The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in rod SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. John Glenn (Cha man of the Committee) presiding. Present: Senators Glenn, Roth, and Levin. OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN GLENN Chairman GLENN. The hearing will be in order. First off, I do want to announce we will go ahead with the hea ing. We have a vote on the floor and Senator Levin is going vote now and will be here in a few minutes. I will go ahead an start the hearing and he will spell me while I go over and vot So I am sorry we will have a rather truncated beginning th morning, but that is one of the problems when we have votes ar try and conduct hearings at the same time. This is our first hearing on the Federal Advisory Committee A [FACA]. FACA represents one of the four pillars of open-gover ment laws. It fits right along with the Government in the Sunshin Act, the Freedom of Information Act, and the Administrative Pr cedures Act. By passing FACA in 1972, Congress recognized the merits of a lowing the Government to draw upon the knowledge and exper ence of public experts, and at a reasonable cost. And that is som thing we have encouraged. In return, the public is supposed to be afforded an opportunity participate actively in the Government's decisionmaking process. think most of the time it works out exactly like that, and that good. To achieve these simple objectives, Congress created a cor prehensive legal and administrative system to regulate the esta lishment, the operation and termination of these advisory commi tees. Over the past 15 years it is clear that this system has served th Government and the public quite well. And the real costs to th taxpayer have been held reasonably stable, as evidence by a fe very telling statistics. For instance, the total number of chartere advisory committees has remained relatively constant since 191 with approximately 1,000 committees, councils, advisory groups one type or another in existence at any one time. (1) Weiss, Paul T.-Continued Page Responses to written questions submitted by Senator Roth. Ziombra, Greg: Testimony... 172 17 APPENDIX Prepared statements of witnesses in order of appearance. 65 207 214 Rules and regulations concerning advisory committees from the Federal Register.. 239 Letters from: Department of Transportation, August 6, 1987. 240 W. Eugene Mayberry, M.D., president and chief executive officer, Mayo 241 Woodrow A. Myers, Jr., M.D., State health commissioner, Indiana State 244 Adm. James D. Watkins, January 11, 1988, with a preliminary decision issued by Judge Gasch regarding the Commission's composition and other related issues under the Federal Advisory Committee Act.... Statement of Philip J. Harter with an attachment 245 265 |