Capitol Commentary

Lee White

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House Appropriations Panel Considers NARA’s FY 2009 Budget

On April 1, 2008, the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government held a hearing to consider the fiscal year (FY) 2009 budget request for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein was the lead witness. In his opening statement, he summarized the administration’s budget request for his agency. He noted the president’s FY 2009 request included $327.7 million for operating expenses, an increase of $12.7 million over FY 2008. This includes funding to prepare for the George W. Bush Presidential Library. The proposed increase would include $1.6 million to add fifteen archivist positions at the various presidential libraries.

Another major increase was the nearly $9 million in additional funding for the Electronic Records Archives (ERA) project that is scheduled to come online this summer. Of the $67 million requested for the ERA, NARA was requesting that $21.2 million be made available as one-year funding and the remaining $45.7 million be made available as two-year funding.

Weinstein stated that the administration had declined to seek funding for grants for the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). This has become an annual battle between the administration and Congress over the survival of this small but vital agency to historians.

Subcommittee Chairman Jose Serrano (D-NY) began the question and answer period by noting that the subcommittee had worked hard to get funding in the FY 2008 budget to restore the research hours that had been cut at NARA’s facilities in 2006. Serrano expressed concern that no specific funding was included in the FY 2009 request to keep them in place beyond FY 2008. He asked Weinstein if the Archives would have to cut research hours again if new earmarked funding is not provided in the FY 2009 budget. The archivist said if the FY 2009 budget as proposed by the Bush administration is adopted, the research hours will NOT be affected or cut. The proposed base budget allows for the research hours to remain as they would be when they were restored on April 14.

Serrano next asked about the status of the recovery of hundreds of days of e-mails missing from the White House servers. The chairman noted that at a recent hearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, NARA staff had been quoted in a memo saying they had received no cooperation from the White House in dealing with the issue. Serrano asked if the White House had been more cooperative since the hearing. Weinstein replied that they had made some progress, but there still had not been a full accounting of the missing e-mails. He reported that a meeting had been scheduled among all the relevant stakeholders and that he preferred not to provide an answer until after it had taken place.

Representative Jo Bonner (R-AL) observed that the presidential campaign of Senator Clinton had brought a great deal of attention to the need for transparency surrounding fundraising by foundations of the presidential libraries. He asked the archivist if he thought donors to the library foundations should be disclosed. Weinstein said he had no objection to the identity of donors being disclosed, but felt it would be more important in the early years of a presidential library’s fundraising, but less so for the older libraries.

In a second round of questioning, Chairman Serrano noted that the rollout date for the Electronic Records Archive had been delayed from last September to June 2008. He asked how confident the archivist was that there would be no more delays. Weinstein replied that when the difficulties started, NARA did not bury the fact and immediately contacted the Government Accountability Office and the agency’s congressional oversight committees. He noted that the senior management staff in the agency met weekly on the status of the ERA, and he was confident they would meet the June rollout deadline.

Assistant Archivist for Information Services Martha Morphy added that NARA had restructured the ERA contract with Lockheed Martin and that the contractor had improved the quality of its staffing. She said payment had been tied to the achievement of specific milestones. She noted that Lockheed Martin has met every one since the new procedures had been implemented. She said the project will come online in June, and by November NARA will be ready to start accepting Bush administration records. Weinstein added that if NARA didn’t meet the deadlines, he would take personal responsibility.

Serrano then asked about the lengthy amount of time it was taking to complete the publication of the Founding Fathers papers. He urged NARA to speed up the process and increase accessibility of the finished products and noted that language had been included in NARA’s FY 2008 appropriation requesting a status report. Weinstein said that he testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about this in February and that the report to Congress would be completed by the end of April. But, he added, he preferred not to talk about it prematurely while the details were still being worked out.

Ranking Member Ralph Regula noted that the Administration had once again proposed eliminating the National Historical Publications and Records Committee (NHPRC). Regula asked whether the archivist would support preventing the elimination of the NHPRC if the Appropriations Committee restored funding for it. Professor Weinstein replied, “From your mouth to God’s ears.”

NHPRC Reauthorization

A bill (H.R. 5582) to reauthorize the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) was recently introduced in the House by Representative Wm. Lacy Clay (D-MO). The bill would reauthorize the NHPRC at an annual level of $20 million for FY 2010-2014. The current reauthorization expires in FY 2009 and authorized spending at an annual level of $10 million, so if enacted this would be a significant funding increase

NHPRC member Representative John B. Larson (D-CT) cosponsored the bill. A companion bill has yet to be introduced in the Senate. The Bush administration once again requested zero funding for the NHPRC in FY 2009. Last year the NHPRC received $9.5 million in funding with $7.5 million for grants and $2 million for administrative expenses.

PIDB Report on “Improving Declassification” of Federal Records

The Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) is a little-known federal advisory group promoting the declassification of historical federal records related to national security. The PIDB was authorized in 2000 (P.L.106-567) and charged to advise the president and other executive branch officials on classification and declassification policy. However, it took the Bush administration over five years to name its appointments and only in FY 2006 did the board receive its first annual appropriation. Following its difficult beginnings, since 2006 the PIDB has begun to fulfill the purposes that late-Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan had in mind in proposing the board.

Late last year, the PIDB issued its initial report entitled “Improving Declassification: <http://www.archives.gov/declassification/ pidb/improving-declassification.pdf>. The PIDB provided detailed recommendations to the president on fifteen issues it identified that would improve the federal government’s declassification procedures. For anyone interested in the issues surrounding declassification of federal records, the report should be required reading. Although many thought President Bush would simply ignore the report, in January he ordered executive branch agency heads to respond to the PIDB’s recommendations by April 15, 2008.

One some of the fifteen issues identified in the report is developing better procedures to identify and prioritize the declassification review of “historically significant” information. Among the recommendations is the creation of a board consisting of prominent historians, academicians, and former government officials who would be appointed by the Archivist of the United States to determine which events or activities of the U.S. Government merited expedited declassification for a particular year. The report also recommends expanding the use of historians and historical advisory boards at departments and agencies with significant classification activity. It goes on to recommend that all departments and agencies with national security responsibilities hire an appropriate number of historians to speed declassification of classified records or to write historical accounts based on the department or agency’s classified holdings.

Civil War Preservation Trust Identifies Most Endangered Battlefields

The Civil War Preservation Trust (CWPT) has issued its annual report on the status of the nation’s historic battlegrounds. The report, entitled History Under Siege: A Guide to America’s Most Endangered Civil War Battlefields (<http://www.civilwar.org/mebr2008/2008%20Most %20Endangered%20Report.pdf>), identifies the most threatened Civil War sites in the United States and what can be done to rescue them.