Opinion ID: 184889
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Federal Advisory Committee Act

Text: 3 Congress passed FACA, 5 U.S.C. app. 2 §§ 1-16, in 1972 to address whether and to what extent committees, boards, and councils should be maintained to advise Executive Branch officers and agencies. See 5 U.S.C. app. 2 § 2(a); Public Citizen v. United States Dep't of Justice, 491 U.S. 440, 445-46, 109 S.Ct. 2558, 105 L.Ed.2d 377 (1989). FACA was enacted to cure specific ills, above all the wasteful expenditure of public funds for worthless committee meetings and biased proposals.... Id. at 453; accord Natural Resources Defense Council v. Pena, 147 F.3d 1012, 1026 (D.C.Cir.1998) (NRDC). Congress recognized that advisory committees are frequently a useful and beneficial means of furnishing expert advice, ideas, and diverse opinions to the Federal Government. 5 U.S.C. app. 2 § 2(a). However, Congress also feared the proliferation of costly committees, which were often dominated by representatives of industry and other special interests seeking to advance their own agendas. See H.R.REP. NO. 92-1017 (1972), reprinted in 1972 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3491, 3496 (One of the great dangers in the unregulated use of advisory committees is that special interest groups may use their membership on such bodies to promote their private concerns.); see also Public Citizen, 491 U.S. at 453; Food Chem. News v. Department of Health and Human Servs., 980 F.2d 1468, 1472 (D.C.Cir.1993); Richard O. Levine, Comment, The Federal Advisory Committee Act, 10 HARV. J. ON LEGIS . 217, 219, 225 (1973). 4 In enacting FACA, Congress struck a balance between these concerns, by preserving the advisory committee mechanism for informing policy decisions, while ensuring 5 that new advisory committees be established only when essential and that their number be minimized; that they be terminated when they have outlived their usefulness; that their creation, operation, and duration be subject to uniform standards and procedures; that Congress and the public remain apprised of their existence, activities, and cost; and that their work be exclusively advisory in nature. 6 Public Citizen, 491 U.S. at 446 (citing 5 U.S.C. app. 2 § 2(b)). Congress aimed, in short,  'to control the advisory committee process and to open to public scrutiny the manner in which government agencies obtain advice from private individuals.'  National Anti-Hunger Coalition v. Executive Comm. of the President's Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, 711 F.2d 1071, 1072 (D.C.Cir.1983) (quoting Food Chem. News, Inc. v. Davis, 378 F.Supp. 1048, 1051 (D.D.C.1974)); accord Public Citizen, 491 U.S. at 459; Animal Legal Defense Fund, Inc. v. Shalala, 104 F.3d 424, 426 (D.C.Cir.1997). 7 In order to achieve these objectives, Congress enacted in FACA a series of requirements governing the creation and operation of bodies falling within the Act's definition of advisory committee. See 5 U.S.C. app. 2 § 3(2). For instance, FACA bars the initiation of new advisory committees absent express authorization by statute or the President, or a formal determination by an agency that such establishment would be in the public interest. See id. § 9(a). In addition, FACA mandates that advisory committee membership be fairly balanced in terms of the points of view represented and the functions to be performed, and that a committee's advice reflect its independent judgment without improper influences from the appointing authority or special interests. Id. § 5(b)(2), (3). Moreover, FACA provides that, once established, an advisory committee must conform its operations to various procedural requirements by, inter alia, filing a charter before beginning its operations, see id. § 9(c), opening its meetings to the public, see id. § 10(a)(1), publishing advance notice of its meetings, see id. § 10(a)(2), keeping detailed minutes of its meetings, see id. § 10(c), and making available to the public records, drafts, studies, and other documents that were made available to or prepared by or for the committee, see id. § 10(b). The Act also charges the General Services Administration (GSA) with prescribing regulatory guidelines and management controls applicable to advisory committees, and providing such committees with advice and assistance to improve their performance. See id. § 7(c). Finally, FACA imposes various oversight and reporting requirements on congressional committees, GSA, and the President, in order to monitor advisory committees and ensure their ongoing usefulness and productivity. See id. §§ 5(a), 6(c), 7(b). 8 Sometimes dubbed the fifth branch of Government, see, e.g., Mary Kathryn Palladino, Survey, Ensuring Coverage, Balance, Openness and Ethical Conduct for Advisory Committee Members under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, 5 ADMIN. L.J. 231, 231 (1991), advisory committees today remain a fixture in the Nation's Capital. In fiscal year 1997, a total of 36,586 individuals served on 963 committees, see U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE, FEDERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE ACT: ADVISORY COMMITTEE PROCESS APPEARS TO BE WORKING, BUT SOME CONCERNS EXIST, GAO/T-GGD-98-163, at 3 (July 14, 1998) (Statement of L. Nye Stevens), available at < http: //www.gao.gov >, addressing almost all imaginable topics, from national policy matters to technical or scientific issues. See generally U.S. GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION, FEDERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE ACT (FACA) DATABASE, available at < http: //cm.policyworks.gov/cms > (listing advisory committees by relevant agency). In other words, to this date, the Government continues to draw heavily upon the advisory committee process as a part of its political machinery. 9