Clinton-Gore's America! Reinventing Secrecy
York, Byron
Reinventing Secrecy by Byron York n October 4, President Clinton 0 sent a memo to the chiefs of all government agencies, ordering them to cooperate fully with requests for information that come...
...I sent a letter to Bob Stone, project director for the review, asking that he provide the information specified in my original FOIA request, "or, at the least, some documentation detailing categories of spending in the NPR budget...
...T he review, also known as Vice President Gore's "reinventing government" task force, released its report amid much fanfare in a White House ceremony September 7. The report outlines ways the government might make the federal bureaucracy more responsive to the public—and save $108 billion over five years...
...Why isn't it a matter of record how much you all spent...
...During his televised NAFTA debate with Ross Perot, Gore pressed Perot to reveal what he had spent lobbying against the trade agreement...
...A few days later, Todd Campbell, counsel to the vice president, refused therequest...
...Romash later left the vice president's office to become spokesperson for the health care reform effort...
...I told his assistant I wanted to ask Osborne about whatever expenses he might have incurred during his NPR work...
...And accurate figures on the cost of the NPR will have to wait until the administration decides to extend its "openness" policy to a project designed to make the federal government more responsive to American citizens...
...Then there are the costs of the "reinvention teams" and "reinvention laboratories" that the president ordered all cabinet members to organize, the vice president's cross-country federal employee town meetings held to gather worker input, and the implementation effort that goes on today...
...Two weeks after that, the answer was the same...
...So for now, all one can do is speculate...
...If the 200 on-loan staffers mentioned by Romash fell midway in the GS-13 pay grade (the most common federal salary bracket in the Washington area), they would earn about $27,500 in the course of working six months for the NPR...
...A case in point is the National Performance Review (NPR...
...It is impossible to come up with even a rough estimate...
...It began to seem as if there might be some sort of blackout on the issue...
...Add in office expenses, travel, consultants, and the other costs of doing business...
...she was replaced by Lorraine Voles, formerly a spokesperson for the Clinton, Harkin, Dukakis, and Mondale presidential campaigns...
...Justice Department spokesman Carl Stern says government experts think there are legal grounds to contend that the vice president's office is not subject to FOIA, although "it is a matter that hasn't been litigated, so you could argue it either way...
...Stone's assistant, after talking with Stone and other top NPR officials, told me the office could not provide the information, that all such facts about the review would have to come from the vice president's office, which had already denied the request...
...The administration believes the answer is yes...
...In an effort to find out what the reinventing government project cost, on September 8 I requested, through FOIA, the financial records of the task force...
...I contacted the Department of Health and Human Services, asking about the roughly 20-25 staffers who had been detailed to the NPR for several months...
...In a phone conversation, Romash told me only that the National Performance Review had approximately 200 workers—most on loan from federal agencies—and was financed in part by $1.5 million from the Defense Department budget...
...Nor did any of the accompanying speeches or media accounts...
...Justice, she wrote, "will no longer defend an agency's withholding of information merely because there is a 'substantial legal basis' for doing so...
...How much did they make...
...As for the $1.5 million from the Defense Department, a Pentagon spokeswoman says the review has returned $150,000 of that...
...Reinventing Secrecy by Byron York n October 4, President Clinton 0 sent a memo to the chiefs of all government agencies, ordering them to cooperate fully with requests for information that come their way via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA...
...A month later, Osborne was still busy...
...He wrote that "FOIA does not entitle you to records or other materials of...
...In the six months before the ceremony, the NPR itself spent millions of taxpayer dollars, but the report did not say how many...
...Can that be a The American Spectator January 1994 43...
...A figure, incidentally, that the Congressional Budget Office believes is grossly exaggerated...
...The action appears to provide a much-needed boost for a law that experts say has been undermined in recent years by Reagan and Bush administration agencies that stonewalled and dragged their feet on FOIA requests...
...I have not yet given up, but it has become clear that the vice president's office will go to some lengths to protect the secrecy of the National Performance Review budget...
...The public, according to Clinton, should not always have to resort to FOIA to get information out of its government...
...Vice President Gore himself seems to be in favor of financial disclosure, at least in a general sense...
...the National Performance Review...
...On the same day, Attorney General Janet Reno threw out the 1981 rules under which the Justice Department defended agencies that consistently refused to release information requested under the Act...
...Rather, bureaucrats who want to keep secrets will now have to prove that giving out the information would harm some person or government interest...
...I also asked for monthly budget reports outlining the total expenditures of the project...
...I can't get that information," said a spokesman, adding that the best word would come out of the vice-president's office...
...Beyond that, the vice president's office did not provide any information in the course of nearly three months of inquiries...
...There is also the cost of the review's office in a glossy downtown building near the White House...
...Two weeks later, after checking with the vice president's office, the assistant called to say that "unfortunately, David's not going to have time to do interviews...
...In the spirit of the president's FOIA memo, I asked that she simply release the financial records of the reinventing government group—without regard to FOIA...
...But they believe a subject like the cost of the National Performance Review is not among them...
...The assistant checked with Osborne and told me he would discuss the matter only if the conversation was approved by Romash...
...But when it comes to National Performance Review spending, Gore—like Perot on NAFTA—does not seem to want to release the numbers...
...I sent another request, to Marla Romash, at that time Gore's press secretary...
...Byron York is a producer at WRC-TV, the NBC station in Washington...
...Press experts concede that some areas of the White House are indeed exempt from FOIA...
...But the Clinton administration's response to recent requests for information indicates there may be a significant gap between the president's words and his deeds...
...I then turned to officials of the NPR itself...
...Whether they have a legal right to do so is another matter.matter of public record...
...The refusal to open NPR financial records "flies absolutely in the face of [Clinton's] statement, which says the presumption should be for disclosure," says Paul McMasters, who for four years was national FOIA chairman of the Society of Professional Journalists...
...Gore said...
...How much had it cost HHS...
...Then the president took things one step further...
...Can you release those numbers...
...I tried roundabout routes...
...42 The American Spectator January 1994 I called David Osborne, the author who has been described as the Clinton administration's "guru" for reinventing government...
...I asked how many employees worked for the NPR, how much money they made, how much their benefits cost the government, how much was spent on office equipment, consultants, rent, travel, parking, and other miscellaneous expenses...
...Openness in government is essential to accountability," he wrote, "and the Act has become an integral part of that process...
...The reason that you have an executive privilege is to protect the decision-making process of the executive," says Rebecca Daugherty, director of FOI at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, "not to protect [disclosure of] their expenses...
...At the ceremony, Gore said his project would let American citizens know that "their tax dollars will be treated with respect for the hard work that earned them...
...Multiplying that by 200 would mean NPR workers made about $5.5 million in salaries...
...the owner of the building refused to say how much the NPR paid in rent...
...0 an the vice president's office C legally keep details of the NPR a secret...
...adding federal fringe benefits would increase that figure substantially...
...The audience will notice that he does not want to publicly release how much money he's spending...
...It is not enough for government agencies simply to be more open to FOIA requests, he said: "Each agency has a responsibility to distribute information on its own initiative...
Vol. 27 • January 1994 • No. 1
