48 sary relationship can actually be beneficial, declares Marie Scotti, manager of safety and health for the Maxwell House Div. of General Foods Corp. and a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission's Product Safety Advisory Council. "Initially, I thought the consumer members were going to be anti-industry," she confesses. "But through their service on the committee, I think they've gained at least some appreciation for industry's problems. And I now have a better respect for their point of view-as well as their knowledge and resilience. "It's good for business executives to be reminded of the basic intelligence of people in the marketplace." However, it may be dangerous to become too sympathetic to other interests on advisory committees-especially labor-warns the Chamber of Commerce's Mr. Berman. "A lot of management people go on committees without realizing that they'll be serving with labor members who equate the experience with collective bargaining," he says. "They [managers] think everybody on the committee is going to be reason able. Their position starts eroding immediately." Dogmatism vs altruism. Furthermore, Mr. Berman fears that management members who have "unique professional backgrounds" may represent industry poorly when they are assigned to committees. "They may be more disposed to represent their professional view in an academic sense than the industrial view in the practical sense." On the other hand, Ms. Freedman faults industry-and labor, too-for not being altruistic enough. "They both on occasion join committees hoping they'll get exactly what they want," she observes. "Unfortunately, if they send proponents of a dogmatic point of view, nothing positive gets accomplished." Positive accomplishment. That's the goal, certainly, of all advisory committees. Members differ on their perception of what is "positive," as well as their role on the panels. But then, similar disagreements occur among members of government's three "official" branches. Why should advisory committees the unofficial fourth branch-be any different? From the Washington Star, March 25, 19767 Should U.S. Know-How Be Exported Only to U.S. Military Allies? By Henry S. Bradsher Washington Star Staff Writer A Pentagon task force has recommended that the transfer abroad of revolutionary advances in technology be permitted only to allied countries, provoking complaints from some U.S. industries that they might lose Third World markets. The task force of the Defense Science Board studied prevention of transfer of militarily useful technology, industrial equipment and products to Communist countries. It proposed some loosening of present restrictions, shifting emphasis from limiting sales of equipment and products to controlling design and manufacturing know-how. "Control of design and manufacturing know-how is absolutely vital to the maintenance of U.S. technological superiority" in strategic fields, the task force felt. IT SOUGHT to prevent “leakage" of major new technologies through neutral countries to potential enemies, as has been occurring, by applying the limits on Communist trade to all nations outside the present Western control system. The Defense Department is now studying the task force's recommendations, which would require extensive changes in the present system of controlling foreign trade. The department plays a key role in the system in combination with the State and Commerce departments. Although Principal Deputy Secretary of Defense William P. Clements Jr. has ordered that an implementing plan be developed, a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday the department would not necessarily push all the recommendations. When the task force report was made public Tuesday at a hearing of the Senate Banking Committee's international finance subcommittee, representatives of electronics, computer and machine tool companies protested that the recommendation on limiting some technologies to allies might cut them out of many markets. THE SUBCOMMITTEE and the House International Relations Committee are considering renewal or replacement of the Export Administration Act which controls foreign trade. It expires Sept. 30. Testifying before the House committee on March 11, a Harvard expert, Graham Allison, said "the current system is not achieving the U.S. national security objective for which it is designed. It fails to prevent shipment to the Soviet Union of technological products of potential concern to the United States, while restricting U.S. companies from selling many products of no strategic importance. The system, created more than two decades ago and modified several times since then, links North Atlantic Treaty Organization nations, except Iceland and Japan, in a coordinating committee known as CoCom to control trade with Communist nations. "The U.S. exporter to Communist I countries is still confronted with greater barriers than his counterparts in other Western countries," a Library of Congress specialist, John P. Hardt, told the House committee. J. Fred Bucy, chairman of the Pentagon task force, noted in a memo with the report that "it is always going to be difficult to obtain full cooperation on technology issues from CoCom member nations." PRESSURES FROM West European businessmen eager to make money in the East sometimes override security considerations as viewed from the Pentagon, a senior official there said recently. So does U.S. domestic political pressure, as in the American decision at the warmest period of detente to help build the world's largest heavy truck plant on the Kama River east of Moscow despite Pentagon objections. The legislation on U.S. trade was loosened in 1972 to remove controls except when their absence "would prove detrimental to the national security of the United States." When renewed in 1974, the law increased Pentagon powers to review exports that would "significantly increase the military capability" of Communist country. BUCY'S TASK force was appointed to study the way this worked. As executive vice president of Texas Instruments, Inc., a leading electronics firm, Bucy had a reputation of taking a fairly hard line on Communist trade. The task force's report therefore surprised some observers with its drastic new approach which amounted to liberalization in some aspects. Selling machines and products to the Communists is not the main danger of helping them grow stronger to the possible detriment of the West, the report said. "Design and manufacturing know-how are the principal elements of strategic technology control," it said. ... Therefore, primary emphasis in control efforts should be placed on "arrays of design and manufacturing information that include detailed 'how to' instructions . . . plus significant teaching assistance. 'keystone' equipment that completes process line and allows it to be fully utilized (and) products with technological know-how... accompanied by sophisticated information on operation, application, or mainte nance.' "TO PRESERVE strategic U.S. lead time," the report said, "export should be denied if a technology represents a revolutionary advance to the receiving nation, but could be approved if it represents only an evolutionary advance." From the National Observer, March 27, 1976/ DANGERS OF TAILGATING Braking standards lowered despite more rear-end crashes. By Paul C. Hood You're doing the speed limit along the highway, a big truck close behind. If trouble comes you can stop in about 200 feet. The trucker probably can't. Accident records show heavy trucks are ramming into automobiles at a growing rate. But Government safety officials have just approved lower braking standards for trucks. Federal braking standards for heavy trucks traveling 60 m.p.h on dry pavement have been reduced 48 feet since they were first proposed in 1971. The latest revision by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) requires that a truck, loaded or empty, be able to stop in 293 feet, about the length of a football field. That's 35 feet farther than the old maximum for an unloaded truck, 16 feet more than the superceded maximum for a loaded vehicle. Reluctant Action The Federal safety agency clearly was reluctant to back down on truckbraking requirements after defending them for years. But officials were confronted by some obvious mechanical problems encountered in new braking systems, plus the financial difficulties of a depressed trucking industry. Dr. James B. Gregory, NHTSA administrator, said in announcing the lower braking standards: "While it would be possible to require redesign of the vehicles to eliminate these Imechanical -Edward Earnshaw Can that following truck be stopped in time if you must sud problems], the agency considers this denly apply your brakes? course of action unduly costly in view Seeing a Bright Side Gregory had tendered his resignation as chief of the safety agency just before the new brake rules were announced. He denied there was any connection between his departure plans and either the braking ruling or the long controversy over passive passenger restraints such as air bags. He will continue to direct the agency until a successor is named. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, an advocate of improved brake standards, deplored the change in truck requirements, without being entirely discouraged. The "much weakened" standard that remains in effect still represents a positive, if modest, step toward solving a major piece of the human damage problem," says A. B. Kelley, institute vice president. Kelley warns specifically of increasing the disparity between automobile and heavy-truck brakes at a time when the 55-m.p.h. speed limit "has increased the proportion of rear-end crashes in which automobiles are being struck from behind by tractor-trailers." He Why? To Kelley it's not surprising. When they had to be stopped, explains Kelley, it took longer for autos to be braked, so drivers tended to keep out of the way of trucks. But with both types of vehicles traveling at the same speed, the incompatability of auto and truck brakes has been accented. At the core of the brake problem is a controversial requirement that heavy trucks be able to meet the stoppingdistance standards in a 12-foot-wide lane, without uncontrolled locking of wheels and the resulting probability of "jackknifing" of trucks and trailers. Federal safety officials are barred from specifying mechanical means to comply with their performance standards, but truck manufacturers have chosen to use a computer-controlled antilock device that momentarily releases braking pressure when a vehicle starts to skid (The Observer, Nov. 29, 1975). This, coupled with powerful new brakes on the front axles, has produced mechanical problems and led to the trucking industry's cries for relief. The weakening of brake standards has the effect of suspending the urgent need for antilock devices by permitting less powerful front-wheel brakes. Presumably when antilock problems are worked out, the more stringent braking standards will be restored. Buses Get Postponement Buses, which have had particularly widespread and critical troubles with antilock treatment, already have received a NHTSA postponement until next Jan. 1 of requirements for antilock devices and tougher braking standards. Why so much concern over the problems of heavy vehicles on the highway? Joel Gustafson, a member of the National Motor Vehicle Safety Advisory Council, summarized it in a recent council study memorandum: Although heavy trucks make up less than 1 per cent of all registered vehicles, they are "involved in 2.6 per cent of all accidents and 7.3 per cent of all fatal accidents." From the Congressional Quarterly, March 20, 1976/ Government Operations - 4 Senate Hearings: Ban Sought on Closed Advisory Sessions While the "sunshine" drive in Congress to eliminate closed sessions has shown increasing success over the years, the trend toward openness in meetings where the federal government seeks advice appears stalled. The Senate Government Operations Subcommittee on Reports, Accounting and Management reported March 8 that during 1974 only 55 per cent of federal advisory committee meetings were open to the press and public. Twenty per cent of their meetings were wholly closed and 25 per cent were partially closed. As of Oct. 31, 1975, there were 1,341 official committees giving advice to federal agencies. By comparison, 93 per cent of congressional committee meetings were open during 1975, according to Congressional Quarterly's annual study of committee secrecy. (Study results, Weekly Report p. 152) The three-year-old Federal Advisory Committee Act (PL 92-464) stipulated that all advisory committee meetings be open except those concerning matters exempted from mandatory disclosure by the 1966 Freedom of Information Act (PL 89-487). The advisory committee act also set standards and prescribed uniform procedures to govern the establishment, operation, administration and duration of advisory groups. (Background, 1972 Weekly Report pp. 1171, 2404, 2472) Exemption Five Apparent abuses of the advisory committee act have occurred in the rationales such committees used to close their doors to the public. The nine exemptions listed in the Freedom of Information Act as justification for closing meetings are recognized in the advisory committee act. One of those-exemption five-has been heavily used by advisory committees. Lee Metcalf (D Mont.), chairman of the Reports Subcommittee, told the Senate Feb. 6 that the Justice Department in its original guidelines for implementing the advisory committee act "indulged in some bureaucratic embroidery which handed agency officials an all-purpose alibi for barring the public from meetings." Metcalf was referring to exemption five, which stipulated that internal or intra-agency memorandums or letters were exempt from mandatory disclosure. The Justice Department guidelines originally said that "by analogy" exemption five also could shield the discussions and deliberations of advisory panels. A subsequent rewrite of the guidelines by the Office of Management and Budget rescinded the language pertaining to exemption five. Further, four district court cases have ruled that exemption five is inapplicable to advisory committees. Still, such agencies as the Food and Drug Administration, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission continued to rely on the use of exemption five to close meetings of their advisory units, according to Metcalf. (FDA use of advisory panels, Weekly Report p. 223) Amendments The first amendments to the advisory act were considered in hearings March 8-10 by Metcalf's subcommittee. The two amendments considered were introduced in S 2947 would extend the act's coverage to advisory com. mittees of the Federal Reserve System, which at present are expressly exempted, Amtrak, the Postal Service and government units that serve Congress, such as the General Accounting Office, Congressional Budget Office and the Of fice of Technology Assessment. The bill also would require agencies to solicit nominations for advisory committee membership and to disclose how they selected the members. Exemption five of the Freedom of Information Act would be deleted from the advisory committee act as grounds for closing a meeting. Finally, S 2947 would give citizens the same legal right to sue to open a closed advisory committee meeting that they have under the information act to obtain documents that the government does not wish to release. Percy's bill, S 3013, would change the reporting requirements for advisory committees. It would require disclosure of any private funding or support received by any such committee. Also, the sponsoring agency would be required to account for all advisory committee recommendations and the status of those recommendations. Proposed Deletion The provision in S 2947 to delete exemption five as a justification for closing advisory meetings caused the most controversy at the March hearings. PRO: Right to Know Citing the public's right to know, Reuben Robertson, legal director for the Aviation Consumer Action Project, March 9 decried the use of exemption five to close meetings. He urged its deletion. "How is the presence of public observers going to interfere with legitimate committee activities?" he asked. "The courts have repeatedly rejected the argument that exemption five may be used in the ad. visory committee context. Still the agencies continue to in. voke it on a wholesale basis...." Political science professor Henry Steck said March 9 that "the greatest threat" to the act's openness mandate "has been the use and abuse of FOIA [Freedom of Informa tion Act] exemptions, most notably exemption five." Steck suggested a provision that allowed for "speedy resolution of contested decisions to close meetings and for a mechanism of sanctions that will discourage administrators from becoming sloppy or playing hide-and-seek with FACA [the Federal Advisory Committee Act]." CON: Inflexible Administration witnesses urged that exemption five be retained. HEW Under Secretary Marjorie Lynch said March 10 that an agency must be able to close an advisory meeting, at its own discretion, when regulatory matters are being dis cussed. "If we are to produce sound regulatory programs, it is essential that the agency have the discretion to close a portion of a meeting," she said. 70-426 O 76 - 38 |