The Tennessean
February 12, 2009 Thursday
LENGTH: 356 words
HEADLINE: Sunshine Law can be sidestepped
BYLINE: Brad Schrade and Anne Paine
THE TENNESSEAN
The TVA board said it's following the federal Sunshine Law, but that doesn't guarantee transparency.
Critics have said that many agencies and decision makers have found ways to meet the law but conduct business outside the public view by having one-on-one meetings, small group meetings or meetings with staff.
The law is falling short in many respects, said Jeffrey Lubbers, a law professor at American University in Washington, whose expertise is federal administrative law and government structure and procedures.
"In general, the (federal) agencies like to try to conduct a lot of business outside public meetings," he said. One method is to have notational voting, the practice of circulating written ballots to individual members and having them vote in private and return those votes.
Secret voting method
TVA spokeswoman Emily Reynolds confirmed Wednesday that the board has a notational voting process but could provide no details at deadline.
The federal version of the Sunshine Law passed in the 1970s in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It applies to some 50 federal agencies with boards, including TVA, and was intended to allow the public to monitor and understand decisions the agencies made.
Lubbers served as a research director for the government's Special Committee to Review the Government in Sunshine Act in 1995. It recommended a pilot program allowing a board to meet privately in some instances with the tradeoff that it provides full details of the meetings, including transcripts or detailed minutes within five business days.
Media groups opposed the plan, which would have closed meetings.
The goal of the report, which was not implemented, was to find ways for boards to be able to discuss substantive issues, while trying to meet the goals of the Sunshine Act, said Randolph May, who served as chairman of the special committee and is with the Free State Foundation in Maryland.
May said he didn't know specifics about TVA, but its administrative procedures may not allow for enough public input. "It may mean that the law needs to be changed to allow public input into what they are doing," he said.
