The Senate Finance Committee is considering new rules on Wednesday (Jan. 30) to increase transparency of the committee's meetings. While the proposed changes are a welcome step toward openness and transparency, the draft rules contain several serious problems. We need to give the committee quick feedback on these problems and get them fixed before Wednesday's markup.

Most notable are the following three problems:

The rules only require the posting of one of the following meeting records, a transcript, an audio recording or a video recording, even though often more than one of these is produced. OMB Watch recommends that all records of committee meetings be posted online.

The proposed rule would establish a 21 business day deadline for posting meeting records, which translates into more than a calendar month. This is far too long for the public to wait and OMB Watch is recommending a 5 business day deadline be established for most records, with one exception for corrected transcripts.

The draft rules would also allow the committee to delete meeting records after the conclusion of a Congress. Coupled with the poor timeframe provision, this could result in records of committee meetings occurring in the last month of a Congress never seeing the light of day. OMB Watch is recommending permanent archiving of committee records.

Here are the draft rules.

Please join us in urging the committee to correct these problems. Call the Senate Finance Committee at (202) 224-4515 and tell them they to keep moving further in the right direction.

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Posted by Craig Jennings, 11:49:37 AM

Wednesday, January 09, 2008