Report to Congressional Requesters

United States Government Accountability Office

GAO 

May 2006 U.S. COMMISSION ON 

CIVIL RIGHTS 

The Commission 

Should Strengthen Its 

Quality Assurance 

Policies and Make 

Better Use of Its State 

Advisory Committees 

GAO-06-343 
What GAO Found

United States Government Accountability Office

Why GAO Did This Study

Highlights

Accountability Integrity Reliability

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-343.

www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-05-551SP

To view the full product, including the scope 

and methodology, click on the link above. 

For more information, contact Bob Robertson 

at (202) 512-9889 or robertsonr@gao.gov. 

Highlights of GAO-06-343, a report to 

congressional requesters 

May 2006

U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS

The Commission Should Strengthen Its 

Quality Assurance Policies and Make 

Better Use of Its State Advisory 

Committees 

The Commission has some policies for ensuring the quality of its national 

office reports, briefings, and hearings. However, it lacks policies for ensuring 

that these products are objective and that the Commission is sufficiently 

accountable for the decisions made on these products. While the 

Commission’s policies for its national office products call for legal and other 

reviews, and Commissioners have an increased role in the development of 

its products, as GAO previously recommended, the Commission’s policies do 

not require that Commission reports, briefings, or hearings incorporate 

balanced, varied, and contrasting perspectives in order to ensure objectivity. 

Also, the Commission has no policy on the use of external reviewers of 

national office reports, such as a policy that would specify when external 

reviewers should be used and how to select them so as to obtain a broad 

representation of views. We also found that the Commission’s leadership has 

lacked accountability for some of its reporting decisions. For example, in 

some cases, the leadership has not consulted with all Commissioners at key 

points in the development of its reports. This includes the development of 

the Commission’s 2005 national report to the President and Congress, which 

was significantly refocused without obtaining the concurrence of all 

Commissioners. Finally, the Commission has not secured an external means 

of oversight to examine its reporting policies and monitor its practices. 

The state advisory committees have played a key role in the Commission’s 

mission by identifying and reporting on local civil rights issues, but most 

committees do not have current charters giving them authorization to 

operate and the Commission has not fully integrated the committees into the 

accomplishment of its mission. Since 1980, the state advisory committees 

have accounted for 200 of the 254 reports issued by the Commission. 

However, 38 of the 51 state advisory committees cannot function because 

their authorizing charters have expired. In recent years, the committees’ 

operations have been limited by reduced funds for meetings and travel and 

reductions to regional office staff who provide the committees with essential 

operational support. Additionally, in our survey of the state advisory 

committees and interviews with committee members, they reported a lack of 

timely review by the Commission of reports they have developed. 

Furthermore, although the state advisory committees are considered the 

“eyes and ears” of the Commission, it has not incorporated the role or work 

of the committees into its strategic planning and decision-making processes. 

Finally, the Commission has not provided for independent oversight of its 

policies and practices for the state advisory committees. 

The Commission on Civil Rights 

(the Commission) and its 51 state 

advisory committees were 

established in 1957 to serve as 

independent entities charged with 

reporting on the status of civil 

rights in the nation. GAO was 

asked to assess (1) the adequacy of 

the Commission's policies for 

ensuring the quality of its reports 

and (2) the role of the state 

advisory committees. 

What GAO Recommends

GAO makes several 

recommendations designed to 

strengthen the quality of 

Commission reports and make 

better use of its state advisory 

committees. They include 

establishing policies for ensuring 

the quality of national office 

reports and briefings and 

improving accountability for the 

Commission’s decisions on these 

products; establishing a 

requirement to ensure the timely 

renewal of state advisory 

committee charters; and 

establishing an external 

accountability mechanism such as 

seeking the services of an 

Inspector General. 

The Commission did not comment 

on our conclusions or 

recommendations but instead 

described actions it has taken to 

improve its policies, processes, and 

operations. These actions, 

however, do not address our 

recommendations. One of the 

seven Commissioners agreed with 

our report and two disagreed. 
Page i GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Letter 1

Results in Brief 3 

Background 5 

The Commission Lacks Policies for Ensuring Objectivity or 

Providing Accountability for Its Products 10 

State Advisory Committees Have Played a Key Role in the 

Commission’s Work, but Most of Their Operations Have Been 

Suspended 21 

Conclusions 34 

Recommendations for Executive Action 35 

Agency Comments 36 

Appendix I Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 40 

Appendix II Comments from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 43 

Appendix III Comments from Vice Chair Thernstrom and 

Commissioner Braceras and GAO’s Response 47 

GAO’s Response to Comments 54 

Appendix IV Comments from Commissioner Kirsanow, U.S. 

Commission on Civil Rights 58 

Appendix V The Commission’s Policies and Process for 

Developing and Approving National Office Products 

59 

Appendix VI The Commission’s Process for Developing and 

Approving State Advisory Committee Products 63 

Contents 
Page ii GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Appendix VII Summary Data on Profiles of the State Advisory 

Committee Members 65 

Appendix VIII GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 67 

Tables 

Table 1: Charter Expiration Dates for State Advisory Committees, 

as of February 2006 24 

Table 2: Comparison of the Previous and Proposed New Criteria 

for State Advisory Committee Membership 25 

Table 3: Number of Regional Offices and Professional Staff, 1980 to 

2006 29 

Figures 

Figure 1: Number of Reports Issued by State Advisory Committees, 

2000 to 2005 28 

Figure 2: Process for Developing and Approving National Office 

Reports 61 

Figure 3: Process for Developing and Approving State Advisory 

Committee Products 64 

Abbreviations 

CBO Congressional Budget Office 

FACA Federal Advisory Committee Act 

GSA General Services Administration 

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Page 1 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

May 1, 2006 

The Honorable Jim Sensenbrenner, Jr. 

Chairman 

Committee on the Judiciary 

House of Representatives 

The Honorable Steve Chabot 

Chairman 

Subcommittee on the Constitution 

Committee on the Judiciary 

House of Representatives 

The Honorable Orrin G. Hatch 

United States Senate 

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (the Commission) was established by 

the Civil Rights Act of 1957 to serve as an independent, bipartisan, factfinding agency whose mission is to investigate and report on the status of 

civil rights in the United States. Since its inception, the Commission has 

conducted hearings and issued reports highlighting critical, controversial 

civil rights issues, including racial segregation, impediments to voting 

rights, and affirmative action. To carry out its fact-finding and reporting 

mission, the Commission is required to submit at least one report annually 

to the President and Congress on federal civil rights enforcement efforts, 

among other requirements. Because the Commission has no enforcement 

power, the key means for achieving its mission lies in its credibility as an 

independent and impartial fact-finding and reporting organization. To 

complement this national fact-finding and reporting effort, separate state 

advisory committees were also authorized in 1957 to advise the 

Commission and serve as its “eyes and ears” on state and local civil rights 

issues. State advisory committees are composed of volunteers appointed 

by the Commission in every state who conduct public hearings on state 

and local civil rights issues and issue reports to the Commission on their 

findings. The Commission’s national office reports are researched and 

written by national office staff and approved by the Commissioners, and 

the state advisory committee reports are researched and drafted by the 

Commission’s regional office staff under the direction of the state advisory 

committees. 

We were asked to assess the Commission’s quality assurance policies for 

its national and state advisory committee reports and other products and 

 

United States Government Accountability Office

Washington, DC 20548 
Page 2 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

the role of the state advisory committees in fulfilling the Commission’s 

fact-finding and reporting mission. More specifically, our objectives were 

to assess (1) the adequacy of the Commission’s policies for ensuring the 

quality of its products and (2) the role of the state advisory committees in 

contributing to the Commission’s work. 

To address these objectives, we reviewed documents such as relevant 

statutes, regulations, and administrative policies of the Commission; 

transcripts and minutes of Commission meetings; and recent Commission 

and state advisory committee reports. We interviewed Commission staff, 

including the Staff Director, and three Commissioners—the Chair, one 

Republican member, and one Democrat. We also attended monthly 

meetings of the Commission, including briefings, during the period in 

which we conducted our work. To analyze the quality assurance policies 

for its products, we reviewed the Commission’s administrative policies for 

its reports, briefings, and hearings. We also reviewed the policies used by 

the National Academies of Sciences (the Academies) and the 

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to ensure the quality of their products 

and guidance from the Office of Management and Budget on ensuring the 

quality and objectivity of information disseminated by federal agencies, in 

addition to considering GAO’s own policies. We also interviewed officials 

from the Academies and CBO. In addition, we reviewed the Commission’s 

files for a selection of recent national and state advisory committee 

reports and interviewed national and regional office staff. 

To analyze the state advisory committees’ role in the Commission’s factfinding and reporting mission, we conducted a survey of the 51 state 

advisory committee chairs. We received responses to this survey from 

state advisory committee chairs and former chairs in 36 states. In addition, 

we conducted site visits to all six regional offices, where we interviewed 

regional staff to determine the support they provide to the state advisory 

committees. We also interviewed the state advisory committee chairs and 

members in 11 states to understand how they operate and their 

experiences with the Commission’s national and regional offices. We 

interviewed officials at the General Services Administration (GSA), which 

provides guidelines for federal advisory committees, and reviewed the 

Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) and related documents. In 

addition, we reviewed the most recently approved state advisory 

committee charters, interviewed Commission officials who work with the 

regional offices, and reviewed state advisory committee regulations, 

policies, and other guidance. We conducted our work from April 2005 to 

March 2006 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing 

standards. 
Page 3 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

The Commission has some policies that provide adequate quality 

assurance for its products; however, it lacks policies for ensuring the 

objectivity of its national office reports, briefings, and hearings and 

providing accountability for decisions made on its national office 

products. Among its key policies, the Commission requires its national 

office products to be reviewed for legal sufficiency and provides affected 

agencies an opportunity to comment on the accuracy of information in its 

draft reports. In addition, under new Commission policies, Commissioners 

have an increased role in the development of its products, as we 

previously recommended. However, the Commission lacks several key 

policies that could help ensure objectivity in its national office products. 

Specifically, the Commission does not have a policy requiring varied and 

opposing perspectives in its national office reports, briefings, or hearings. 

Similarly, the Commission does not have a policy for determining when to 

use external reviewers for its national office reports and how to select 

reviewers so that they can provide a variety of perspectives. The 

Commission also lacks accountability for the decisions made on its 

products. In some cases, the Commission has made decisions without fully 

consulting with the Commissioners or documenting its decisions. For 

example, the Staff Director did not consult with all the Commissioners or 

obtain their agreement before he significantly redirected the focus of its 

2005 statutorily required national office report. In addition, although we 

found that the Commission has weaknesses in its policies for ensuring the 

objectivity of its products and accountability for the decisions made on 

these products, it has not provided for any external examination or 

monitoring of its policies or practices. Finally, the Commission’s product 

quality policies for its state committees are more comprehensive than 

those for its national office policies, including, for example, the 

requirement that state advisory committees consider varied and opposing 

perspectives in conducting its work. 

The state advisory committees have played a key role in the Commission’s 

work by identifying and reporting on local civil rights issues, but most 

committees do not have current charters giving them authorization to 

operate, and the Commission has not fully integrated the committees into 

the accomplishment of its mission. Traditionally, the committees have 

gathered data on state and local civil rights issues by holding hearings, 

forums, and briefings and communicated their findings to the Commission 

and the public through reports. Since 1980, the state advisory committees 

have accounted for 200 of the 254 reports published by the Commission. 

Currently, however, 38 of the 51 state advisory committees cannot conduct 

any work because they do not have approved charters. In late 2005, the 

Commission began revising the criteria for state advisory committee 

Results in Brief 
Page 4 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

membership in order to, among other things, move away from racially and 

ethnically based representation toward great diversity in expertise and 

ideas. It also decided that the committees’ applications for new charters 

would not be accepted until they had been redrafted to include only 

members who meet the new criteria. Several other actions by the 

Commission have limited the activities of the state advisory committees. 

First, since the 1990s, because of budgetary constraints, the Commission 

has significantly reduced the number of regional office staff, who provide 

extensive support to the state committees in conducting their activities 

and producing reports. In addition, the Commission has reduced funding 

for the state advisory committees, including money needed to hold public 

meetings. Furthermore, draft reports prepared by the state advisory 

committees are often not reviewed or published by the Commission in a 

timely manner. For example, most of the state advisory committees we 

visited told us the national office had not reviewed and accepted their 

reports in a timely manner, and less than a quarter of the state advisory 

committee chairs who responded to our survey reported that they were 

satisfied with the national office’s timeliness in processing their reports. 

The Commission has also not incorporated the work of the state advisory 

committees into its strategic planning and decision-making processes, 

including articulating how the national office will use the state advisory 

committees’ findings on state and local civil rights issues to inform the 

Commission’s national goals and strategies. For example, the Commission 

did not obtain input from the state advisory committees in developing its 

new draft strategic plan, although the committees play an important role in 

accomplishing the agency’s goals. Finally, although many of these are 

long-standing issues, the Commission has not provided for independent 

oversight of its policies and practices for the state advisory committees. 

We are making several recommendations intended to strengthen the 

Commission’s product quality assurance policies, its accountability for the 

decisions made on these products, and its use of the state advisory 

committees. More specifically, we are recommending that the Commission 

develop policies designed to better ensure the quality of the Commission’s 

national office products and to ensure that relevant information and 

perspectives are covered comprehensively during briefings and hearings. 

In addition, we are recommending that the Commission make the most 

effective use of the state advisory committees and that it establish an 

external accountability mechanism to ensure that the Commission’s 

processes are well documented and its policies are followed. 

We provided the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights with a draft of this 

report for review and comment. In its response, the Commission’s Staff 
Page 5 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Director did not comment on our conclusions or recommendations but 

instead described actions taken to improve the Commission’s management 

and financial controls, the operations of the state advisory committees, the 

role of the Commissioners, and internal review procedures for its reports 

and briefings. We had already discussed most of these actions in our 

report, and we added information on recent state advisory committee 

activities. However, while many of these actions are positive, they do not 

address the matters upon which we based our recommendations. We 

continue to believe that the actions described in our recommendations are 

needed to strengthen the Commission’s products and make better use of 

its state advisory committees. The Staff Director’s comments are 

summarized on pages 36 and 37 and reproduced in their entirety in 

appendix II. 

Although we did not solicit comments from the Commissioners, the Staff 

Director provided them with an opportunity to respond to our draft report, 

and three of the seven Commissioners provided us with comments. One 

Commissioner agreed with the contents of the draft report. However, in a 

joint response, the Vice Chair and one Commissioner strongly disagreed 

with the draft report’s approach, tone, and conclusions and asserted, 

among other things, that the report was biased and unbalanced. They also 

stated that the report did not sufficiently acknowledge the policy and 

other changes made by the Commission and that the previous leadership 

of the Commission was responsible for many of the issues discussed in our 

report. We have carefully reviewed the Commissioners’ comments and 

continue to believe that our findings, conclusions, and recommendations 

are well grounded and that the report is balanced and unbiased. Their 

comments and our responses are summarized on pages 37 and 38. The 

written comments we received from the Commissioners are contained in 

appendixes III and IV. 

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was established to serve as an 

independent, bipartisan, fact-finding agency whose mission is to 

investigate and report on the status of civil rights in the United States. It is 

required to study the impact of federal civil rights laws and policies with 

regard to discrimination or denial of equal protection of the laws. 

According to its statutory mission, the Commission also serves as a 

national clearinghouse for information related to its mission and 

investigates charges of citizens being deprived of the right to vote because 

of color, race, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin. For the 

purpose of carrying out its mission, the Commission may hold hearings 

and has the power to administer oaths, issue subpoenas for the attendance 

Background 
Page 6 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

of witnesses and the production of written materials, take depositions, and 

use written interrogatories to obtain information about matters that are 

the subject of a Commission hearing or report. However, because the 

Commission lacks enforcement powers that would enable it to apply 

remedies in individual cases, the Commission refers specific complaints to 

the appropriate federal, state, or local government agency for action.1

 Its 

operations are also governed by the provisions of the Sunshine Act, which 

requires the Commission to open most of its meetings to the public.2

By statute, the structure of the Commission has three key components—

the Commissioners, the Staff Director, and the state advisory committees: 

• The Commission is directed by eight part-time Commissioners who serve 

6-year staggered terms. Four Commissioners are appointed by the 

President, two by the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and two by the 

Speaker of the House of Representatives. With the concurrence of a 

majority of the Commission’s members, the President also designates a 

Chairperson and Vice Chairperson from among the Commissioners. No 

more than four Commissioners can be of the same political party.3

• The Staff Director is appointed by the President with the concurrence of a 

majority of the Commissioners. A full-time employee, the Staff Director 

serves as the administrative head of the Commission. All Commission 

offices and senior staff report directly to the Staff Director. 

• The Commission has established 51 state advisory committees composed 

of private citizens appointed by the Commission who volunteer to assist 

 1

Several agencies have enforcement authority for civil rights issues. For example, the Equal 

Employment Opportunity Commission is charged with enforcing specific federal 

employment antidiscrimination statutes. The Civil Rights Division of the Department of 

Justice also enforces federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, sex, 

disability, religion, and national origin. 

2

In general, the Government in the Sunshine Act, 5 U.S.C. 552b (2000), requires collegial 

bodies composed of two or more individual members to conduct and dispose of agency 

business at meetings which have been announced in advance, for which an agenda has 

been published and at which the public may attend and observe. Some meetings can be 

closed if they meet specific statutory requirements. 

3

As of March 2006, the Commission members included four Republicans, one Independent, 

and two Democrats. One position was vacant. In recent years, several Commissioners have 

changed their party affiliation during their tenures. For example, one Commissioner was 

appointed to the Commission as a Republican in 2001 but changed her party affiliation to 

Independent in December 2004. 
Page 7 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

the agency by identifying local civil rights issues, some of which may 

become important at the national level. Each committee has a minimum of 

11 members. The state advisory committees are supported by six regional 

offices whose primary function is to assist the state committees in their 

planning, fact-finding, and reporting activities. 

The Commission’s annual appropriation has averaged about $9 million for 

more than 10 years, with salaries and benefits constituting about 

73 percent. Because of level funding since fiscal year 1995, the total 

number of full-time equivalent employees steadily declined from 95 in 

fiscal year 1995 to 64 in fiscal year 2004. As of January 1, 2006, the number 

of staff had further declined to 46 full-time staff nationwide, excluding the 

Commissioners; 9 of the 46 staff were professionals in regional offices. 

After December 2004, when a new Chair, Commissioner, and Staff 

Director were appointed, the Commission began to reevaluate its product 

development policies and matters related to the operations of its state 

advisory committees. 

Because the Commission has no enforcement authority, the “force of its 

work derives from its scholarly reports.”4

 The Commission’s work was 

intended from the outset to be “objective and free from partisanship . . . 

broad and at the same time thorough,” as the Attorney General noted 

when he transmitted the legislative proposal that established the 

Commission—the Civil Rights Act of 1957.5

 The primary written product 

produced by the Commission’s national office is a statutorily required 

annual report on federal civil rights enforcement efforts. This statutory 

report, which is transmitted to the President and Congress, contains 

findings, conclusions, and recommendations and is published by the 

national office. In addition, the national office produces other studies, 

such as reports on federal funding for civil rights programs and letters to 

agencies or members of Congress on civil rights issues. The Commission 

also invites speakers, such as attorneys and scholars, to brief the 

Commissioners on civil rights issues upon request at the Commission’s 

 4

H.R. Rep. No. 775 103rd Cong., 2d Sess., 4 (1994). 

5

Letter from Herbert Brownell, Jr. to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, April 9, 

1956, reprinted in H.R. Rep. No. 29, 85th Cong., 1st Sess. 13 (1957). In our report, 

“objectivity” means expressing facts or conditions as perceived without distortion by 

personal feelings, prejudices, or interpretations. Synonyms include “fairness,” 

“impartiality,” and “independence.” 

Commission Products 
Page 8 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

regular (generally, monthly) public meetings. Such briefings can also serve 

as the basis for Commission reports that include the speakers’ written 

statements. The Commission has also conducted public hearings with 

witnesses as part of its investigative and fact-finding mission. The 

Commission’s professional staff researches and writes its national office 

reports and organizes Commission briefings and fact-finding hearings. 

In addition to the Commission’s national office products, the state 

advisory committees produce written reports that are based on factfinding hearings and other public meetings. State advisory committee 

members propose civil rights topics for study, participate in state and local 

hearings and public meetings that they sponsor, review draft reports, and 

vote to approve state advisory committee reports to be sent to the 

Commission. Fact-finding reports may contain findings, conclusions, and 

recommendations for action. State advisory committees also issue reports 

that summarize speakers’ presentations at conferences and public 

hearings held by the committee. The Commission’s regional staff provide 

support to the state committees by organizing and attending their 

meetings, hearings, and other public events, and by researching and 

drafting reports for the committees. 

The Staff Director and Commissioners play key roles in approving the 

Commission’s products. The Staff Director is responsible, among other 

duties, for approving all national office project proposals, project designs, 

and draft products before they are forwarded to the Commissioners for 

review. The Staff Director also approves all state advisory committee 

activities, project proposals, and reports. Commissioners vote to approve 

national office products at key stages, such as project proposals and final 

drafts, and they also receive all state advisory committee final reports but 

do not vote to accept or reject them. 

The Commission’s quality assurance policies for its national office and 

state advisory committee products are set forth in its Administrative 

Manual,

6 Legal Sufficiency and Defame and Degrade Manual, and 

Hearing Manual. In addition, the Commission’s quality assurance policies 

for its state advisory committee products are set forth in the Commission’s 

 6

This manual contains the Commission’s administrative instructions and policies for many 

of its day-to-day operations. Hereafter, we refer to the Administrative Manual as the 

Commission’s policy manual. 

Quality Assurance Policies 
Page 9 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

State Advisory Committee Handbook, published by the Commission in 

February 1998. The Commission’s policies for its state advisory 

committees provide guidance for developing and approving project 

proposals and reports and conducting fact-finding hearings and public 

meetings. Some of the Commission’s regional offices also have issued 

memorandums and other documents on policies affecting their products. 

(See apps. V and VI for further information on the Commission’s policies 

and processes for developing and approving national office and state 

advisory committee products.) 

The Commission’s state advisory committees were established to function 

as the “eyes and ears” of the Commission on civil rights issues. The 

Commission’s statute authorizes the creation of advisory committees and 

directs the Commission to establish at least one advisory committee in 

every state and the District of Columbia. Each state committee has a 

charter that enables it to operate and identifies its members. Each charter 

is valid for a term of 2 years, and the committee terminates if the charter is 

not renewed at the end of the term.7

 The Commission is responsible for 

renewing state advisory committee charters. 

The mission of the state advisory committees is to investigate within their 

states any subject that the Commission itself is authorized to investigate 

and provide advice to the Commission in writing about their findings and 

recommendations. The committees must confine their studies to the state 

covered by their charters. They are not limited to subjects chosen by the 

Commission for their study but may study any subjects within the purview 

of the Commission’s statute. More specifically, the state advisory 

committees advise the Commission about (1) any alleged denials of the 

right to vote due to discrimination or fraud, (2) any matters related to 

discrimination or denial of equal protection of the law and the effect 

federal laws and policies have with respect to equal protection of the laws, 

and (3) any matters of mutual concern in the preparation of reports of the 

Commission to the President and Congress. Advisory committees are also 

charged to receive reports, suggestions, and recommendations from 

individuals, public and private organizations, and public officials upon 

matters pertinent to advisory committee inquiries; assist the Commission 

 7

The Commission recently asked Congress to change the term of each state advisory 

committee from 2 years to 4 years but as of February 2006, this change had not been made. 

FACA limits charters to 2 years and provides other operating parameters for advisory 

committees. See 5 U.S.C. App. 1-16 (2000). 

State Advisory Committees 
Page 10 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

in the exercise of its clearinghouse function; and, attend, as observers, any 

open hearing or conference that the Commission may hold within their 

state. 

To carry out their mission to gather information and to advise the 

Commission on state and local civil rights issues, state advisory 

committees are authorized to hold fact-finding meetings and invite 

government officials and private persons to provide information and their 

views on various subjects. Advisory committee meetings are open to the 

public, and a designated federal employee must be present at all meetings. 

Any person may submit a written statement at any business or fact-finding 

meeting of an advisory committee and, at the discretion of the designated 

federal employee, may make an oral presentation. 

The Commission’s relations with its state advisory committees are guided 

and regulated by FACA. Enacted in 1972, FACA prescribes certain ground 

rules that govern all federal advisory committees, including the 

Commission’s 51 advisory committees. Under the act, GSA established a 

Committee Management Secretariat, which is tasked with prescribing 

administrative guidelines and management controls for advisory 

committees and providing advice, assistance, and guidance to advisory 

committees to improve their performance. In turn, FACA requires each 

agency head to establish uniform administrative guidelines and 

management controls for its advisory committees that are consistent with 

the Secretariat’s directives. Under FACA, advisory committees are to have 

a balanced representation of views and adequate funding and support, and 

to exercise independent judgment without inappropriate influence from 

the appointing agency or any other party.8

The Commission has some policies designed to ensure the quality of its 

products. However, it does not have policies for ensuring an objective 

examination of the issues or ensuring accountability for the decisions 

made on its products. The Commission’s policies for developing and 

approving its products do not contain criteria to be used by the Staff 

Director or Commissioners and do not provide for the representation of 

diverse perspectives or the use of experts as external reviewers. In 

addition, the Commission’s policies do not provide transparency for the 

decisions made in regard to its national office products, and the 

 8

5 U.S.C. App. 5(b) and (c) (2000). 

The Commission 

Lacks Policies for 

Ensuring Objectivity 

or Providing 

Accountability for Its 

Products 
Page 11 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Commission has not obtained the services of an Inspector General, as we 

previously recommended, to strengthen its accountability. In contrast, the 

Commission’s policies for its state advisory committees are more 

comprehensive than those for its national office. 

The Commission has policies for developing and approving its national 

office products—reports, briefings, and hearings—that provide some 

safeguards for the quality of these products, but it lacks policies for 

ensuring their objectivity. More specifically, the Commission does not 

have a policy requiring the inclusion of balanced and varied perspectives 

in its national office reports, briefings, and hearings, nor does it have a 

policy on the use of external reviewers. In addition, although the 

Commission requires the Staff Director and Commissioners to approve its 

national office products at key junctures in their development, its policies 

do not include criteria for their assessment of these products. 

The Commission’s policies on the quality of its national office products are 

fairly general, requiring the reports to be accurate, well written, and 

timely. For example, it is Commission policy to issue “well-written 

documents that meet high standards of accuracy and timeliness,” 

according to the Commission’s policy manual. Similarly, the offices that 

develop Commission products are responsible for ensuring that the draft 

report is “well written, accurate, and of high quality” before the report is 

published, and staff must “double-check sources” in draft reports “for 

accuracy and conformance with the appropriate rules of citation.” In 

addition to these general policies, the Commission requires four 

independent reviews of draft reports primarily designed to ensure their 

accuracy: (1) an editorial review;9

 (2) a legal sufficiency review; (3) a 

“defame and degrade” review to ensure that, if reports cast aspersions on 

any persons named in them, those persons will be offered an opportunity 

to respond; and (4) if needed, a review by agencies affected by the report. 

(See app. V for further information on the Commission’s policies and 

processes for developing and approving national office products.) 

 9

The purpose of the editorial review is to determine the adequacy and accuracy of the 

substantive information in the draft document, according to the policy manual. However, 

Commission officials we interviewed generally agreed that editorial reviewers tended to 

focus on issues such as grammatical correctness, inconsistencies, and clarity, rather than 

on substantive issues such as the adequacy of evidence. 

Although the Commission 

Has Policies That Provide 

Some Safeguards, It Lacks 

Policies Designed to 

Ensure the Objectivity of 

Its National Office 

Products 

Commission Policies Provide 

General Criteria for Ensuring 

Quality 
Page 12 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

The Staff Director and Commissioners exercise considerable control in 

carrying out these policies. The Staff Director plays a pivotal role in 

approving all interim documents, such as proposals, outlines, discovery 

plans, and draft reports, throughout their development.10 The Staff 

Director must approve all documents before they can be sent to the 

Commissioners for approval. Under new policies effective in May 2005, the 

Commissioners are required to approve Commission products at all key 

stages, from proposal development through final report stages, and their 

approval requires a majority vote. If there are any significant changes to a 

product at any stage, the Staff Director and Commissioners are required to 

approve these changes as well. This change marks a significant 

improvement over previous Commission policy, in which the 

Commissioners had limited involvement in the development of its 

products.11 The previously limited role was a source of considerable 

concern to some Commissioners and led to our 2003 recommendation that 

the Commission provide for increased involvement of the Commissioners 

in planning and implementation.12

The Commission has issued four reports and conducted several briefings 

under the new policy requiring greater Commissioner involvement.13 Two 

of these reports were based on briefings made to the Commissioners. 

From July 2005 to February 2006, the Commission conducted five briefings 

with invited speakers presenting their perspectives on specific civil rights 

issues, such as the reauthorization of expiring provisions of the Voting 

Rights Act and racial disparity studies. The papers that speakers submitted 

for these briefings provide the basis for briefing reports published by the 

Commission. 

 10A discovery plan describes the methods to be used to obtain the information needed to 

develop a product, such as issuing subpoenas for hearings, document requests, and 

interrogatories—formal questions sent to federal agencies, and nongovernmental 

organizations when appropriate, that require a written response and documentation. 

11Under previous policy, Commissioners could approve proposals and design summaries at 

the beginning of product development and vote to approve final reports at the end, but did 

not otherwise play an active role in product development. 

12See GAO, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: More Operational and Financial Oversight 

Needed, GAO-04-18 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 31, 2003). 

13U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: Federal Procurement after Adarand (Washington, D.C.: 

Sept. 2005); Funding Federal Civil Rights Enforcement: The President’s 2006 Request 

(Washington, D.C.: Oct. 2005); The Economic Stagnation of the Black Middle Class 

(Washington, D.C.: Dec. 2005); and Reauthorization of the Temporary Provisions of the 

Voting Rights Act (Washington, D.C.: Feb. 2006). 
Page 13 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

The Commission does not have a policy requiring the representation of 

varied perspectives in its national office reports, in contrast to its policies 

for state advisory committee reports, which are required to “represent a 

variety of different and opposing views.”14 For example, the initial draft of 

the Commission’s 2005 report, Federal Procurement after Adarand (the 

Adarand report)—the most significant report recently issued by the 

Commission because it was the statutorily required annual report—

reflected a range of research and perspectives on a controversial issue 

involving the application of racial considerations in federal contracting.15

The Commissioners had agreed upon this range of perspectives when they 

voted to approve the report’s outline in April 2005. However, in response 

to comments from a few Commissioners, the Staff Director removed major 

sections of the report that supported one perspective, that “race 

conscious” strategies are still needed to increase minority businesses’ 

participation in federal contracts.16 As a result, the main text of the final 

 14Including dissenting statements by Commissioners in reports is one of the avenues 

available for broadening a national office report to include varied perspectives. Such 

statements are now provided for under a new policy that the Commission approved in May 

2005. However, in practice, relying upon dissenting statements can be problematic because 

it places the burden on the dissenting Commissioners to obtain and analyze data and write 

the dissents without necessarily having support from the Commission staff. The process 

also assumes that Commissioners who wish to write dissents will be given access to data 

and adequate time to write their statements. Similarly, although members of state advisory 

committees can submit dissenting statements, the Commission’s new policy for these 

committees, approved in February 2006, limits these statements to no more than one page. 

15The title of this report refers to the Supreme Court’s 1995 decision, Adarand 

Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U.S. 200 (1995), which addressed the use of set-asides for 

small and disadvantaged businesses in federal contracts. Prior to the decision, federal 

contracting agencies operated under the presumption that businesses owned by members 

of racial minority groups were disadvantaged and entitled to preference in awarding 

federal contracts. The Supreme Court opinion held that government benefit programs that 

use racial criteria must serve a compelling government interest and be narrowly tailored in 

order to be constitutional. The Supreme Court returned the case to the U.S. Court of 

Appeals in Colorado to decide whether the compelling interest and narrow tailoring were 

present in the case of the construction contracts questioned by the petitioner Adarand. To 

determine whether the program was narrowly tailored, the Supreme Court suggested that 

the Court of Appeals should inquire, among other things, “whether there was ‘any 

consideration of the use of race-neutral means to increase minority business participation’ 

in government contracting...” 515 U.S. at 237-238. 

16Programs that provide economic benefits to overcome the effects of past discrimination 

are said to be “race neutral” if criteria such as social or economic disadvantage are used to 

determine the availability of the economic benefit. They are said to be “race conscious” if 

race or ethnic characteristics are used to determine the availability of the economic 

benefit. Programs that use affirmative action to increase minority participation are 

generally categorized as race conscious. 

The Commission Lacks Policies 

for Ensuring the Objectivity of 

National Office Products 
Page 14 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

published report reflected only one point of view, that federal agencies 

have not sufficiently developed “race neutral” approaches to increase the 

participation of small and disadvantaged businesses in federal 

contracting.17

We also found that the Commission does not have a policy for determining 

when to use external reviewers and how reviewers should be selected for 

its national office reports. For example, for the Commission’s 2005 

Adarand report on affirmative action in federal contracting, the Staff 

Director hired a single reviewer whose work is cited in the report and who 

is widely known for his opposition to affirmative action. The contractor’s 

functions were to review the draft report and provide his “opinions, 

revisions, comments and suggestions,” based on his expertise in federal 

contracting and race-neutral alternatives. Some of the Commissioners and 

the staff responsible for preparing the report said that they did not know 

that an external reviewer had been hired, how he had been selected, what 

changes the reviewer had recommended, or which changes were included 

in the final report. Agency staff noted that the external reviewer added 

some material to the report that critiqued the work of a federal agency and 

that the Commission did not provide the agency with an opportunity to 

comment, as required by Commission policy. In addition, the Commission 

did not acknowledge the external reviewer’s participation in the published 

report. 

Although the Commission does not have a policy on using external 

reviewers, other nationally recognized research organizations, such as the 

National Academies and the Congressional Budget Office, use external 

reviewers to assess the completeness, balance, and objectivity of their 

reports.18 For both the Academies and CBO, the general principle is that 

the more controversial the topic, the greater the number of reviewers they 

use. The Academies’ extensive external review process includes preparing 

a slate of names of possible reviewers, having the names approved at two 

levels of the organization, and establishing a review coordinator. The 

 17The deleted material was the subject of the dissenting statement written by one 

Commissioner, who included the deleted material as an appendix to his dissent. 

18The National Academies is a nongovernmental institution that enlists scientists, health 

professionals, and other experts to provide the government and others with independent, 

unpaid advice on scientific and other issues that have public policy implications. CBO is a 

nonpartisan, independent congressional agency that prepares reports for Congress on 

budget-related information, including cost estimates for bills, budget and economic 

projections, and analyses of the President’s budget each year. 
Page 15 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Academies then recruit independent experts with a range of views and 

perspectives to comment on the draft report, and their comments are 

provided anonymously. In addition, to ensure that the reviewers’ 

comments are appropriately incorporated, the Academies require the 

review coordinator to document that the report adequately addressed the 

reviewers’ comments. Similarly, CBO uses external reviewers from the 

academic community and other agencies in order to obtain a wider range 

of views and twice yearly draws on the advice of a panel of experts to 

review and comment on the agency’s preliminary economic forecasts. 

Although briefings and briefing reports are becoming increasingly frequent 

Commission products, the Commission does not have a policy specifying 

how speakers for the briefings are to be identified or requiring that 

briefing panels be balanced and include a variety of perspectives.19 For 

example, the Commission held a briefing in October 2005 to discuss 

expiring provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a controversial topic 

of immediate interest. Three of the four speakers at the Commission 

briefing opposed reauthorization of a key provision of the act. One 

Commissioner we interviewed told us he thought the briefing panel was 

biased and unbalanced.20 According to the Staff Director, the way speakers 

are identified and the basis for their selection vary with each briefing, 

depending on the topic, but the Commission does not have a written 

requirement for ensuring varied perspectives in briefing panels.21 Some 

invited speakers have declined to participate in Commission briefings 

because they were unavailable on the proposed briefing dates or because 

they believed their professional roles precluded them from taking a stance 

 19In August 2005, the Commission voted to conduct briefings during nearly all of its 

monthly meetings and publish briefing reports based on them rather than issuing national 

office reports not required by its statute. If briefing reports are issued for all briefings 

conducted, as planned, this would be an increase in the number of products issued by its 

national office. From July 2005 to February 2006, the Commission held five briefings and 

issued two briefing reports. 

20According to the Commission’s new policies, Commissioners must approve briefing 

topics and the panel of speakers for briefings at a monthly Commission meeting at least 1 

month in advance of the briefing itself. In addition, in order to hold a hearing, a majority of 

the Commission or a majority of the members present at a meeting with a quorum must 

vote to approve the hearing. 

21Regarding hearings, as opposed to briefings, the Commission also lacks a policy 

specifying how witnesses for hearings are to be identified or requiring the inclusion of a 

variety of perspectives in its hearings. A Commission official told us that the witness panel 

as a whole should be balanced, although the Commission does not have a written policy to 

this effect. The Commission has not conducted hearings since 2002. 
Page 16 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

on the issues to be discussed. However, the Staff Director also told us that 

the Commission often has difficulty obtaining speakers who represent 

different perspectives on controversial topics.22 For example, in one 

instance an invited speaker declined in part because he had no confidence 

in the Commission’s receptivity to the evidence and other points of view. 

In addition, although the Commission’s new policies require the Staff 

Director and Commissioners to approve national office products at several 

stages, these policies do not include criteria designed to ensure that the 

products are objective. The Staff Director’s and Commissioners’ decisions 

to review and approve each stage of a product’s development—such as 

proposal, outline and methodology, discovery plan, and draft report—are 

not guided by written criteria, such as requiring reviewers to assess 

whether the methodology provides sufficient and relevant evidence to 

achieve the product’s objectives. According to the Staff Director, in 

addition to the Commission’s general policy guidance, his reviews of draft 

reports are largely guided by his judgment on whether the reports are 

likely to be approved by a majority of the Commissioners. The Staff 

Director made a similar point at a July 2005 public meeting, stating that 

several Commissioners had indicated that they would dissent from a draft 

report, and that his goal in removing chapters from the final report was to 

ensure that a majority of the Commissioners would vote to approve it. 

The Commission does not use some checks and balances to ensure 

Commissioner involvement and its policies do not provide transparency 

for the decisions made in regard to its products, and the Commission has 

not obtained the services of an Inspector General to strengthen its 

accountability, as we previously recommended. 

The Commission does not use some of the checks and balances needed to 

provide accountability for the decisions made on its products. Although its 

new policies involve the Commissioners far more extensively in decisions 

on its products than in the past, the Commission still does not routinely 

include all Commissioners in its deliberations as required. This problem 

predates the Commission’s new policies. For example, our 2003 report 

noted the complaints of several Commissioners that they were often 

 22The Staff Director also noted that the Commission does not pay speakers. 

Commission Policies Do 

Not Provide Accountability 

for Decisions Made on Its 

Products 

Some Product Decisions Are 

Made without Consulting All 

Commissioners 
Page 17 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

unaware of the content of Commission products until they were published 

or released to the public.23

This pattern of not including all Commissioners in its deliberations was 

especially evident with regard to the decisions made on the Adarand 

report. For example, in an early stage of the development of this report, 

the Staff Director did not consult with all of the Commissioners or obtain 

their agreement before he changed the focus of the questions used to 

collect essential data from federal agencies for the report. These 

questions—called interrogatories—significantly altered the report’s 

direction after the Commission’s staff had completed much of their 

research. However, the Commissioners were not made aware of this 

change until a Commissioner pointed out discrepancies between the 

original focus as approved by the Commission in 2003 and the 

interrogatories that went out in 2005. At a public meeting of the 

Commission, three Commissioners objected to the fact that the 

interrogatories had gone forward without the expressed authority of the 

Commissioners and that these changes were made autonomously by the 

Staff Director and the Chair. At the meeting, the Chair agreed that the 

interrogatories should not have been sent without the other 

Commissioners’ approval of the changes. 

In another example of decisions being made without the knowledge of all 

of the Commissioners, the Chair made changes to a draft briefing report 

on campus anti-Semitism based on his legal interpretation of an issue and 

private conversations with officials from the Department of Education. At 

the Commission’s February 2006 meeting, the Vice Chair said that she did 

not understand the rationale for the changes and objected to the methods 

used to obtain information on the issue. Other Commissioners questioned 

the Chair’s legal interpretation and the accuracy of the changes he made. 

Although they had planned to vote on the report at this meeting, the 

Commissioners postponed the vote because of disagreements about these 

changes and their implications for the report’s recommendations. 

Similarly, the Chair and several Commissioners sent a letter to the 

Secretary of the Department of Education (Education) disagreeing with a 

civil rights organization’s report that had criticized the department and 

 23See GAO, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: More Operational and Financial Oversight 

Needed, GAO-04-18 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 31, 2003). 
Page 18 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

commending Education for its commitment to civil rights.24 However, the 

Commissioner, who, at that time, was the sole Democrat,25 noted in a 

separate dissenting letter that he was not informed about the majority’s 

letter until after it was drafted and that he did not understand the other 

Commissioners’ impetus for writing the letter.26

In several recent instances, Commissioners have also complained about 

not receiving key documents for review or receiving them too late to help 

them in their deliberations. For example, at the Commission’s monthly 

public meeting in January 2006, several Commissioners complained that 

they had not received transcripts of Commission meetings since October 

2005. Among other things, the transcripts contained information on a 

briefing that Commission staff had used to draft a briefing report on 

reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. However, because the 

Commissioners had not received copies of the transcript used to prepare 

this report, they postponed a vote to approve the report for publication. In 

addition, the Commissioners postponed a vote accepting a state advisory 

committee report for publication because they had not received it in time 

to review it. Similarly, in July 2005, the Commissioners were sent a final 

draft of the Adarand report for review on the same day that they voted on 

its publication, despite the fact that it contained comments from an 

affected federal agency and an external reviewer that required fresh 

review. In addition, the Commissioner who was the sole Democrat at that 

time said that he did not receive additional changes to the report that were 

sent to all of the other Commissioners. 

The Commission’s decisions on the content of its products lack 

transparency because, in some cases, they are not discussed publicly or 

documented. For example, there was no documentation of the basis for 

the Staff Director’s decision to remove several sections of the Adarand 

report in response to comments received from several Commissioners 

 24Letter from Chairman Reynolds, Vice Chair Thernstrom, and Commissioners Braceras, 

Kirsanow, and Taylor to the Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings (July 5, 2005). See 

http://www.usccr.gov. The report referred to in the Commission’s letters, written by the 

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, is entitled, “Closing the Gap: Moving from 

Rhetoric to Reality in Opening Doors to Higher Education for African-American Students,” 

(June 23, 2005). See http://www.naacpldf.org/landing.aspx?sub=52. 

25As of July 2005, the Commission had one Democratic Commissioner. A second Democrat 

was appointed in October 2005. 

26Letter from Commissioner Yaki to the Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings (July 6, 

2005). See http://www.usccr.gov. 

The Commission Has Not 

Documented Key Decisions on 

Its Products 
Page 19 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

during their initial review of the draft report. In addition, in accordance 

with the Commission’s new policies, the Commissioners’ individual 

reviews of the draft report were not discussed in a public meeting.27 Two 

Commissioners said that they were unaware of the changes made to the 

report until after the decision had been made to remove the sections of the 

report from the draft. In a public meeting afterward, the Staff Director 

stated that he had removed the sections because it had become clear to 

him that with these sections, the report would not receive enough votes to 

be approved for publication. One Republican Commissioner told us that 

although he agreed with the analysis in the Adarand report, he had 

abstained from voting on the final report because he objected to the report 

process and because he did not want a biased report to be issued by the 

Commission. 

Another means of documenting the quality of products is the use of 

checklists. Although the Commission does not have checklists for 

assessing the quality of its national office reports, it does have such 

checklists for assessing the quality of state advisory committee reports. 

The checklists include a section to be completed by the Office of the Staff 

Director that documents the office’s assessment of the balance, writing, 

and report conclusions of state advisory committee reports before 

transmitting these reports to the Commissioners. However, the 

Commission does not appear to use the checklists for state advisory 

committee reports, since they were not always completed or were missing. 

For example, although we requested copies of the completed checklists 

for nine state advisory committee reports issued since 2002, the 

Commission could not provide us with copies of any completed checklists. 

Finally, the Commission has not obtained independent oversight, as we 

recommended in 2004 to address long-standing concerns about its 

 27Two review stages, including review of draft reports, do not require Commissioners’ vote 

to occur in a public meeting, where the discussion and decisions would be transcribed. The 

Commission’s new policies allow Commissioners to approve each stage of a product’s 

development outside of public meetings in writing by means of a process called “notational 

voting.” Notational voting is a procedure used to consider and act on agency business 

without holding a formal meeting. Written proposals are circulated among the 

Commissioners and they vote by fax or mail; no public deliberations on the issues are held. 

However, if any Commissioner decides that an issue requires public deliberation, the 

notational vote is canceled and the issue is discussed at the Commission’s next public 

meeting. 
Page 20 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

management and accountability.28 Specifically, we recommended that the 

Commission seek the services of an existing Inspector General to help 

keep the Commission and Congress informed of problems and to conduct 

and supervise necessary audits and investigations of the Commission’s 

operations. In 2005, the Commission acted to implement our 2003 

recommendation to increase Commissioners’ involvement in the 

development of its national office products and also began to implement 

our recommendations on other matters, such as financial management. 

According to the Staff Director, he contacted officials from some Offices 

of Inspectors General, including GSA, but they declined to provide their 

services, noting that most of the Commission’s problems would take too 

much of their staff time. The Staff Director also told us that the 

Commission had contracted with an accounting firm for advice on how to 

correct problems identified in their recent financial audit. This action, 

however, will not address the weaknesses we identified in the 

Commission’s policies, or provide reasonable assurance of the objectivity 

of its products and accountability for the decisions made on these 

products. 

For state advisory committee products, which are researched and written 

principally by the Commission’s regional office staff, the Commission has 

quality assurance policies that are generally more comprehensive than its 

policies for its national office products. More specifically, Commission 

policy explicitly requires state advisory committees to incorporate 

balanced, varied, and opposing perspectives in their hearings and reports, 

in contrast to national office products, which do not have such a 

requirement. According to the Commission’s administrative policy manual, 

state advisory committees “must seek to hear a variety of points of view 

and opinions” in conducting their work. This policy also notes that 

“balance does not mean that the conclusions of a State Advisory 

Committee agree with or include all positions, only that the research and 

opinions listened to represent a variety of different and opposing views on 

the topic at hand.” To reinforce this focus, the checklist for transmitting 

state advisory committee proposals to the national office for approval asks 

the Staff Director’s office to determine whether the sources to be used 

represent a variety of opinions on the issues. Similarly, the checklist for 

transmitting state advisory committee reports to the national office 

 28See GAO, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: Management Could Benefit from Improved 

Strategic Planning and Increased Oversight, GAO-05-77 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 8, 2004). 

Commission Policies for 

State Advisory Committee 

Products Are More 

Comprehensive than 

Those for Its National 

Office Products 
Page 21 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

requires the Office of the Staff Director to determine whether varied and 

opposing views were identified and discussed in the report. The national 

office does not have such quality assurance checklists for assessing its 

own products. In addition, state advisory committee members are required 

to review draft committee reports for their clarity, substance, objectivity, 

and conclusions, unlike Commissioners, who do not have criteria for 

reviewing Commission products. The regional directors are also 

responsible for ensuring that state advisory committee reports meet 

appropriate methodological, organizational, and balance standards. State 

advisory committee products are also subject to the four reviews required 

for all Commission products: the editorial review, legal sufficiency review, 

defame and degrade review, and affected agency review. (See app. VI for 

further details on the process for approving state advisory committee 

reports.) 

The state advisory committees have played a key role in accomplishing the 

work of the Commission, but most committees cannot currently conduct 

any work because the Commission has not renewed their charters. The 

Commission has also instituted new membership criteria for the 

committees and has required all of the committees whose charters have 

expired to redraft their applications for renewal to comply with the new 

criteria. Furthermore, over the past 5 years, the activities of the state 

advisory committees have been significantly limited, in part because the 

Commission, working under budget restraints, has reduced the resources 

available to conduct their work and also because it has delayed reviewing 

and accepting their reports for publication. In addition, the Commission 

has not sought the views of state advisory committee members in its 

strategic planning process or on key decisions that affect the committees. 

Finally, although many of these are long-standing issues, the Commission 

has not provided for independent oversight of its policies and practices for 

state advisory committees. 

The Commission’s state advisory committees have operated as a unique 

national network intended to provide the Commission with information on 

local civil rights issues that can be used in its work at the national level. 

The state advisory committees have identified and examined issues 

through a variety of activities and provided information to the Commission 

and the public in written reports. Since 1980, the state advisory committee 

issued 200 of the 254 reports published by the Commission. Other 

activities conducted by the state advisory committees include open 

forums, public meetings, and formal hearings that have provided avenues 

State Advisory 

Committees Have 

Played a Key Role in 

the Commission’s 

Work, but Most of 

Their Operations 

Have Been Suspended 

State Advisory Committees 

Have Identified, Examined, 

and Publicized Many Local 

Civil Rights Issues 
Page 22 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

for the public to communicate their civil rights experiences and for the 

committees to define current local civil rights issues that may not yet be 

on the national agenda. 

Some of the committees’ reports have prompted action by the 

Commission. For example, in 1973, the California State Advisory 

Committee held hearings on the concerns of the Asian American and 

Pacific Islander communities. These hearings resulted in two state 

advisory committee reports: Asian American and Pacific Peoples: A Case 

of Mistaken Identity (February 1975) and A Dream Unfulfilled: Korean 

and Philipino Health Professionals in California (May 1975). These 

reports were the first studies conducted by the Commission on these 

issues, according to agency officials. The Commission issued national 

office reports on these issues in 1986, 1988, and 1992. More recently, after 

the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, the Commission asked the state 

advisory committees to gather information on the status of Muslim, Arab 

American, and others perceived to be from these communities in their 

states. Twenty state committees held information-gathering events—such 

as town hall meetings—at which the public was invited to speak about 

experiences that may have threatened the civil rights of members of the 

Muslim community. As a result, nine state advisory committees’ reports 

were issued by the Commission on the civil rights of Muslims and other 

communities in their states, and the Commission issued a statement that 

summarized the results of these activities and reports.29

State advisory committee reports also have had an impact on their states’ 

operations, including state legislation. Members of several committees told 

us about legislation that had passed or state offices that had been affected 

through their efforts. For example, officials with one of the Commission’s 

regional offices told us that in 2003, one of its states formed a multi-agency 

state task force to work on an issue reported by the Nevada State Advisory 

Committee on the educational opportunities of Native American Indian 

students in the state’s public schools. As a result of the task force’s efforts, 

the state enacted legislation designed to improve educational outcomes of 

Native American Indian students. State advisory committee members also 

noted that just conducting activities, without issuing a report, can have an 

effect. For example, members of one committee told us that they visited a 

local prison after receiving allegations of sexual abuse of female detainees 

 29U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Anniversary Update on Commission Activities Related 

to September 11 (Washington, D.C.: Sept. 2002). 
Page 23 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

being held on account of their illegal entry into the United States. Local 

newspapers were present during the committee’s visits, bringing the issue, 

which was not well known, to the public’s attention. 

In addition, state advisory committee members reported that they 

participated in activities that gave them a voice in their states’ civil rights 

operations. For example, they reported working with the state civil rights 

offices to inform them of local issues and assist in writing proposed 

legislation, giving testimony to state legislatures, and training state and 

local officials on current civil rights issues. In responding to our survey, 

one chairman reported that on the basis of work conducted by the state 

advisory committee, he testified before his state’s Joint House and Senate 

Committee on several minority issues, including racial harassment in 

schools and discrimination in hiring. Another advisory committee chair 

wrote that following a report the committee issued on hiring practices and 

appointments to state commissions and boards, the governor committed 

to improving state practices and asked the committee for assistance in 

identifying minorities to serve on state boards and commissions. 

State advisory committee members also reported being well connected to 

their local communities because of their professions. Those we 

interviewed included a state legislator, several university professors and 

lawyers, a director of a county Equal Employment Opportunity 

Commission office, the administrator of the regional office of a federal 

agency, and a church minister—roles that allowed them to influence civil 

rights issues in their communities. (See appendix VII for a summary of the 

profiles of state advisory committee members as listed in their most 

recently approved charters. To view the details by state of all 

51 committee membership profiles, see an electronic supplement at 

http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-551SP.) 

Consistent with the requirements in FACA, state advisory committees that 

do not have an approved charter cannot meet or conduct any business. 

However, as of February 2006, 38 of the 51 state advisory committees did 

not have an approved charter, and 13 of them had not had an approved 

charter for at least 2 years. Only 13 state advisory committees currently 

have approved charters as of February 2006, and their charters are due to 

expire late in 2006. (See table 1.) 

Most State Advisory 

Committee Activities Have 

Been Suspended Pending 

Renewal of the 

Committees’ Charters 
Page 24 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Table 1: Charter Expiration Dates for State Advisory Committees, as of February 2006 

Year of charter expiration Number of states States 

2003 13 CA, DE, IO, MI, MS, MO, NJ, NC, PA, SC, UT, WI, WY 

2004 

23

 AL, AZ, AR, DC, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MD, MA, NE, NE, NY, 

OK, OR, TN, TX, VA, WV 

2005 2 CT, MN 

Subtotal—number of states without 

approved charters 38

 

2006a 13 AK, CO, HI, ME, MT, NV, NM, ND, OH, RI, SD, VT, WA 

Subtotal–-number of states with 

approved charters 13

 

Total 51 

Source: U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. 

a

These charters will expire in either September or December 2006. 

The primary reason for the current delays in renewing the state advisory 

committees’ charters is that the Commission recently initiated significant 

changes in the criteria for membership in the state advisory committees. In 

addition, the Commission chose to cancel pending applications for 

renewal until members could be chosen to serve on the rechartered 

committees that reflect the new membership criteria, further delaying the 

process of establishing active new charters for the committees. The new 

membership criteria were first proposed as a regulatory change in 

November 2005. As of February 2006, one portion of the criteria had been 

incorporated in a new regulation for the Commission; the remaining 

criteria had not been finalized.30

The proposed new membership criteria are substantially different from the 

previous criteria and could result in major changes in state advisory 

committee membership. First, the Commission’s new policy requiring 

nondiscrimination in the selection of committee members was published 

in February 2006 as a new regulation. It supersedes the Commission’s 

previous regulation requiring the membership of each state advisory 

 30On February 17, 2006, the Commission published its final rule on state advisory 

committee membership, which excised all of the specific information that had been 

mentioned in the proposed criteria. (See 71 Fed. Reg. 8483.) This final rule states simply 

that advisory committees shall generally consist of at least 11 members serving fixed terms 

who are appointed and removed by the Commission. It further states that no person shall 

be denied the opportunity to serve based on race, age, sex, religion, national origin, or 

disability. Other criteria will be delineated in the Commission’s administrative manual. 

Changes in Membership 

Criteria Have Delayed Charter 

Renewal 
Page 25 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

committee to reflect and be representative of the state’s population. It also 

replaced a 1990 administrative policy that required minority group 

membership to be no less than 40 percent or more than 65 percent of the 

state advisory committee. Secondly, the proposed new criteria would 

require the Commission to consider selecting members with more 

academic technical skills, such as knowledge of law and statistical 

analysis, instead of having general skills and a diversity of experience and 

knowledge from business, labor, and other perspectives. Finally, the 

proposed new criteria would require each advisory committee to include 

“members of both political parties.” If adopted, this will replace the 

previous regulation requiring the committees to reflect the political 

affiliation proportional to the demographics. In addition, the criteria do 

not refer to members who are politically independent, although 

independents currently make up about one-quarter of the committees’ 

membership. See table 2 for a comparison of the previous and proposed 

new criteria.31

Table 2: Comparison of the Previous and Proposed New Criteria for State Advisory Committee Membership 

Previous criteria Proposed new criteria 

Diversitya Diversityc

Membership shall be reflective of the different ethnic, racial, and 

religious communities within each state, and the membership shall 

also be representative with respect to sex, political affiliation, age, 

and disability status. 

No person is to be denied an opportunity to serve on a state 

advisory committee because of race, age, sex, religion, national 

origin, or disability. The Commission shall encourage membership 

on the state advisory committee to be broadly diverse. 

Political representationb Political representationd

The membership should reflect the bipartisan character of the 

Commission. 

Each committee should have members of both political parties. 

Knowledgeb Knowledged

Skills to facilitate the work of the Commission. The handbook also 

notes that a broad cross-section of representation should be 

based on other factors such as business and labor. This diversity 

gives the committees the benefit of a wide range of knowledge, 

experience, and perspective on many subjects, which should also 

help ensure that advice will be given serious consideration. 

Consideration of experiences, including, but not limited to, social 

science research, legal research and analysis, and statistical 

analysis; professional expertise and attainment; demonstrated 

interest in civil rights issues of color, race, religion, sex, age, 

disability, and national origin and in voting rights. 

Term lengthb Term lengthd

Members are appointed for a 2-year term with no limit defined for 

the number of 2-year terms that could be served. 

10 years or five 2-year terms. 

Source: GAO analysis of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights documents. 

 31The criteria proposed in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking will be detailed in 

forthcoming Administrative Instructions. See 70 Fed. Reg. 8483 (Feb. 17, Nov. 2006). 
Page 26 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

a

45 C.F.R. 703.5 (2005). 

b

The Commission’s State Advisory Committee Handbook. 

c

71 Fed. Reg. 8483 (Feb.17, 2006). 

d

This criterion was proposed in the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking issued on Nov. 4, 2005. 70 Fed. 

Reg. 67129. The Commission has announced that it will be included in the new Administrative 

Instructions. See 71 Fed. Reg. 8483 (Feb.17, 2006). 

The proposed new criteria require both political parties to be represented, 

and FACA requires that federal advisory membership be fairly balanced in 

terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be 

performed.32 However, it is not yet clear how the Commission intends to 

achieve this balance. According to the Staff Director, having one person of 

a minority party on an 11-member state advisory committee would meet a 

new criterion for each committee to have members of both political 

parties. 

According to the Commission’s Chair, the new membership criteria were 

developed in order to, among other things, move away from racially and 

ethnically based representation toward greater diversity in expertise and 

ideas. For example, according to the Staff Director, the proposed new 

membership criteria are intended to increase the diversity of skills among 

committee members. One reason for this is that because of the shortage of 

staff in the regional offices, the Commission is considering having state 

advisory committee members contribute to the writing of reports 

themselves, a course of action that, in the view of the Staff Director, would 

require committee members to have the expertise needed for such an 

undertaking. In addition, according to the Chair, limiting members’ terms 

to 10 years or five 2-year terms will promote the selection of more new 

members with new ideas.33

The Commission received several objections to its decision to suspend the 

charter approval process until the membership criteria had been finalized. 

In July 2005, the chairs of 32 state advisory committees sent a letter to the 

Commission Chair requesting that pending charter applications be 

approved and stating that there was no justification for not approving 

 32See 5 U.S.C. App. 5(b)(2) and(c). 

33While the previous membership criteria defined a term as 2 years (the length of the 

charter), there was no mention of how many 2-year terms could be served, and members 

were commonly reappointed for many terms. For example, 22 percent of the chairs who 

responded to our survey reported that they had served on the committee for more than 

20 years. 
Page 27 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

charters pending policy formulation. During a Commission meeting in 

August 2005, at which this issue was raised, one Commissioner made a 

similar proposal, adding that this would also allow the Commissioners 

more time to consider whether to change the membership criteria. 

However, the majority of the Commissioners voted not to extend the state 

advisory committees’ charters or conditionally approve charter renewal 

applications that had already been filed. 

Although, under FACA, state advisory committees that do not have an 

approved charter cannot meet or conduct any business, we found that—

both in the past and recently—the committees have continued their 

activities while their applications for renewal were being considered. In 

the past, many state advisory committees continued working without a 

charter, according to agency officials we interviewed. Until recently, when 

we questioned the Commission about the current delays in approving the 

committees’ charters, we found that state advisory committees in several 

states have routinely continued their work and meetings. For example, 

representatives of two advisory committees told us that they generally 

operate normally, except for the actual publishing of reports, when they 

do not have an approved charter. However, in December 2005, after the 

Commission consulted with its solicitor, the Staff Director informed the 

state advisory committees that holding meetings and engaging in other 

activities were not permissible under FACA in the absence of a charter. 

Since 2000, the number of state advisory committee reports that have been 

published has declined considerably, partly because limited funding has 

contributed to a reduction in regional staff, travel, and other committee 

activities, and also because of the Commission’s delays in approving state 

advisory committee reports. According to the Commission’s policy, state 

advisory committees should complete one project every 2 years if funding 

and staffing permit. With 51 state advisory committees, committee reports 

have been the mainstay of the Commission’s publications, and state 

advisory committees have produced 200 of the 254 Commission reports 

published since 1980. In the past 5 years, the committees have produced 

38 reports. As shown in figure 1, since 2001, the number of reports issued 

by the state advisory committees each year has steadily declined. 

Some Committees Have 

Continued to Operate without 

Charters 

State Advisory Committee 

Activities Have Declined 
Page 28 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Figure 1: Number of Reports Issued by State Advisory Committees, 2000 to 2005 

Over the years—especially in the past 15 years—the number of staff in the 

regional offices has declined considerably because of office closures, 

attrition, and voluntary separations. According to Commission officials, in 

1980, there were 10 regional offices and each office had a director, 

attorney, editor, and three or four civil rights analysts. In 1985, the number 

of regional offices was reduced from 10 to 3, their legal functions were 

moved to the national office, and the number of staff in each office was 

also reduced. In 1991, the Commission opened 3 additional regional 

offices, bringing the total up to 6 offices, but the number of staff in each 

office continued to decline. During the most recent 5-year period, as the 

agency’s budget remained flat, these declines continued, with staff 

decreasing from 19 staff in 2000 to 9 in 2006. Currently, each of the 

6 regional offices has only 1 or 2 professional staff—a total of 9 as of 

January 2006—and each regional office supports several state advisory 

committees, ranging from 6 to 14 committees for each office. Furthermore, 

the Commission has approved a plan to reduce the number of regional 

offices to 4 offices in fiscal year 2007 because of budgetary concerns. (See 

table 3.) 

Declines in Regional Staff 

Have Limited the 

Committees’ Activities 
Page 29 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Table 3: Number of Regional Offices and Professional Staff, 1980 to 2006 

Year 

Number of 

regional offices Staffing 

1980 

10

 a director, attorney, editor, and 3 or 4 civil 

rights analysts 

1985 3 a director and civil rights analysts 

1991 6 a director and civil rights analysts 

2006 

6

 a director and 1 civil rights analyst (in two 

offices, one person fills both positions) 

2007 (proposed) 4 Not yet determined 

Source: GAO analysis of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights information. 

This decline in the number of professional regional staff affects the ability 

of state advisory committees to carry out their work. The state advisory 

committees depend on regional staff to arrange meetings and hearings, 

conduct interviews and research, and write and process their reports. 

Because federal advisory committees cannot hold a meeting without 

having a designated federal official, a regional staff person must attend 

every state advisory committee meeting for every state in the region.34 In 

our survey of state advisory committee chairs, 75 percent of chairs who 

responded reported that they were unable to hold meetings in the period 

2000 to 2005 because no regional staff was available to attend. In addition, 

because the work performed by regional staff on the state advisory 

committee reports is extensive, it is difficult for the regional staff to work 

on more than one or two reports at one time. The members of one state 

advisory committee told us their regional office had established a “take 

turns” policy, where the one regional analyst works with one state 

advisory committee at a time. In addition, members of another state 

committee said that they were not able to produce reports with critical 

analyses because no regional staff with the appropriate expertise was 

available to conduct the work. As a result, the committee issued a 

“Statement of Concern” to the Commission, a document that does not have 

the impact of a report, instead of producing the analytical report that the 

committee had wanted on the issue. 

The state advisory committees have also seen declines in their activities 

because they have rarely been able to travel or hold meetings. For 

example, of the chairs who responded to our survey, 85 percent reported 

 34See 5 U.S.C. 10(e) (2000). 

State Advisory Committees 

Also Hindered by Limits on 

Travel and Other Activities 
Page 30 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

that fact-finding and reporting activities were not undertaken because of 

budgetary constraints. In March 2005, the Commission told its regional 

offices and state advisory committees that no funds were available for 

travel, meetings, or hearings because of budget shortfalls. The agency’s 

annual appropriation has remained at about $9 million since 1995, 

resulting in several cost reduction measures throughout the agency. In 

January 2006, the Commission allowed some travel, telling state advisory 

committees with approved charters that a limited number of meetings 

could be held in fiscal year 2006. Since then, according to the 

Commission’s comments on our draft report, 10 state advisory committees 

conducted meetings or briefings between February and April 2006. 

In addition, regional office and advisory committee expenses cannot 

currently be tracked separately from the Commission’s other activities, a 

fact that has made it difficult to determine the level of support provided by 

the Commission. FACA requires agencies to ensure that advisory 

committees have adequate staff, quarters, and funds for the committees to 

conduct their business. The Commission’s statute also directs the 

establishment of at least one advisory committee in each state. Prior to 

2002, the Commission had designated a specific portion of its budget—

generally about $2.5 million annually—for regional office and committee 

activities.35 However, since 2003, the Commission has not identified 

specific funds for the regional offices and state advisory committees but, 

instead, has combined their expenses with other agency expenses, 

according to agency officials. 

The Commission’s policies require state advisory committee reports to go 

through an agency approval process that could negatively affect the 

committees’ independence. Such policies include a requirement for the 

Staff Director’s approval of all state advisory committee activities and 

reports. Specifically, according to the Commission’s policies, the Staff 

Director must approve proposals for nearly all types of state advisory 

committee activities, as well as any significant changes to these proposals. 

In addition, when state advisory committees send approved reports to the 

national office for editorial and legal reviews, the Staff Director’s office 

determines whether the evidence, testimony, and research in these reports 

 35According to the Commission’s policy manual, the regional offices provide required 

support services to the advisory committees. 

National Office Policies and 

Delays in Approving Advisory 

Committees’ Reports 

Negatively Affect their 

Independence 
Page 31 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

support the conclusions.36 Finally, according to Commission policy, “under 

no circumstances” can state advisory committee reports “be released to 

the public or forwarded to the Commissioners without the Staff Director’s 

approval.” 

In our discussions with state advisory committee members and regional 

office staff, many complained about the Commission holding up or 

attempting to interfere with committee products. For example, members 

of several state advisory committees told us that, in the past few years, 

they had sent completed reports approved by the committees to the Staff 

Director’s office, but the reports were not published or given to the 

Commissioners and the committees were not told what happened to them. 

Members of another state advisory committee told us that, because of the 

long time it takes for the national office reviews and approvals, it has 

taken 2 to 3 years for a report to be published. In addition, slightly over 

half of the survey respondents reported that they were dissatisfied or very 

dissatisfied with the national office’s timeliness in approving their reports. 

Some state advisory committee members told us that, at times, the 

window of opportunity for making an impact has passed by the time the 

national office publishes a state advisory committee report. For example, 

one committee chairman stated that it took the Commission 4 years to 

publish the committee’s report on limited English proficiency. He noted 

that “When it was released, the information was so stale as to render our 

effort meaningless...” Another state committee chair commented that 

issuing reports so late is “an exercise in hindsight.” This is not a new 

problem. In 1986, in response to concerns about delays in the issuance of 

state advisory committee reports, among other things, Congress held 

hearings on the subject. We testified on the decline in the number of state 

advisory committee reports and noted that the Commission had released 

two committee reports in 1985 but not as official Commission 

documents.37

In February 2006, the Commission changed its policy for the 

Commissioners’ review of state advisory committee reports. According to 

 36The Office of the Staff Director makes this determination on a checklist that regional 

offices use for transmitting committee reports to the national office, and this checklist 

contains a question on whether the report’s evidence, testimony, and research support the 

conclusions as well as other questions on the report’s balance. 

37GAO, The Operations of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, (Washington, 

D.C.: Mar. 25, 1986). 
Page 32 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

the new policy, Commissioners will receive all state advisory committee 

reports, but will no longer be asked to vote to accept or reject the reports, 

as they had done in the past. The intention in making this change was to 

allow the public access to the state advisory committees’ work without 

necessarily conveying the impression that the Commission endorses their 

findings. However, the new policy leaves in place the role of the Staff 

Director (or his designee) in ensuring the reports’ adherence to the 

Commission’s procedural and legal criteria for state advisory committees. 

Reports that have satisfied these criteria will be printed with a disclaimer 

stating: “The views expressed in this report and the findings and 

recommendations contained herein are those of a majority of the members 

of the state advisory committee and do not necessarily represent the views 

of the Commission, its individual members, or the policies of the United 

States government.” According to two Commissioners in their comments 

on our draft report, the Commission will be reviewing project procedures 

for state advisory committee products as it did previously for national 

office products. 

Until recently, the current Commission officials have not generally 

considered the views of the state advisory committees when planning 

future national office work. For example, in developing the agency’s new 

draft 5-year strategic plan, the Commission did not solicit the perspective 

of the state advisory committees on their role in accomplishing the 

agency’s strategic goals. As of January 2006, the state advisory committees 

had not been involved in developing the agency’s draft strategic plan, 

although they are key stakeholders in accomplishing the Commission’s 

goals. The first draft of the strategic plan that was submitted for 

stakeholder review in October 2005 scarcely mentioned the role of the 

state advisory committees, despite their statutory role or their many 

contributions to the Commission’s work over time. The congressional staff 

who reviewed the draft plan asked the Commission to include more 

information on the role of the state advisory committees in the plan, 

among other comments. Although the Commission obtained the 

perspectives of two regional directors who participated in a working 

group on the strategic plan, the Commission did not solicit the views of 

state advisory committee members. According to the Staff Director, the 

Commission is now working to include goals that incorporate the role of 

the state advisory committees in its strategic plan, including obtaining the 

views of the state advisory committees on the Commission’s goals and 

their role in accomplishing these goals. In February 2006, the Staff 

Director solicited the input of the state advisory committees in identifying 

possible topics for the Commission’s 2008 statutory report. 

The Current Commission 

Has Not Generally Sought 

Input from the State 

Advisory Committees on 

Its Work or Operations 
Page 33 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

The Commission has also not generally obtained the views of the state 

advisory committees when making organizational changes that directly 

affect the committees. For example, when the Staff Director proposed in 

April 2005 to close two regional offices in fiscal year 2006 as part of a 

larger plan to reduce agency expenses, the Commissioners approved the 

proposed closures without obtaining any input from the state advisory 

committees on how closures would affect their ability to conduct their 

work.38 In addition, according to the Chairman of the Commission, the 

state advisory committees did not participate in the development of the 

new criteria for state committee membership until after the criteria had 

been proposed. After receiving comments on the Commission’s failure to 

consult with the state advisory committees from several members of 

Congress, outside civil rights organizations, and others, the Staff Director 

held a meeting by conference call with all of the regional directors to 

discuss the proposed membership criteria and proposed office closures. 

However, in January 2006, the Staff Director reported that he had sought 

the perspectives of state advisory committee members in the 13 states 

with active charters on whether to ask Congress to extend the terms of the 

charters and the chairs to 4 years instead of the current 2 years. The 

Commission received comments on the proposed request from about half 

of the active committees. According to the Staff Director, most of them 

agreed with the proposal to extend the terms of the committees’ charters 

and the chairs to 4 years. 

Another indication of the Commission’s failure to involve the state 

advisory committees in its planning and decision-making efforts is its poor 

communication with the committees. For example, when the Staff 

Director and Commissioners agreed to close two of the regional offices, 

they did not inform the regional directors, who are the liaisons to the state 

advisory committees, until 3 days later, according a regional director. 

Instead, two regional directors learned about the decision from sources 

outside the Commission, including the local newspaper. In addition, only 

22 percent of state committee chairs who responded to our survey 

reported that they were satisfied with the quality of their communication 

with the national office. Furthermore, several state committee members 

we interviewed told us that there should be more communication between 

the state advisory committees and the Commission and that they believed 

that the Commission did not understand the role of the committees. More 

specifically, members told us that they thought the Commission could 

 38The planned closures were later postponed to fiscal year 2007. 
Page 34 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

make more effective and efficient use of the advisory committees if they 

knew what issues the Commission saw as priorities and how they could 

contribute to the Commission’s vision and goals. For example, several 

state advisory committee members said they thought joint reports 

prepared by more than one committee would be more efficient and allow 

the Commission to obtain more comprehensive views on a particular 

issue. In our survey, respondents identified several civil rights issues they 

had in common, such as housing, education, and employment for 

immigrants and various elements of the justice system. 

The Commission has not provided for independent oversight of its policies 

and practices for state advisory committees, despite the long-standing 

nature of many of the issues we identified regarding the Commission’s 

lack of consultation and communication with the state advisory 

committees, delays in renewing charter applications, and lack of 

timeliness and other issues in approving state advisory committee reports. 

Obtaining the services of an Inspector General, as we recommended in our 

2004 report, could provide this oversight. 

Without having policies in place for ensuring the objectivity of its reports, 

briefings, and hearings, the Commission cannot provide adequate 

assurance that it is achieving its mission as an independent, bipartisan 

fact-finding agency by informing often controversial debates over civil 

rights issues for the public’s benefit. It is therefore important for the 

Commission’s credibility that its Commissioners and Staff Director base 

their work on sound criteria and that the Commission’s reports and other 

products include varying perspectives so as to be recognized as fair and 

impartial. The Commission’s briefings and hearings also run the risk of 

appearing biased, rather than objective, in the absence of a policy for 

identifying and selecting speakers and witnesses who can bring to bear a 

range of perspectives and expertise. Furthermore, by using an external 

reviewer for its reports without having a process for considering the use of 

such reviewers, the Commission risks introducing one-sided commentary 

on its products and is not availing itself of an important avenue for helping 

to ensure the objectivity of its analyses. The absence of such policies 

leaves the Commission less accountable to the public for its decisions 

related to its reports. Moreover, its credibility and independence could be 

compromised by the failure to engage all of the Commissioners in its 

decisions and to document substantive decisions made outside of public 

view. 

Conclusions 
Page 35 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

As the eyes and ears of the Commission, the state advisory committees are 

critical to the work of the Commission. However, a variety of problems 

inhibit them from successfully carrying out their important function. These 

include continued delays in renewing charters as well as declines in 

regional staff and other forms of support for the state advisory 

committees. The Commission’s budgeting practices make it difficult to 

gauge the level of funding provided to the committees in order to use this 

information to analyze trends, such as the comparison of funding for 

reports for the national office versus the advisory committees and to make 

decisions about priorities. Furthermore, the potential impact and 

usefulness of state advisory committee reports can be significantly 

reduced if they are not reviewed and issued speedily or if the 

Commission’s review policies constrain the reports’ direction or findings. 

The Commission also cuts the line of communication on important civil 

rights issues from the local level to the national level if it does not seek the 

perspectives of state advisory committees in planning its work, 

determining long-term goals and strategies, or making organizational 

decisions that directly affect the committees. However, despite the longstanding nature of many of these issues, the Commission has not obtained 

independent oversight by an Inspector General of its policies and practices 

for state advisory committees. In a time of large budget deficits and fiscal 

constraints, addressing these issues would allow the Commission to better 

leverage its resources by drawing upon this nationwide network of 

volunteers who could enrich the national perspective on civil rights and 

allow for more informed decisions by the President and Congress. 

(1) In order to better ensure the quality of the Commission’s national 

office products, the Commission should 

• require that its written products consider varied and opposing 

perspectives, and that the process for achieving this be well documented; 

• develop a process for using external reviewers that includes criteria for 

determining when to use external reviewers, identifying a range of 

appropriate reviewers, and ensuring that the selection process is impartial 

and transparent to the Commissioners and the public; and 

• include criteria for Commissioner and Staff Director reviews of national 

office reports—from project proposal through final draft—in its policies 

and require substantive decisions and changes to be documented. 

Recommendations for 

Executive Action 
Page 36 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

(2) In order to ensure that relevant information and perspectives are 

covered in a comprehensive manner during briefings and hearings, the 

Commission should 

• require that the selection of speakers for briefings and witnesses for 

hearings include balanced, varied, and opposing perspectives, and that this 

process be well documented. 

(3) In order to ensure that the Commission can provide advice to Congress 

and make the most effective use of the state advisory committees, it 

should 

• develop and implement a formal process for approving state advisory 

committee charters with specific timetables to ensure their approval in a 

timely manner and for appointing and seating advisory committee 

members promptly after charter approval; 

• renew its practice of separately identifying funds for the regional offices 

and state advisory committees to better evaluate the adequacy of funding 

for supporting the committees, given budgetary constraints; 

• establish required time frames for Staff Director reviews in order to ensure 

that state advisory committee reports are published in a timely manner; 

and 

• integrate the state advisory committees’ mission and work in its strategic 

planning and decision-making processes, including articulating how the 

national office will use the state advisory committees’ findings on state 

and local civil rights issues to inform the Commission’s national goals and 

strategies. 

(4) In order to ensure that the Commission’s processes are well 

documented and its policies are followed, the Commission should 

• establish an external accountability mechanism, such as seeking the 

services of an existing Inspector General from another agency. 

We provided the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights with a draft of this 

report for review and comment. In the agency’s response, the Staff 

Director did not comment on our conclusions or recommendations but 

instead described actions the Commission had taken to improve its 

management and financial controls, the operations of the state advisory 

Agency Comments 
Page 37 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

committees, the role of the Commissioners, and internal review 

procedures for its reports and briefings. We had already discussed most of 

these actions in our report, and we added information on recent state 

advisory committee activities that the Staff Director provided in his 

comments. While many of these actions are positive steps, they do not 

address the matters upon which we based our recommendations, such as 

the Commission’s lack of a process for using external reviewers for its 

national office reports. Therefore, we continue to believe that further 

actions are needed. Our recommendations identify the specific steps we 

believe should be taken to strengthen the quality of the Commission’s 

products and make better use of its state advisory committees. The Staff 

Director’s comments are contained in appendix II. 

Although we did not solicit comments from the Commissioners, the Staff 

Director provided them with an opportunity to respond to our draft report, 

and three of the seven Commissioners provided us with comments.39 

One Commissioner agreed with the contents of the draft report. In his 

letter, he stated that the report’s findings and recommendations provide a 

framework for improving the Commission’s procedures and enhancing the 

credibility, balance, and transparency of the Commission’s work. He also 

noted that, although the Commission had implemented many of the 

recommendations in our previous reports, it has not updated its strategic 

plan nor retained the services of an Inspector General as we 

recommended in 2004 and in this report. 

The Vice Chair and one Commissioner strongly disagreed with the draft 

report’s approach, tone, and conclusions and asserted in their joint letter 

that the report was biased and unbalanced. We believe that our report is 

balanced and unbiased. As described in our scope and methodology, we 

designed and conducted this engagement in accordance with generally 

accepted government auditing standards. The Commissioners’ major 

concerns included the following: 

• The Commissioners stated that it was misleading for us to criticize the 

Commission’s reports for their lack of objectivity. This view appears to 

emanate from a misunderstanding of our audit objectives. It was not 

 39The Commissioner who wrote a letter agreeing with our report is a Republican. Of the 

two Commissioners who wrote a joint letter disagreeing with our report, one is a 

Republican and one is an Independent, although she was appointed to the Commission as a 

Republican in 2001 but changed her party affiliation to Independent in December 2004. 
Page 38 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

within the scope of our study to assess the objectivity of the Commission’s 

reports. As noted in the report objectives, our purpose was to analyze the 

Commission’s policies for ensuring the quality, including objectivity, of its 

reports and other products. When we discussed specific Commission 

reports or briefings, we did so to illustrate issues that arose when the 

Commission did not have written policies, not to provide an assessment of 

the content of individual products. 

• The Commissioners asserted that the draft report was biased because we 

did not interview all of the Commissioners. Our evaluation focused on 

assessing the adequacy of the Commission’s policies and the role of the 

state advisory committees and was not contingent upon obtaining the 

views of every Commissioner about these policies or the committees’ role. 

Therefore, we disagree with the Commissioners’ assertion that, because 

we did not interview all of the Commissioners, the report is biased in its 

assumptions and conclusions. 

• The Commissioners stated that our finding that the Commission did not 

include the state advisory committee members in its strategic planning 

process was an unwarranted attack. We do not agree with this 

characterization. Our recommendation is intended to provide a 

constructive suggestion for improving the Commission’s strategic 

planning. At the time of our review, Commission officials told us and the 

congressional committees that provide oversight of the Commission that 

they did not solicit the input of the state advisory members in developing 

its draft strategic plan. In addition, our report recognizes that the draft 

strategic plan had not yet been completed. To the extent that the final plan 

includes the perspectives of and better defines the role of the state 

advisory committees, it will be a more complete plan. This is the basis for 

our recommendation. 

• Finally, the Commissioners stated that the report did not sufficiently 

acknowledge the significant policy and other changes made by the 

Commission and that the previous leadership of the Commission was 

responsible for many of the issues discussed in our report. We 

acknowledged throughout the report the current leadership’s changes to 

the Commission’s reporting and state advisory committee policies. Our 

findings and conclusions are based on the policies and operations of the 

current Commission, including the new policies. 

Comments from the three Commissioners and our responses are 

contained in appendixes III and IV. We incorporated clarifications and 

updates in the report as appropriate. 
Page 39 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

As arranged with your office, unless you publicly announce its contents 

earlier, we plan no further distribution of this report until 30 days after the 

date of the report. At that time, we will send copies of this report to the 

U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and other interested parties. We will also 

make copies available to others upon request. It will be available at no 

charge on GAO’s Web site at http://www.gao.gov. 

If you have any questions about this report, please contact me at (202) 

512-9889 or at robertson@gao.gov. Contact points for our Offices of 

Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found on the last page 

of this report. Key contributors to this report are listed in appendix VIII. 

Robert E. Robertson 

Director, Education, Workforce, 

 and Income Security Issues 
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, 

and Methodology 

Page 40 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Our objectives in this study were to assess (1) the adequacy of the 

Commission’s policies for ensuring the quality of its products and (2) the 

role of the state advisory committees in contributing to the Commission’s 

work. To address these objectives, we reviewed documents such as 

relevant statutes, regulations, and administrative policies of the 

Commission; transcripts and minutes of Commission meetings; and recent 

Commission and state advisory committee reports. We interviewed 

Commission staff, including the Staff Director, and three Commissioners—

the Chair, one Republican member, and one Democrat. We also attended 

monthly meetings of the Commission, including briefings. 

In addition, to analyze the quality assurance policies for its products, we 

reviewed the Commission’s administrative policies for its reports, 

briefings, and hearings. We also reviewed the policies used by the National 

Academies of Sciences and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to 

ensure the quality of their products and guidance from the Office of 

Management and Budget on ensuring the quality and objectivity of 

information disseminated by federal agencies, in addition to considering 

GAO’s own policies. We also interviewed officials from the Academies and 

CBO. In addition, we reviewed the Commission’s files for a selection of 

recent national and state advisory committee reports and interviewed 

national and regional office staff. 

In addition, we conducted site visits to all six regional offices, where we 

interviewed regional staff to determine the support they provide to the 

committees. To analyze the state advisory committees’ role in 

accomplishing the Commission’s fact-finding and reporting mission, we 

conducted a survey of the 51 committee chairs and we received responses 

to this survey from state advisory committee chairs and former chairs in 

36 states. We conducted site visits to all 6 regional offices, where we 

interviewed regional staff to determine the support they provide to the 

state advisory committees. We also interviewed the state advisory 

committee chairs and members in 11 states to understand how they 

operate and their experiences with the Commission’s national and regional 

offices. We interviewed officials at the General Services Administration 

who administered the Federal Advisory Committee Act and reviewed 

related documentation. In addition, we reviewed the most recently 

approved state advisory committee charters, interviewed Commission 

officials who work with the regional offices, and reviewed state advisory 

committee regulations and policies. We conducted our work from April 

2005 to March 2006 in accordance with generally accepted government 

auditing standards. 

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology 

Survey of State 

Advisory Committees 
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, 

and Methodology 

Page 41 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

One of our methods for determining the adequacy of the Commission’s 

policies and the role of the state advisory committees was to survey the 

chairs or former chairs of each state advisory committee.1

 We sent a 

questionnaire to all state advisory committee chairs in each state, 

including the chair of the District of Columbia’s committee. We conducted 

the survey from July 7, 2005, through August 31, 2005. We received 

responses from state advisory committee chairs and former chairs in 

36 states. 

To prepare the questionnaire, we asked knowledgeable officials from the 

state advisory committees and survey professionals to comment on the 

questionnaire, and we pretested the questionnaire to ensure that the 

questions were clear and unambiguous, terminology was used correctly, it 

did not place an undue burden on the respondents, the information was 

feasible to obtain, and it was comprehensive and unbiased. We pretested 

the questionnaire with state advisory committee chairs in a geographically 

diverse group of states by means of telephone and face-to-face interviews. 

On the basis of the feedback from these pretests, we made changes to the 

content and format of the questionnaire. 

The questionnaire asked a combination of open- and close-ended 

questions about each state advisory committee and the activities it had 

undertaken in the previous 5 years. The questionnaire also asked the 

chairs to comment on their experiences working with the Commission’s 

regional and national offices. 

To ensure an adequate and appropriate response to our questionnaire, we 

sent an e-mail in advance to establish the correct respondent. We also sent 

two reminder letters and followed up with telephone calls to those who 

had not yet responded. All respondents who had not sent in a survey after 

approximately 4 weeks were telephoned by GAO and asked to participate. 

The majority of respondents completed the survey electronically but some 

faxed copies of their answers to GAO. In these cases, the faxed responses 

were entered into a database by contractors hired by GAO. Quality 

assurance steps were taken to ensure the accuracy of the data entry. 

 1

Because the Commission was unable to provide us with a current list of all of the state 

advisory committee chairs, we obtained the list from one of the state advisory committee 

chairs. 
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, 

and Methodology 

Page 42 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Because this was not a sample survey, there are no sampling errors. 

However, the practical difficulties of conducting any survey may introduce 

errors, commonly referred to as nonsampling errors. For example, 

difficulties in how a particular question is interpreted, in the sources of 

information that are available to respondents, or in how the data are 

entered into a database or were analyzed can introduce unwanted 

variability into the survey results. We took steps in the development of the 

questionnaire, the data collection, and the data analysis to minimize these 

nonsampling errors. For example, social science survey specialists 

designed the questionnaire in collaboration with GAO staff with subject 

matter expertise. Then, the draft questionnaire was pretested with a 

number of state officials to ensure that the questions were relevant, clearly 

stated, and easy to comprehend. When the data were analyzed, a second, 

independent analyst checked all computer programs. In several cases, we 

contacted respondents to clarify their responses to the questions, but we 

did not otherwise independently verify the information they provided. 
Appendix II: Comments from the U.S. 

Commission on Civil Rights 

Page 43 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Appendix II: Comments from the U.S. 

Commission on Civil Rights 
Appendix II: Comments from the U.S. 

Commission on Civil Rights 

Page 44 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 
Appendix II: Comments from the U.S. 

Commission on Civil Rights 

Page 45 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 
Appendix II: Comments from the U.S. 

Commission on Civil Rights 

Page 46 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 
Appendix III: Comments from Vice Chair 

Thernstrom and Commissioner Braceras and 

GAO’s Response 

Page 47 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Appendix III: Comments from Vice Chair 

Thernstrom and Commissioner Braceras and 

GAO’s Response 

Note: GAO comments 

supplementing those in 

the report text appear at 

the end of this appendix. 

See comment 1. 
Appendix III: Comments from Vice Chair 

Thernstrom and Commissioner Braceras and 

GAO’s Response 

Page 48 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

See comment 4. 

See comment 3. 

See comment 2. 
Appendix III: Comments from Vice Chair 

Thernstrom and Commissioner Braceras and 

GAO’s Response 

Page 49 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

See comment 7. 

See comment 6. 

See comment 5. 
Appendix III: Comments from Vice Chair 

Thernstrom and Commissioner Braceras and 

GAO’s Response 

Page 50 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

See comment 9. 

See comment 8. 
Appendix III: Comments from Vice Chair 

Thernstrom and Commissioner Braceras and 

GAO’s Response 

Page 51 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

See comment 10. 
Appendix III: Comments from Vice Chair 

Thernstrom and Commissioner Braceras and 

GAO’s Response 

Page 52 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

See comment 12. 

See comment 11. 
Appendix III: Comments from Vice Chair 

Thernstrom and Commissioner Braceras and 

GAO’s Response 

Page 53 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

See comment 13. 
Appendix III: Comments from Vice Chair 

Thernstrom and Commissioner Braceras and 

GAO’s Response 

Page 54 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

1. The Commissioners stated that the report does not acknowledge the 

significant changes that have taken place at the agency and its efforts 

at reform. To the contrary, the report acknowledged numerous 

changes to the Commission’s reporting and state advisory committee 

policies by the current leadership. For example, we noted that, after 

the arrival of new leadership, the Commission began to reevaluate its 

policies on product development and state advisory committee matters 

and, in discussing the Commission’s quality assurance policies for its 

products, we reported on the increased involvement of the 

Commissioners in product development, describing it as a “significant 

improvement over previous Commission policy.” In addition, we 

devoted a considerable portion of two appendixes to the Commission’s 

process for developing and approving national and state advisory 

committee products, including policy changes. With regard to the state 

advisory committees, we similarly analyzed the Commission’s policy 

changes to the committees’ membership criteria and publication of 

state advisory committee reports. 

2. The Commissioners asserted that it was misleading for us to criticize 

the Commission’s reports because they lack objectivity. This view 

appears to emanate from a misunderstanding of our audit objectives. It 

was not within the scope of our study to analyze the objectivity of the 

Commission’s reports. As noted in our report, our purpose was to 

analyze the Commission’s policies for ensuring the quality of its 

reports and other products. When we discussed specific Commission 

reports or briefings, we did so to illustrate issues that arose when the 

Commission did not have written policies, not to assess the content of 

individual reports. We observed that the Commission lacks several 

policies for its product development that could help ensure the 

objectivity of its reports and briefings. We focused especially on 

policies that other organizations, such as the National Academies, the 

Congressional Budget Office, and GAO, consider important to ensuring 

the quality of their reports and other products. 

3. Our evaluation focused on assessing the adequacy of the Commission’s 

policies and the role of the state advisory committees. Our assessment 

was not contingent upon obtaining the views of every Commissioner 

about these policies or the committees’ role. Therefore, we disagree 

with the Commissioners’ assertion that, because we did not interview 

all of the Commissioners, the report is biased in its assumptions and 

conclusions. 

GAO’s Response to 

Comments 
Appendix III: Comments from Vice Chair 

Thernstrom and Commissioner Braceras and 

GAO’s Response 

Page 55 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

4. The Commissioners stated that we did not define the term “objectivity” 

in criticizing the Commission’s work. We added a definition of 

objectivity to our report. 

5. We disagree with the Commissioner’s statements regarding our review 

of the Commission’s statutory reports. First, the scope of our report 

did not include a review of the pending 2006 report on the 

reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act. Second, in discussing the 

2005 statutory report on Adarand, we noted that the project was 

originally approved in 2003 under the previous leadership. However, 

we also noted that the current leadership had a significant hand in 

revising the direction of the research questions that were sent to 

federal agencies to obtain information for the report. The current 

Commission also approved an outline for the Adarand report and had 

several opportunities to comment on the draft report. Furthermore, 

contrary to the Commissioners’ statement, the current Commission 

proposed and approved the October 2005 briefing on the Voting Rights 

Act, not the previous leadership. This briefing was the subject of our 

discussion on the Commission’s speaker selection policies. In 

appendix V of our report, we referred to, but did not otherwise discuss, 

the Commission’s pending 2006 statutory report on the Voting Rights 

Act. 

6. Our report acknowledges the new policy on the Commissioners’ role in 

reviewing state advisory committee reports and publication 

requirements that was approved in February 2006. We added a note to 

our report acknowledging that the Commission will be reviewing its 

project approval procedures for state advisory committee products as 

it did previously for national office products. 

7. As noted earlier, we did not review the content of either national office 

reports or individual state advisory committee reports to assess their 

quality. However, if the Commissioners have major concerns about the 

quality of the state advisory committee reports, they should take a 

hard look at the committees’ adherence to the Commission’s quality 

assurance policies for these reports. 

8. In our report, we did not state that the process for the state advisory 

committees’ operations should become the model for the national 

office. However, we did examine the Commission’s policies for 

ensuring the quality of its products and found that the Commission has 

some policies governing the committees’ work that are more 

comprehensive than those for national office products. 
Appendix III: Comments from Vice Chair 

Thernstrom and Commissioner Braceras and 

GAO’s Response 

Page 56 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

9. Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the content or 

quality of the chapters and other material that were removed from the 

draft Adarand report, we continue to believe that the manner in which 

they were removed is of concern. For example, although the current 

Commission voted to approve a report outline in April 2005 that 

reflected a range of perspectives, the removal of several sections of the 

draft report shifted the balance towards one perspective. In addition, 

there was no documentation of the basis for this decision. Afterwards, 

two Commissioners said that they were unaware of the changes until 

after the decision had been made, and one of them abstained during 

the Commission’s final vote because he objected to how these changes 

had been made, even though he said that he agreed with the content of 

the report. 

10. We disagree with the Commissioners’ assertion that its new procedural 

policies for briefings will necessarily provide balance and a variety of 

perspectives to its briefing panels. The new policy requires the 

Commissioners to approve briefing topics and panel of speakers at 

least one month in advance of the briefing. However, as we reported, 

this new policy does not require that briefing panels be balanced or 

include a variety of perspectives. 

11. In their comments, the Commissioners stated that we criticized the 

inclusion of political parties in the membership criteria for state 

advisory committee members, but this is incorrect. In our report, we 

described the previous and proposed membership criteria, both of 

which included members’ political affiliation. Because the proposed 

criteria call for each committee to have members of “both” political 

parties, we also expressed uncertainty about how the Commission 

would consider candidates who are politically independent and how it 

would ensure balance in the points of view represented, as required 

under FACA. 

12. According to the Commissioners, our report repeatedly refers to the 

state advisory committees as the “eyes and ears” of the Commission. 

This description of the state advisory committees’ role is not our term. 

Rather it appears in the Commission’s State Advisory Committee 

Handbook and in the Commission’s October 2005 and December 2005 

draft strategic plans developed under the current leadership. 

13. The Commissioners also stated that our finding that the Commission 

did not include the state advisory committee members in its strategic 

planning process was a “ludicrous and unwarranted attack.” We 

disagree with this characterization. Our recommendation is intended 
Appendix III: Comments from Vice Chair 

Thernstrom and Commissioner Braceras and 

GAO’s Response 

Page 57 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

to provide a constructive suggestion for improving the Commission’s 

strategic planning process. At the time of our review, Commission 

officials told us and the staff of the congressional committees that 

provide oversight of the Commission that they did not solicit the input 

of the state advisory committee members in developing the draft 

strategic plan. In addition, our report recognized that the draft 

strategic plan had not been completed. If the final plan includes the 

perspectives of the state advisory committees and better defines their 

role, it will be a more complete plan. This is the basis for our 

recommendation. 
Page 58 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Appendix IV: Comments from Commissioner 

Kirsanow, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 
Appendix V: The Commission’s Policies and 

Process for Developing and Approving 

National Office Products 

Page 59 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

In addition to its general policies on quality assurance, Commission policy 

also requires four independent reviews of its draft products to ensure the 

accuracy and adequacy of the information in them. These reviews include 

the following: 

1. Editorial review:

1

 The purpose of this review is to determine the 

adequacy and accuracy of the substantive information in the draft 

document, according to the Administrative Manual. This includes 

conceptual soundness, adherence to Commission policy, quality of 

research, argumentation, and documentation of major points. 

However, Commission officials we interviewed generally agreed that 

the editorial board review more often focused on issues such as 

grammatical correctness, inconsistencies, and clarity, rather than on 

substantive issues such as the adequacy of evidence. The Staff Director 

appoints the members of the editorial review, usually consisting of 

three staff members. According to the Staff Director, editorial 

reviewers should be able to provide a fresh perspective, be familiar 

with the Commission’s standards and style manual, have strong 

editorial and writing skills, and should not work in the same office that 

wrote the draft product. 

2. Legal sufficiency review: The purpose of this review, which is 

conducted by the Office of General Counsel, is to ensure the accurate 

interpretation and citation of legal materials and compliance with 

statutory requirements. 

3. “Defame and degrade” review: The purpose of this review is to ensure 

that Commission products do not defame or degrade persons named in 

them.2

 It is performed by the Office of General Counsel concurrently 

with the legal sufficiency review. Although agencies typically require 

or have legal sufficiency reviews for their products, it is unusual for an 

agency to also review its products for their potential to defame or 

degrade individual persons. 

4. Affected agency review: The purpose of this review is to provide a 

government agency or, if appropriate, a nongovernmental organization 

 1

Although this review is described as an Editorial Policy Review in the Commission’s policy 

manual, the Staff Director and others we interviewed told us that it is not a policy review 

and is usually referred to as the editorial review. Editorial reviews do not apply to 

transcripts of hearings or briefings. 

2

The Commission requires that a right of response be given to any person if a Commission 

report tends to defame, degrade, or incriminate that person. 

Appendix V: The Commission’s Policies and 

Process for Developing and Approving 

National Office Products 
Appendix V: The Commission’s Policies and 

Process for Developing and Approving 

National Office Products 

Page 60 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

mentioned in the draft report with pertinent sections of the draft for 

the agency’s review on the accuracy of the material contained in them. 

The Commission’s detailed procedures require the development of interim 

documents such as concept papers, proposals, outlines, discovery plans, 

and draft reports. 

The Staff Director plays a pivotal role in approving all stages of the 

products’ development, including follow-up plans after a report’s issuance. 

However, until May 2005, the Commissioners had limited involvement in 

the development of its products: Essentially, Commissioners could 

approve proposals and design summaries at the beginning and approve 

final reports at the end. The Commissioners’ limited role was a source of 

considerable concern to some Commissioners, as reported in our 2003 

study.3

 This concern led to our recommendation that the Commission 

provide for increased involvement of the Commissioners in planning and 

implementation. 

In May 2005, the Commission made significant changes to its quality 

assurance policies by increasing Commissioners’ involvement in the 

development of its national office products. Under these new policies, 

Commissioners are required to review and approve Commission products 

at five key stages: (1) proposal and concept paper development, 

(2) background research and outline development, (3) discovery, (4) draft 

report, and (5) final report stages.4

 The Commissioners’ review and 

approval at three of these stages are new—background research and 

outline development, discovery, and draft report stages—and provide 

Commissioners with considerably greater opportunities to comment on 

and guide the direction of Commission products than previously. At most 

of these stages, approval by the majority of the Commissioners is 

necessary before moving on to the next stage. Under the new policies, the 

independent reviews–editorial, legal, defame and degrade, and affected 

agency reviews—occur between the Commissioners’ initial and final 

reviews of the draft product instead of before the Commissioners’ review, 

as was previous practice. The new policy does not require Commissioners’ 

 3

See GAO, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights: More Operational and Financial Oversight 

Needed, GAO-04-18 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 31, 2003). 

4

In discovery plans, staff provide information on possible subpoenas for hearings, 

document requests, and interrogatories, which are written questions sent to federal 

agencies that require a written response and documentation. 
Appendix V: The Commission’s Policies and 

Process for Developing and Approving 

National Office Products 

Page 61 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

votes on draft reports and final reports to occur in a public meeting. The 

new policies were formally incorporated into the Commission’s 

administrative policy manual in January 2006. (See fig. 2.) 

Figure 2: Process for Developing and Approving National Office Reports 

In May, 2005, the Commission adopted additional quality assurance 

policies for national office products that provide them with greater control 

over the substance of draft products: First, Commissioners can now vote 

to approve substantive changes to previously approved projects and may 

reassess priorities if budgetary changes occur during the year. Second, 
Appendix V: The Commission’s Policies and 

Process for Developing and Approving 

National Office Products 

Page 62 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

instead of having to vote on an entire draft of a final report, the 

Commission may vote on sections, and only portions of the report that 

receive a majority vote would become part of the final Commission 

document. 

The Commission also agreed to add a policy formally allowing statements 

of dissent. Commissioners can submit a statement of dissent after a report 

has been approved, and this dissenting statement can be integrated within 

the body of the report if the Staff Director and dissenting Commissioner 

agree. Before this change, there was no written Commission policy on 

dissenting statements. 

The new Commission policies have not been fully implemented for some 

national office projects that were initiated under the previous Commission 

before the new policies became effective, according to the Staff Director. 

These projects include the Commission’s 2005 report Federal 

Procurement after Adarand (Washington, D.C.: September 2005), which 

satisfied the Commission’s statutory requirement for that year; its 2005 

report, Funding Federal Civil Rights Enforcement: The President’s 2006 

Request (Washington, D.C.: September 2005); and its report on the Voting 

Rights Act, which is planned for publication in 2006 to satisfy the 

Commission’s annual statutory requirement. 

In May 2005, the Commissioners clarified the Commissioners’ role in 

approving briefings and hearings. According to the Commission’s new 

policies, Commissioners must approve briefing topics and the panel of 

speakers for briefings at a monthly Commission meeting at least 1 month 

in advance of the briefing itself. In addition, in order to hold a hearing, a 

majority of the Commission or a majority of the members present at a 

meeting with a quorum must vote to approve the hearing. 

Commission briefings and hearings are usually part of specific national 

office projects, which include distinct stages such as the concept, 

proposal, and design. The Commission’s Hearing Manual provides detailed 

administrative and legal procedures for conducting hearings and for 

posthearing activities. For example, the manual describes the process for 

selecting team members to prepare for hearings and the process for 

verifying hearing transcripts following hearings. The manual also notes 

that the final decision to hold a hearing belongs to the Commissioners. The 

Commission has not held any hearings since 2002. 

Policies for Briefings and 

Hearings 
Appendix VI: The Commission’s Process for 

Developing and Approving State Advisory 

Committee Products 

Page 63 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

According to the Commission’s policies, the state advisory committees 

provide their advice on civil rights issues by submitting committee reports 

and other written products to the Commission. The Commission’s 

Administrative Manual and State Advisory Committee Handbook have 

policies and procedures for developing and approving these state 

committee products. State advisory committee members generally 

propose a civil rights topic and vote to approve it for development. After 

regional staff researches the topic and drafts a formal proposal, the 

committee votes to approve it. The approved proposal is then forwarded 

to the national office for the Staff Director’s approval. Following approval 

of the proposal, the regional staff conducts research, such as conducting 

interviews and inviting speakers to public meetings in local communities, 

to help the committee in its fact-finding process. The regional staff also 

writes a draft report using interviews, background research, and 

transcripts of the speakers’ comments that were made at public 

community meetings. After the committee reviews and votes on the draft 

report, the regional director sends the approved committee report to the 

national office for review, a procedure that is also followed for any 

dissenting statements. The state advisory committee votes to approve the 

final report. The regional office sends the final approved committee report 

to the Commissioners, who, under a new policy approved in February 

2006, receive all state advisory committee reports that the Staff Director 

has approved as having satisfied the procedural and legal criteria for such 

reports. However, the Commissioners are not asked to accept or reject the 

committee reports. The Commission also prints all state advisory 

committee reports that have satisfied the criteria for such reports. (See 

fig. 3.) 

Appendix VI: The Commission’s Process for 

Developing and Approving State Advisory 

Committee Products 
Appendix VI: The Commission’s Process for 

Developing and Approving State Advisory 

Committee Products 

Page 64 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Figure 3: Process for Developing and Approving State Advisory Committee 

Products 

Preparation and state advisory committee approval of draft report

Stage 1 Development of state advisory committee project proposal

State advisory committee members vote on concept for a project

Project proposal developed by regional office staff for committee

State committee votes on project proposal

Project Proposal is signed by regional director and forwarded to the 

Office of the Staff Director for review

Staff Director approves proposal 

Stage 2 Background research and public community meetings

Regional staff conducts background research for report

Regional staff assists committees in fact-finding activities such as organizing

public community meetings to obtain information for committee report

Transcript is sent to participants in public meetings for correction

Stage 3

Regional staff writes draft report. Regional director reviews draft report 

and submits it to state committee for approval

State advisory committee votes to approve the report for agency action

Regional office sends approved committee report to Office of Staff Director

Stage 4 National office reviews and state committee approval of final report 

Staff Director sends the committee report for review 

Editorial Review provided for committee report

Legal Sufficiency Review and Defame and Degrade Review of 

committee report

Affected Agency Review, if needed

Regional staff sends revised report to state advisory committee for 

final approval

State committee votes to approve final committee report, and regional office 

submits the final approved report to the Office of Staff Director

Stage 5 Staff Director and Commissioner receipt of final report for publication 

Staff Director approves the state advisory committee report and places it on 

the Commission’s meeting agenda 

Commissioners receive the committee report 

State advisory committee report is printed by the Commission and posted on

the Commission’s Web site

NEW

Source: GAO analysis of U.S. Commission on Civil Rights policy.
Appendix VII: Summary Data on Profiles of 

the State Advisory Committee Members 

Page 65 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

State advisory committee charters provide, among other things, 

biographical and demographic data on the members of the committees. All 

of the information presented in the electronic supplement to this report 

reflects the membership criteria that existed prior to the new criteria 

proposed in 2005. [For detailed data by state see electronic supplement at 

http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-06-551SP .] 

As shown by the state charters, state advisory committees are generally 

composed of a demographically diverse group of individuals. The size of 

committees varies from 11 to 26 members, though 73 percent of the 

committees have between 11 and 14 members. Overall, these committees’ 

members are reflective of the state populations they represent, though the 

committees generally rely more heavily on minority populations, such as 

persons of color and religious minorities. 

State advisory committees tend to have a fairly equal gender distribution, 

though committee members as compared to 2000 census data are, on the 

whole, older than the general population. For example, 43 percent of 

Americans 18 or over are under 40 years old, whereas only 23 percent of 

advisory committee members are in this age range. This trend is consistent 

throughout most of the regions considered in this study. Overall, most 

committee members fall into the 40-59 age range, while approximately a 

fifth of members are 60 or over, a proportion that closely parallels that of 

the general population. 

Racial minorities constitute a large percentage of state advisory committee 

membership, with black members holding the most minority committee 

positions. While whites constitute 72 percent of the nation’s population, 

white committee members hold only 35 percent of committee positions 

nationwide. Black members are the second most populous demographic 

on the committees, constituting 29 percent of state advisory committees. 

Hispanic members also play a prominent role; 15 percent of committee 

members across the nation consider themselves Hispanic, a proportion 

that is comparable to that of the general adult U.S. population. The 

Midwest has the largest gap in terms of parity—for example, 32 percent of 

committee members are black, compared to 9 percent of the regional adult 

population for blacks. 

Persons with disabilities are reasonably well represented on the 

committees. While 19 percent of citizens were identified in the census 

Appendix VII: Summary Data on Profiles of 

the State Advisory Committee Members 

Age Distribution 

Racial Distribution 

Persons with Disabilities 
Appendix VII: Summary Data on Profiles of 

the State Advisory Committee Members 

Page 66 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

nationwide as disabled, these individuals constitute approximately 

16 percent of committee members.1

 However, there are wide disparities 

apparent among committees—for example, while one committee has no 

representatives with disabilities; several committees have 5 or 6 disabled 

members. 

Each committee had at least one Republican and one Democrat. However, 

committee membership tended to be more Democratic than their 

respective states’ populations; 46 percent of members consider themselves 

Democrats, in contrast to an estimated 31 percent nationwide. 

Independent members also constitute a large share of the state advisory 

committee membership (27 percent), a trend that is most prominent in the 

Northeast. Religious affiliations also differ among regions and many 

committee members do not categorize themselves as Catholic, Protestant, 

or Jewish. In fact, most committee members in the western and 

northeastern states do not identify with one of the three main religions, 

while committees in the Midwest and South have mostly Protestant 

members. 

State advisory committee members hold a variety of occupations, from 

homemaker to university president. The most common occupations held 

by committee members include professor/assistant professor, attorney at 

law, and executive-level positions within nonprofit or governmental 

entities, such as social services organizations or county commissions. In 

addition, many committee members are elected officials, teachers, 

community activists, business owners, students, or private sector 

employees. Many members participated in organizations such as regional 

or state civil rights organizations, which promote civil rights advancement. 

 1

 The nationwide population rate refers to U. S. citizens 16 to 64 years old. 

Political and Religious 

Affiliations 

Occupations 
Appendix VIII: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments 

Page 67 GAO-06-343 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights 

Robert E. Robertson, (202) 512-9889 or robertsonr@gao.gov. 

Revae E. Moran, Assistant Director, and Deborah A. Signer, Analyst in 

Charge, managed all aspects of the assignment. Mary E. Roy made 

significant contributions to this report and Kyle Browning also provided 

key assistance in collecting data for the report. In addition, Margaret L. 

Armen, Richard P. Burkard, Susan C. Bernstein, Jessica A. Lemke, 

Walter K. Vance, and Monica L. Wolford provided essential legal and 

technical assistance. 

Appendix VIII: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments 

GAO Contact 

Staff 

Acknowledgments 

(130480) 
The Government Accountability Office, the audit, evaluation and 

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