FY14 OMNIBUS SPENDING BILL INCLUDES REVERSION OF NRC SENSITIVE DOCUMENT POLICY

Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
1/17/2014

The Fiscal Year 2014 omnibus spending bill released this week includes language that would stipulate the Nuclear Regulatory Commission revert its sensitive document policy towards Congressional requests for information back to its 2011 version of the Commission policy. The provision would cancel the much-maligned sensitive document policy update that applied restrictions as to which lawmakers could receive sensitive information  “The Nuclear Regulatory Commission shall comply with the July 5, 2011, version of Chapter VI of its Internal Commission Procedures when responding to Congressional requests for information,” the bill states. The NRC’s new policy says that only Chairs and Ranking Members can receive sensitive documents, but even then, NRC staff has the ability to limit sending them the sensitive material.

Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) led the Congressional outcry about the new policy, sending a letter to NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane in November criticizing the new rule as a form of oversight circumvention. “This policy is a radical departure from previous NRC document policies and creates significant hurdles and delays that can be used to withhold information entirely from the Chairs and Ranking Members of oversight committees,” Boxer’s letter said. “It also allows the NRC to broadly deny information to individual Members of Congress, even when the information is related to matters affecting their home states.” Boxer’s office did not reply to requests for comments this week.

Macfarlane had responded to Boxer in December assuring the Senator that the NRC would continue to engage with its Congressional oversight. “We will continue our practice of providing prompt comprehensive briefings, updates, and publicly available information to individual members of Congress,” Macfarlane’s December response said. “Further, we have made no changes to the long-standing practice of being responsive to a member of Congress’ needs if there is an event or accident in her or his state or district.” The NRC said this week that it will do whatever Congress directs it to do.