Seventy-one percent of all federal advisory committee meetings were held behind closed doors in fiscal 2013 and 2014, the highest percentage of closed-door meetings in the past decade, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The findings are the latest to undermine President Obama's repeated promise to be the "most transparent administration in history."
The law generally mandates that the federal advisory meetings be held openly, except in rare cases. However, over the past decade, the number of closed-door meetings has risen dramatically. The report found that over 5,100 of the meetings were held behind closed doors in fiscal 2014, and 5,006 in fiscal 2015, according to The Daily Caller.
The number of closed-door meetings has risen by about 10 percent since fiscal 2012, and is even higher than the 67.6 percent held behind closed doors during former President George W. Bush's second term, notes The Washington Times.
Federal advisory committees are established to allow industry experts to provide advice to the president and federal agencies when getting grants and designing new regulations. The report says the closed-door meetings give experts the opportunity to provide honest advice without fear of retaliation, and they also help protect proprietary information in grant applications.
The committees advise the government on science, military, tax enforcement, conservation, and everything in-between.
In any given year, there are about 70,000 people serving on the panels. In 2014, 825 committees were operating, costing taxpayers $334.5 million. More than 14 percent of participants represented "the point of view or perspective of an outside interest group or stakeholder interest," according to The International Business Times.
One anti-secrecy group, the Federation of American Scientists, says the committees can be "an important mechanism for exerting non-governmental influence on the policies of executive branch agencies," but warned that "their operations and their recommendations are susceptible to political pressures."
"FACA was intended to help counter abuse of the advisory committee process and ensure a modicum of fairness to competing points of view, in part by requiring that their meetings be conducted openly," the group said.
