The Robert MacNeil Report; 1149; Sunshine Law

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we can late yesterday the house of representatives passed what may be a landmark piece of legislation designed to make the federal government more open and more accessible to the press and the public there was called the government in the sunshine act and it passed the house by an extraordinary vote of three hundred and ninety to five the bill requires nearly fifty federal agencies to open their meetings to the public the agency is affected other so called multi member agencies such as the federal reserve board which sets bank interest rates the federal power commission which determines the interstate sales price of oil and natural gas the postal service the federal communications commission and many others the bill does not affect a congress nor does it apply to such

bureaus as the fbi the cia had a gw and sell on a similar bill passed the senate last november by an equally impressive owed more impressive of ninety four to nothing but your bills will not go to conference to iron out differences tonight will assume are really levin any sunshine or will government bureaucrats just find other ways to keep things secret representative bella abzug is chairperson of the house subcommittee on government information and individual rights she was the leading sponsor of this version of the federal sunshine bill liz abzug is one of the contenders for the democratic senatorial nomination here in new york is this bill if it becomes law really going to make a difference in how government operates i believe it will this is a major advance for open government it will force the bureaucrats discuss the business of the public in the public this is a landmark step i believe it will make a significant difference in all really the decisions affecting

millions of americans for too long in the cider in many coal was the informal meetings and i think disappointment of that and we will no longer allow agencies of government at the whole these meetings away from the press and the public there are exceptions of course certain kinds of information actually which the bill provides for ten exceptions which would exempt me from being open and will our meeting to be close such matters affecting the national security personal privacy matters which might result in financial speculation trade secrets and saw myself what that is the motive of this kind of bill chiefly to make information public or to alter the way government actually works i mean it's in a box it's to make sure of that the public has a right to know what its government is doing in its name

and also to provide information that the public is entitled now and to make sure that the agencies of government realize that they hire under scrutiny and that they have a public trust and that there has to be a public confidence and certainly a temptation to be subject to special interests or pressure is that the process that we see torture here and a man will be a fact that preventing that it may not be the only way in which you could eliminate all influence a special interest but it will have an impact upon that can you tell me why it's confined to these multi member agencies and why it excludes things like the fbi the cia agent is one of the problems in that in considering this legislation and we spent a lot of time in hearings and hearing from people would be an amnesty on the state level as well as the american bar association and others it's pretty hard to hold a public meeting with yourself so that you are a single head an agency we had

difficulty in figuring out the way in which we could have a decision made by an individual to open up the meeting to the public it's a problem which we should still consider him my opinion as we go forward with the legislation and see how it is aaron carried out and administered as we develop regulations and as we see the operation of the law i think we might consider the ways in which we can broaden it to include every aspect of government i say in your purse said in an editorial today the amendments which were successfully passed yesterday to your bill had mutilated it do you feel right now nominal i'm your success the two amendments one was a difference of opinion as to what i'm eating puts oh i'm the man that that was past talked about a meeting being a gathering and that might subject us to an interpretation as to whether or not if i had a drink with you that i can consider that official media which i conducted my business and eight eddie created someone clarity i think some of that language in

general both in our version and the version that was passed was last visited be and i think it will be improving coverage but hardly went the fundamentals of the bill the other amendment which was passed very naturally by a difference about eight votes and it differs from the senate version will also be given preference they eliminate the necessity for a meeting to have a transcript are electronic recording if it was a closed meetings that would be a record that could be utilized to find out whether the meeting was improperly closing song where is an important amendment but i don't think it relates the bill by a long shot it provides four minutes instead of the transcript of i think that that man has to be discussed whether in the course of this and discussion here tonight i don't think it relates to i don't think it would probably be vigorously discussed for a change in the conference between the house and the senate where we will discuss it further and with congressman frank portman from upstate new york the ranking republican on the house committee on government operation yesterday he led the

successful for a fight on behalf of the ford administration to amend news evansville congressman our these amendments do you think necessary yes i think they were necessary and i think they were very important and i certainly would agree with the statement that the dollar has made as the chairman of the subcommittee which analysts bill i want to be a member of that committee poachers sunshine bill because that during my service of fourteen years on the garden operations committee i've served on the subcommittee that the news that the co chair is now for a number of years and was there when we consider the freedom of information act and the amendments in the last congress and then also i had a lot to do with the enactment of the right of privacy legislation so i feel that it is very important for us to take this important step forward and that is to revive the

legislation which i think is needed because these gleeful bodies are the bodies are headed by two more which is the subject of this legislation are not open to the sunshine are not open to the public and without those bailed out in the open and it's been my experience over the fourteen years that i've been in the congress that sometimes when you a proposed legislation forward and sent it down to the president and it is so complicated or it has so much opposition to it that quite frequently it can be on people and i think these two areas were very critical errors that is the definition of meeting and also the problem that we face with regard to the collection how closely infected you work with the white house in drafting the amendments in order presumably to make it more palatable to the president why we didn't work in all the white house is something that i did and i did work that was some of the regulatory agencies that were involved but i did not coordinate my efforts at all of the white house it was something i felt very strongly

about and also a pete mccloskey was a member of the subcommittee he and i worked together on our staff work together mostly to develop or this cement or what we found was is valid happily put it is that the definition that was in the bill that was set before us last night was a was a definition which had been placed in the bill by the judiciary committee the bill was referred for mcgovern operations committed to the judiciary committee and that i'm that a memo that they placed us at those that are meeting means an assembly of simultaneous communication and those communication week be interpreted as meaning that if you had a meeting opprobrium heads of agencies and talk on both of the academy but then it would have to have this plant and so we've got a bag to be changed and we were successful and i would agree with what the law said that that's not a major change in assertiveness not that the bill in anyway will the president signed it now do believe

if it emerges from a conference in something like this form robert the other thing i was going to mention is that the most important part was to eliminate the transcript now the major problem there was there a transcript of a closed meeting and that is tantamount to destroy or making mood the exemptions with regard to the freedom of information act now if that had been in i think that there's a bill that would be a great deal like a fractured by regulatory agencies which would have tended to make the white house somewhat unwilling to sign the bill i have no clear signals that they would or would not but i think it would've been a tremendous amount of pressure when my hair was in this good piece of legislation i'll go on the right sunshine those maybe a brand new experience for the federal government but state and local governments and learning to live with them for quite a while when new york state's sunshine bill goes into effect next january first every state in the union will finally have one if

your purpose is a leading authority on these local sunshine laws of the but this is a newly appointed executive director of the southern regional conference based in atlanta last year he directed the series of studies untitled government in the sunshine which examines sunshine laws in ten southern states is to back us in washington with all your knowledge of state sunshine laws is this going to go yes i think it's a it is a very good bill but i think i must agree with the witnesses absolutely said it's really a first act or for the federal government some of the states in this country have gone far beyond what the federal government's done in this area and it had some experience under their belts it's going to take a year or so prop perhaps to see whether this deal really achieved all that it was intended to achieve there's no question that it is a dramatic improvement in the federal government i must say that in in a state like florida for example lee the definition of the kneading as it is self is far beyond even the version that appeared in the original law house bill were

any two members of any government agency any government body in florida if they meet with the intent of evading the law are in violation of the law are subject to prosecution and a number have been prosecuted first to work in its present form i believed well i think we're going to find the same kinds of difficulties that we've had at the state level in determining precisely what is the meeting i'm probably going to have some the same difficulty that the state level of challenges being made by citizens that meetings that war clothes were closed unlawfully unfortunately but by having out and no transcript by not having transferred transcript requirement is no way we can ever determine whether a particular meeting a portion of the meeting was held secretly in all fairness i must say that that at the state level at least in the south and other states require transcripts but that is largely because

says most state and local government conducted in and in a collegial body that one form or another city council's county commission's a requirement that a transcript be you know whenever there was a lawfully closed meeting i would be enormous financial burden let's pursue this idea of sunshine laws in general both at the state and the federal experience in context of this bill tell me mr peck as first of all of our experience of these why i'm being too cynical if i suggested to some member of the public like that these things are merely a pr gesture to deal with widespread mistrust of government at the moment and the bureaucrats in the very nature of their souls will find other ways to keep things secret if they want to live that too cynical view lovers i greatly that is too cynical i think the same thing might have been said about the first amendment was adopted in your bill of rights and in the end in the eighteenth century the fact is that's our vigilance on the part of congressional

committees and for the public or the press it is going to be at the litmus test of the effectiveness of this kind of legislation or any other kind of legislation that is designed to increase the accountability of of our public officials say that half had seen these laws is that is an area on a response that is necessary but will not get us to the valhalla a perfectly open and accountable government should expect that but without a commitment on the part of a national administration on the role on the part of the legislative the leaders especially those in an oversight positions and in the congress ah i think your cynicism make mayonnaise bear some fruit i trust that won't happen but i think it's a major step forward these bills really benefit is it not possible that the only people will benefit rather like the on the freedom of information act are those

companies with enough resources to have a lot of lawyers who can go in spend many hours digging through all the things that they may find relevant are useful to their clients or to have those few newspapers news organizations that can afford to have really diligent investigative reporters how does the general public benefit well when you asked that question because as chairwoman of the government information and they derive subcommittee we do oversight of both the freedom of information act and the privacy act of which i and other members of coworkers now under the freedom of information act we have seen many citizens bring suits to find out information that they should have had a right now a long time ago many interesting things are happening at the firehouse for example justice may have been totally abused and rosenberg case there's been a lot of press on that recently of the privacy act interesting enough as a result of our oversight hearing as we have now secured the

action on the part of the attorney general levy notifying people of that as the files that were illegally kept about them we recently had the year commissioner of internal revenue service agreed to notify seven hundred and seventy people whose tax returns and on about who they were or what it sent files kept the legally we've had recently got a notification from them and at our pressure on our hearings and he had notified the senate and seventy people of the twelve thousand that they improperly investigated after the nature of their file them answer they write the series using to lose the ordinary citizen with the pressure of congress passing these laws and having proper implementation oversight the ordinary citizen and the constitution and that democratic structured so that it's larger lives i don't write on that day i think that that will result in the things that she's indicated that i think that then i would be also with patches that that

we do have a long way to go that this is a first step and that it is important for us to have some experience under this act i found for example with the privacy act and we have become very common a case the us recently in which a constituent of mine became ill and because of the privacy act this vision did not inform the apparent well that's something i think that we've got to have oversight and get it correct i'm also chairman of the paperwork condition and i find that one of the problems we have with all matters is that we created a tremendous volume of paperwork and so this is another thing that i think we ought to look at as we go through the enactment and gm are putting into effect this bill that we passed yet but i think it's a very important first up alright let's look at some further steps we don't know whether president ford is going to sign a

bit of his book is we don't quite know and what form it's going to emerge but let's look at the presidential candidate who has been nominated open government has been a major campaign issue for jimmy carter in his acceptance speech at the democratic convention two weeks ago tonight carter said it was time to strip away the secrecy from the federal government the democratic platform which reflects got his views declares that quote government decision making behind closed doors is the natural enemy of the people and this is where carter himself had to say on meet the press on july eleventh one of the first accident in a take if i'm elected president is by a lot of open up as many of the deliberations of the second french government partial knowledge on him with the occasional been pursued buzzer the stones and alone shovel for another's puzzle competition in general for the whole federal government so they had been as persian would be designed within the bounds of rationality to open up the deliberation to go to the people through the

press was the wind in this regard owner would you go as far as opening up your meetings with congressional leaders to the press and to the public when the host kabul of a meeting where decisions are made i would further their meetings being open but when a woman executive officer is plentiful for a light conversation that a proper full of public and who feel completely involved in the process you have to have subordinates able to do with us a carrier and a hacker can actually does a lot to do with a president an apologist at the ideas and decisions without braille press impression joe duffey was a familiar face or on the mcgovern campaign four years ago this year he's taking a leave of absence as general secretary of the american association of university professors to join jimmy carter's campaign stop mr duffy was chosen by god and car governor carter as associate director of issues and policies and we'll have the coverage issue his office in washington

where he is now mr duffy are widely used you can actually mean by all at it is he opened the idea of extending sunshine laws into the executive of those personally and directly yes and he's discovered in the course of the primaries that the american people are enormously responsive two well they you know the idea of having processes of government every level where appropriate open and i think it's hope would be out as he stated here that his administration would be open in its dealings with the everyone acknowledges there are appropriate times when our discussions with the initial formulation of positions may take place in confidence about acknowledging the present legislation the recorder has in mind is taking

that be a burden what's now called upon the congress when it happens at all about bringing the judicial appointments of the executive appointments into the open i'll by requiring those people pointed a major regulatory agency isn't a cabinet post to disclose their own financial interests and investments that from the beginning not leave this is something that the congress has to cry how does this happen sometimes served recently it feels like second border there are a number of things that can be done legally simply to open up the process to make clear are the interest in the commitments of those people who serve the american people and the places of the important responsibilities in syria disgusting that satisfies me during this his desire to let the sunshine in the operations of the federal serbia's

welcome start i would hope that perhaps perhaps experience he's had the primaries the democratic party has had made of that encourage members of congress's they've taken this step but i think by the way has been in exactly the right order them dr house and the senate have begun to open up their own conference meetings and discovered that there were could be pursued fish of weight after that experience has now taken this next up with respect to world war ii had a collegial agencies i think that we don't know the final outcome of this bill haslam conference and they'll be some discussion over the provisions have been talked about earlier this evening i think it is going to it's really would consider that the recorder would consider the day of the first out there are the responsibilities of the legislature and the executive in this area and they just think it's appropriate role mr decker says they're with you with his knowledge of state government ordered mr carter actually achieve as governor of georgia and led

in the sunshine and it's rather neutral position and when the bill was being fought over there didn't know why he did i think i think the result however we must remember that in many of our southern states the league the principle of legislative supremacy is far greater than that than at the national level and frankly a it was quite remarkable in nineteen seventy two when the georgia legislature moved ahead on this front from my perspective of you and i don't consider that the legislature that time that the kind of body that would produce a kind of legislation did the georgia open meetings law is certainly one of the one of the better ones in the country there are problems with it that the georgia legislators i do not think resolve the question of what constitutes a meetings that what costume eating very well i don't think they are and the average citizen with inadequate remedy that's always a problem but if it if you can't see you but you cannot afford to sue the the right to sue was a is an entity is an empty one

but the fact is i think it's the government in georgia has benefited substantially from from this law again of the benefits to stem a more white more i think from the commitment of the carter administration that kind of open government and that this particular piece of legislation that's why emphasize that internally international law who know me as peter whether there is any indication of government to sway in florida which is now the longest experience with this law is impeded and insufficiency or if there's any seems to be any difficulty making good appointments i keep hearing that somehow objections to laura first of all that it sort of these are these kinds of laws first of all it may slow down the process less efficient and make that search for qualified individual well i think that before florida and tennessee of the state that we studied have no exemption whatsoever on under there are and they're open meetings laws that means that discussions with attorneys discussions about collective bargaining

discussions about the acquisition of real estate are also openly and frankly when those laws were four first half and there was not local officials especially were terrorized by the prospect of conducting the business matter and there were difficulties in the first year and they're still difficulties in some areas and getting along for it the fact is that after year and half officials are becoming use to the process of dealing candidly with this is one of the people with whom they're accountable and i've heard many reports which suggest that the result has been better government in that sense officials are better prepare for meetings they know that i think they'll do their homework people will be president rather interesting the controversy they know that if they reflect that they pay a special interest or bias that that will be on the public record and in front of the citizens in ann arbor experience in florida we haven't we've had investigators in that state as we've had in and the ten other states is not the last three years in jail how

could i leave it there just like to get a final word from the other congressman congressman barton is there any likelihood of this disease spreading to the congress itself you mean the disease of sand yes yes as a matter fact i think the congress was one of the first places where it's funny because when i first came to congress in forty years ago we had closed meetings we've had mostly a executive sessions an appropriations committee that the techniques that and then you know i had a conference that was all the day out for all practical purposes we have a garden in the sunshine it's as far as our committees are concerned i know a woman wanted to instances and they involve rhetorical matter of where we had to close any meeting of american operations committee i think that the congress has moved greatly towards opening up its process there are still some changes which could be made in a number of places

involving a conference between the house the senate some committees still like to keep that clothes that were to be open i believe that this law will help to give the general atmosphere of great openness and that's all very good for a twelve to eighteen at age ninety one dollar one of the projects

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