Case Asserts Task Force Kept Public Out, Dealt with Oil Companies Behind Closed Doors

SAN FRANCISO: The public could soon learn how much influence Enron CEO Ken Lay and other power-company executives had in ghostwriting the Bush Administration's energy plan.

After numerous attempts by Congress and others to find out how much influence polluting industries had in drafting the energy plan, the Sierra Club is forced to file a suit today against Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force, which prepared the proposal. The suit, filed in San Francisco federal court under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), asks that the White House give a full accounting of who from private industry participated in crafting the national energy policy it introduced last May.

"It's extremely unfortunate that it takes a lawsuit to learn out how much influence polluting companies had over a policy affecting all Americans. If the White House had conducted their meetings in the light of day, we wouldn't need this lawsuit," said Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club. "The American people were shut out of this process while energy companies and oil industry were given the red-carpet treatment. Americans deserve to know what happened behind those closed doors -- and the law requires it."

According to The Financial Times (Jan. 21, 2002, "Cheney Under Pressure Over Contacts with Enron"), Vice President Cheney admits to having met six times last spring with Lay, but he refuses to give details about those meetings. Undue involvement by Enron executives and others in drafting the energy plan is at the heart of what the Sierra Club hopes this suit will bring to light.

"The energy policy that eventually came out of those meetings heavily favors the outdated and polluting fossil fuel industries whose representatives appear to have helped draft the policy," continued Pope. "If the Administration built its energy policy on the recommendations of the likes of Enron, Americans deserve to know about it before it's too late. Vice President Cheney is acting like the public has no business asking about the closed-door meetings that shaped the Administration's energy policy. We're here to say that the future of energy in this country is every citizen's buisness."

Background on Task Force

On January 29, 2001 President Bush signed a memorandum to Vice President Cheney, commissioning the National Energy Policy Development Group, better known as the "Cheney Energy Task Force." The membership of the Energy Task Force included the Vice President as chair, Andrew Lundquist as executive director, and the Secretaries of Energy, Commerce, Transportation, Interior, Agriculture, Treasury, and the EPA Administrator. The Task Force held its first meeting that same day, and held at least eight additional meetings between February and May of 2001. On May 16, 2001, the Energy Task Force submitted a report to President Bush, setting forth the committee's findings and recommendations for a "National Energy Policy." Congress currently is considering legislation based on the Administration's energy policy.

According to media accounts, a parade of CEOs and other business leaders from the energy industry participated in the Task Force's work. Media accounts also suggest that the final findings and recommendations of the Energy Task Force were heavily influenced by the participation of the energy industry leaders, with some parts of the policy taking passages verbatim from industry proposals.

Requests for Information Unsuccessful

Throughout 2001, and continuing to the present, Congressional leaders and the General Accounting Office (GAO) have tried with little success to find out what went on in these secretive meetings. Representatives Henry Waxman and John Dingell, GAO Comptroller General David Walker and GAO General Counsel Anthony Gamboa have corresponded numerous times with Vice President Cheney, Task Force Director Lundquist, and Counsel to the Vice President David Addington but have not received substantive responses. This past fall, Sierra Club lawyers sent requests for information under Freedom of Information Act and Federal Advisory Committee Act to Vice President Cheney, Lundquist, and the agency heads listed as defendants.

"We have yet to receive even the most basic information about the energy task force, like who it met with and what documents it received," Rep. Dingell wrote in the New York Times ("Who Helped Cheney," Jan. 24, 2002). "The Federal Advisory Committee Act requires that meetings of nongovernmental advisers be conducted in public, just to avoid the appearance of secret favoritism."

Sierra Club lawyers also have tried unsuccessfully to obtain basic information from Vice President Cheney and the Task Force about the participation of industry special interests in its work.

Legal Background

The Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) requires that government meetings in which nongovernmental special interests participate be conducted in the open. The purpose of this "good government" law is precisely to protect against secret favoritism, and to avoid the appearance of closed-door corruption. To keep government in the sunshine, FACA requires that advisory committees must open their meetings to the public, allow interested parties to attend, provide the public with access to meeting transcripts, minutes, and other committee records, keep adequate minutes, and file an advisory committee charter.

FACA applies generally to government advisory committees with nongovernmental members. The suit seeks to compel the White House to disclose information about the membership, minutes, records, and documents of the advisory group, as FACA requires.