Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
12/5/2014
Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) this week continued her fight against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s refusal to hand over sensitive documents to Congressional oversight. Boxer has fought with the Commission for much of the past year over the release of documents to the committee, mainly focused on documents related to the two plants located in her home state. The issue of document sensitivity re-surfaced this week during an NRC oversight hearing when Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) asked about a draft memo that would reorganize the NRC’s Office of Investigations, which resulted in confusion over what the NRC was actually doing and what the document said. Boxer used the document as an example NRC’s refusal to release information. “This is going to be a big problem because we want the documents, not a meeting, privately or secretly,” Boxer said to the four commissioners who will continue at the Commission. “This is serious stuff, and your counsel is telling you to do things that are absolute conflicts with me and our constitutional scholar, so you may wind up in a court room pretty soon.” She later added, “When you get confirmed, you answer in the affirmative to turn over documents. Now you say that there is no document when there is such a document. That’s a problem.”
NRC commissioners, meanwhile, remained split on the matter when pressed by Boxer on their willingness to release the documents to the committee. Commissioners Kristine Svinicki and William Ostendorff maintained the Commission’s stance was legal. “I’ve been involved in these decisions as well,” Ostendorff replied to Boxer. “I believe we have followed the laws as I understand it. We have sent letters to this committee requesting to meet in person with us, but we have not been able to arrange those meetings.” The NRC’s two newest members, Commissioners Jeffrey Baran and Steven Burns, offered a different perspective of working through the problem with the committee. “I agree with you that you have an important oversight role, and my view is that the NRC should work with the committee to provide documents when you request them,” Baran said. “Our focus should be on providing the information that is requested, not withholding it. I’m sure there are sensitive issues that we have to work through, but we should be working through those issues.”
Boxer has been trying to obtain documents from the NRC concerning nuclear plant safety concerns within her state, but her requests were partially denied due to the NRC’s sensitive document policy from last year that limited what documents Congress can obtain from the NRC. Boxer fought to include a clause in the Fiscal Year 2014 Omnibus Appropriations bill that changed the document policy. The clause, though, seems to have had little affect over the release of sensitive documents from the NRC’s perspective. Boxer has on more than one occasion threaten a legal remand if the NRC continued to deny her requests.
