceilings for each agency, but as many as 1,110 committees, comprising nearly 30,000 members, still were serving 55 agencies in fiscal 1995, according to the General Services Administration, or GSA. And, with an operating price tag of $157 million, it became clear that having Washington get its advisories by placing 1-900 calls to the Psychic Friends Network seemed a more fiscally responsible course.

The latest figures available are from fiscal 1997, which set the number of these panels at 963. But the not-so-silver lining is that, with a decrease in the number of advisory commissions, there has been an increase in the average number of members. During 1997, a total of 36,586 individuals served on these panels and the average cost per advisory nearly has doubled, according to the GAO. The GSA places the 1997 operating costs of the 963 committees at $178 million.

Whether the issue is what to do about Social Security, IRS reform, social consequences of legalized gambling or the goings-on in the field of geriatrics and gerontology, a formal federal group advises, studies, probes or reviews. And the rules are few.

In accordance with FACA, advisory-committee meetings must be open to the public and the schedule of meetings announced in the Federal Register. Furthermore, all papers, records and minutes must be made available to the public in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, and each panel must file with the GSA a charter outlining its mandate, meeting schedules, membership and to what agency or official it reports.

Under FACA, advisory committees automatically circulate out of existence after two years unless charters are renewed or specific dates are mandated. However, Congress has the authority to exempt any panel from these requirements, as it did in the case of the Social Security Advisory Board established in August 1994.

In some cases, the president will appoint panel members with the advice of Congress, although choices often will be made by an agency head. For example, members of the Advisory Committee on Historical Diplomatic Documentation for the Department of State were appointed by the secretary of state from "among distinguished historians, political scientists, archivists" but no "officer or employee of the U.S. Government." On the other hand, members of the National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service were chosen more strictly. The 13-member commission was required to include five members appointed by the president (two executive-branch officials, two private-sector panelists and one representative of IRS employees), four members to be selected by the Senate majority and minority leaders and four by the speaker of the House and the House minority leader.