could help to undertake which would help to make the act more effective. We should recognize also that we are dealing here with basically independent regulatory commissions, and we are sensitive to the executive branch relationships to those agencies. Senator CHILES. Well, it seems that OMB is, as the Office of Management and Budget, usually the arm of the President implementing and carrying out Executive orders. They come out of OMB normally, do they not? We have got somebody in the Attorney General's office saying: "If I have got to defend a lawsuit against you, I hope you will have a broad definition of the word meeting." I was delighted to see that kind of letter. But, that is someone who says: "I have got the responsibility of defending you in a lawsuit, and I hope to be successful." But I do not find any voice in the executive branch that says: "We are going to monitor, and we want a report of how many meetings that are open, and closed, and why. We are interested, and it is the focal point of this administration that meetings be opened." Has that message gone out? Are the agencies and commissions so independent that the President of the United States should not speak to them or that OMB should not speak to them as the management arm of the President of the United States? If they are that independent, then I wonder how we are going to perform a role of leadership. Mr. GRANQUIST. Let me say, Mr. Chairman, that these hearings will be very helpful in both the testimony the witnesses and the material submitted for the record. They do, sir. Senator CHILES. And I have always thought of OMB as being that agency of the Government which coordinates Presidential activity and directive as it applies to the executive branch. And now today I find that OMB is just going to continue to monitor sunshine or watch it with interest and read the reports with interest and caution. Certainly, from my hearing today, we get a mixed sort of bag of reports of what is happening, both from the Common Cause report and from the Library of Congress report, which was done for us. I do not think we can sit back and say that the act is working with any tremendous degree of success. And now I find that there is no Executive leadership, and that OMB does not intend to perform that role. If OMB is not going to perform that role, I do not know where leadership is going to come from. I do not know whether anyone else has been designated. I am delighted to hear of the Executive order that you are working on with regard to regulatory agencies. Do you know of any other Executive orders that have come down to open up as many of the deliberations of the executive branch of Government as possible? Mr. GRANQUIST. I am not personally aware of any. Senator CHILES. Well, I do not know of any either at this time. It seems that we do not have someone in the executive branch who is going to monitor the act. We have got the Administrative Conference which is writing treatises of what they think the act means. We will certainly take your comments on the testimony quite seriously, and 35-867 -79 15 I really mean that we will work closely with your staff, and this committee, and yourself to see what possible alternatives there are and explore what can be done toward the end of more effective implementation of the Sunshine Act. At this particular stage, we are not prepared, and that is why I used the words with caution," to endorse any specific changes. Senator CHILES. Well, Mr. Granquist, let me say that I hope you will take this quite seriously. I want you to know that I am going to take the statement of OMB quite seriously, too. Those comments of caution I am going to take quite seriously. I hope after you have had a chance, and after the office has had a chance to digest this, we will have an opportunity to discuss this further. I look forward to that. I do not think the President of the United States intends to go back on the promise that he made in this regard. I do not think that he would want to approach with caution a matter like this. I do not think that he would be afraid to say to the other agencies and commissions, even though they may be independent, that he would be afraid to express the feelings that he has so strongly expressed before in regard to open Government. I look forward to seeing how that is going to be expressed. It seems to me the Office of Management and Budget is the logical place for such leadership to originate. If it is not, then maybe there has to be some other kind of agency. Under the circumstances, I will say we are going to complete our hearings, but I want to recess these hearings because I think we are going to have further discussions in this regard. Thank you very much. Mr. GRANQUIST. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. [Whereupon, the hearing was recessed at 12:30 p.m.] OVERSIGHT OF THE GOVERNMENT IN THE TUESDAY, JUNE 13, 1978 U.S. SENATE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL SPENDING PRACTICES AND OPEN GOVERNMENT, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., in room 2288, Dirksen Building, Senator Lawton Chiles (chairman) presiding. Present: Senator Chiles. Staff members present: Ronald A. Chiodo, chief counsel and staff director; Janet R. Studley, counsel; Robert F. Harris, deputy staff director; and Christine Sheridan Betts, chief clerk. Senator CHILES. It has been more than 6 months since our subcommittee recessed its first oversight hearing on the Government in the Sunshine Act. In November 1977, Wayne Granquist testified that OMB was carefully following the implementation of the act and continuing to review the performance of covered agencies. He also said OMB can and should expect more than the agencies had done to date. However, at that same hearing, it became clear that OMB had in fact taken no action to follow the implementation of the act, and was learning for the first time that day what was happening in agencies covered by the act. We didn't adjourn that hearing last November; I simply recessed the hearing because we were very disappointed in what little we heard from OMB regarding its role in the management of sunshine. I knew that I wanted and needed to have further, more detailed discussions with the Office of Management and Budget in this regard. A few months later, however, I did have the chance to talk about sunshine a little more. On March 16, at Jim McIntyre's confirmation hearings as the Director of OMB, I received a firm commitment that OMB would at last take a very active role in monitoring and advising the agencies on their implementation of the Sunshine Act. That was good news to me, and I was pleased then to learn that, finally, the President's commitment to open government was going to be realized. If there was one clear message that I received from our November hearings and from subsequent dealings with several agencies, it is that there is a dire need for guidance and management in the implementation of sunshine. The agencies are still having problems in adopting a spirit of openness in their conduct of the public's business. We have seen so many tortured interpretations of the act's key provisions, that I am beginning to think that we have an excess of paranoid commissioners and far too many general counsels out there with over active imaginations. Their purposes seem to be to maneuver around the act as much as possible. Some agencies still haven't figured out what a meeting is. In one instance, a meeting held outside of the agency's four walls was declared not to be a "meeting" under the act. I am still reading newspaper articles about agencies that are holding "briefings and information sessions" which are not considered to be meetings although information discussed lays the groundwork for future agency decisions. It is also alarming to hear of agencies that conduct public meetings, but the staff and the members are the only ones who can figure out what is going on because the commissioners are making a determined effort to be cryptic. I asked to see some public certifications of closed meetings. One agency sent me an impressive stack of papers that closely resembled swiss cheese because of all the holes left by its general counsel's scissors. Now, these are very real problems. They are interfering with the act's proper operation. But, the problems are not insurmountable. They are merely problems in understanding the act that could be solved with some straight forward executive leadership and advice. This agency resistance is inconsistent with the overwhelming intent of the law to open up the whole decisionmaking process to the public. This pervasive attitude is also inconsistent with the President's own firm stand on openness and accountability in Government. Government in the sunshine has had a curious history. No one was too interested in it when we first started talking about it up here. I had a great deal of respect for the notion of open government after watching it work in Florida. I became firmly convinced that secrecy is not necessary to the effective resolution of conflicting views and interests. Secrecy does not enhance or improve how our Government works. On the contrary, secrecy, and the whole paranoid mentality that goes along with it, has severely hindered and damaged the integrity of this Government. After working hard, we finally convinced some of our fellow legislators that this was the case, and when this succeeded, the time was finally ripe for the Sunshine Act. Open government was a popular notion in the wake of Watergate. Who could take a stand against it after we all saw what evil lurks behind closed doors. Well, as a result of Watergate, we have seen all sorts of reforms— ethics reform, budget reform, Government in the sunshine. Yet, the public's confidence is still low. I was at a hearing recently at which pollster Lou Harris testified. Mr. Harris' poll showed that the present confidence level in Government institutions is even lower today than 5 years ago, at the height of the Watergate scandal. It is clear that despite protestations of wanting to make Government more responsive, Government has not been more responsive. At least our citizens don't think so. Mr. Harris told us that people do not feel that Government has opened up to them significantly, despite our legislative efforts to bring the workings of the bureaucracy into the sunshine. At today's hearing I hope we are going to begin to change this perception. And I sit here in anticipation of learning in detail what OMB has done since our last oversight hearing 6 months ago to fulfill the President's commitment to sunshine. We are delighted to have you here today, and with Mr. Granquist, and we are delighted to hear from you, sir. Mr. MCINTYRE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have with me as you have mentioned, Mr. Wayne Granquist and Mr. Bill Nichols, also from the Office of Management and Budget. Senator CHILES. We are delighted to have you here. Mr. NICHOLS. Thank you. Mr. MCINTYRE. We are pleased to appear before you today to testify on the Office of Management and Budget activities with respect to the Government in the Sunshine Act. I have prepared testimony which I would like to submit for the record. Senator CHILES. Your testimony in full will be included in the record in anyway you would like it. TESTIMONY OF JAMES T. MCINTYRE, DIRECTOR, OMB; ACCOMPANIED BY WAYNE GRANQUIST, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR AND WILLIAM NICHOLS Mr. MCINTYRE. I would like to limit my opening remarks to a short summary of the more salient points of my prepared testimony. First of all, I would like to say that the policy that underlies the Government in the Sunshine Act that the public is entitled to the fullest practical information regarding the decisionmaking processes of the Federal Government, is one that we certainly support in this administration. The intent and purposes of the act, to provide the public with such information while protecting the rights of individuals and the ability of the Government to carry out its responsibilities, are also consistent with the administration's point of view about openness in Government. We believe that the Sunshine Act is an important public policy. In fact, the President on June 9 sent a memorandum to the heads of departments and agencies of the Government in which he asked OMB to record the number of meetings subject to the act, to note whether those meetings are open or closed, and if closed, to state the reasons for closing them. In effect, we were asked to compile information from which we can evaluate compliance with this act. This information will be passed along to the President and to the Congress with recommendations for whatever actions may be appropriate to meet the spirit as well as the letter of the law. It is important that the agencies and the Congress note the President's and the Office of Management and Budget's strong support of this act, and the principles for which the assistance of good faith efforts is needed in its implementation. There is a useful and constructive role that the Office of Management and Budget can play in evaluating compliance with this act. Accordingly, we have established a monitoring system to track and record the activities of the agencies under the Sunshine Act. We intend to continue this tracking and reporting. We will work with the Attorney General to help assure that our litigating positions reflect the administration's policy. We will work with the agencies, the Attorney General, and the Administrative Conference of the United States to insure adequate policy and legal guidance in the implementation of this law. As I have indicated previously, we intend to report to the President and the Congress on the implementation of the act by the various |