The White House wants federal agencies including the Department of Energy to kill off some of their Federal Advisory Committees by September, according to a presidential order published June 14.
Federal Advisory Committees are nominally independent, government-chartered groups that provide advice to U.S. agencies. Either the president or Congress can require an agency to create a Federal Advisory Committee. The Energy Department has about 20 such groups, fewer than half of which provide advice for nuclear programs.
President Donald Trump’s executive order last week gives agencies until Sept. 30 to eliminate at least one-third of the committees created by agency heads. The White House wants agencies to target those that are obsolete, have been replaced in function by some other type of group, or cost too much relative to the benefits an agency thinks the group provides.
Agencies can request waivers for those elimination-eligible committees from the director of the White House Office of Management and Budget. “The Director may grant such a waiver if the Director concludes it is necessary for the delivery of essential services, for effective program delivery, or because it is otherwise warranted by the public interest,” the executive order says.
Among the DOE advisory committees that would require a waiver is the Environmental Management Site-Specific Advisory Board (EMSSAB), according to Seth Kirshenberg, executive director of the nongovernmental Energy Communities Alliance.
The board provides a forum for those affected by cleanup of badly contaminated Cold War nuclear-weapon-production sites to speak with DOE officials. It is technically a single Federal Advisory Committee, with eight local boards organized under the main group’s charter. The Energy Department must renew that charter every two years.
Other DOE bodies requiring waivers would be the Environmental Management Advisory Board and the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, Kirshenberg said by email.
“ECA has always supported SSABs,” wrote Kirshenberg, whose Washington, D.C.-based organization represents communities near DOE cleanup sites. “I believe the that SSABs coupled with direct engagement with local governments are an important tool for community engagement and education for site cleanup by the Department.”
The ECA will ask the Energy Department about its plans for the Environmental Management advisory bodies, Kirshenberg said.
Spokespeople for the department and its Office of Environmental Management this week did not respond to requests for comment about the evaluation of the advisory committees.
Meanwhile, for committees created by Congress or the president, the head of the White House Office of Management will decide which should stay and which should go. The White House budget chief has to make those recommendations in a report due Sept. 1 to the chief executive, then ask Congress to cancel those committees in the administration’s 2021 budget request, nominally due in February.
In April, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators proposed a bill to strengthen ethics requirements for Federal Advisory Committees, including those set up by DOE.
