WASHINGTON, DC -- Today NLPC Chairman Ken
Boehm criticized efforts to compare a task force on energy policy Chaired
by Vice President Dick Cheney to the ill-fated
1993 health care task force headed by Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Boehm said, "As Chairman of one of the groups that successfully sued
Hillary's task force in 1993 to open up the meetings and records, it is
time to set the record straight. First and foremost, Hillary's
task force broke the law while Cheney's has, by all indications, complied
with the law."
"U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that Hillary's task force violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) because it included private citizens in its closed door sessions. The Clinton effort kept the names of hundreds of participants secret, filed a false sworn statement that all participants were government employees, and misrepresented the cost as $100,000 when it was actually millions of dollars."
"Additionally, the Clinton effort had close to 1,000 participants while the Bush effort has merely twelve officials and twelve staff, all of whom are government employees. If no 'outsiders' take part in a government task force, FACA does not require open meetings. NLPC's litigation against Hillary's task force revealed that many of the participants were lobbyists and representatives of special interests which stood to gain financially from inside information and which the Clinton Administration had claimed they wanted to exclude from the process."
"Further, the Clinton effort was not only over-budget, but overdue as
well. The health plan was scheduled to be unveiled on May 30, 1993,
to meet President Clinton's much-ballyhooed 100-day deadline. The plan
was not released to Congress until September 22, 1993. When it finally
disbanded, Hillary's task force faced
charges of improperly shredding records, misrepresenting private workers
as government employees, failing to file proper financial disclosure forms,
and a myriad of other ethical shortcomings."
NLPC is a nonpartisan, nonprofit foundation promoting
ethics and accountability in government through research, education
and legal action. In 1993, NLPC successfully
sued Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care task force to open the meetings
and records. NLPC currently sponsors the Government
Integrity Project, the Organized Labor
Accountability Project and the Legal
Services Accountability Project.