The White House wants federal agencies including the Department of Energy to kill off one-third of their Federal Advisory Committees by September, according to a presidential order published Friday.
Federal Advisory Committees are nominally independent, government-chartered groups that provide advice to federal 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.
According to President Donald Trump’s executive order, agencies can by Sept. 30 ax any Federal Advisory Committee that is obsolete, that has been replaced in function by some other type of group, or which costs too much relative to the benefits an agency thinks the group provides.
Among the Federal Advisory Committees at DOE is the Environmental Management (EM) Site-Specific Advisory Board. The group provides a forum for those affected by cleanup of badly contaminated Cold War nuclear-weapon-production sites to speak with DOE officials.
The EM Site-Specific Advisory Board 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.
The National Nuclear Security Administration also has a Federal Advisory Committee: the Defense Programs Advisory Committee, which provides classified advice behind closed doors about nuclear weapons and nonproliferation programs managed by the semiautonomous DOE branch.
For DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, the part of the agency concerned with civilian nuclear waste created by power plants, there is the Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee.
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.
To avoid the guillotine, each of DOE’s Federal Advisory Committees will need a vote of confidence by the agency. Friday’s executive order requires that agencies study all of their Federal Advisory Committees, then prepare by Aug. 1 a report that recommends either canning or keeping each committee.
