On March 13 I testified at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on behalf of ALA and the Association of American Law Libraries.  The hearing was held by the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of the House Science and Technology Committee.  Complete information about the hearing is available on the subcommittee’s Web site.
In the days immediately before the hearing I received drafts of my testimony from the ALA Washington office staff, edited those drafts and raised questions and returned the drafts.  Phone calls supplemented this iterative process.  I also had a call from two senior Democratic staff members of the House committee.

The purpose of the hearing was to gather evidence on the Environmental Protection Agency’s response to date to its sudden closure of some of its libraries in 2006.  Because this was an investigative oversight hearing, the witnesses were required to stand, raise our right hands, and swear to tell the truth.

I had testified before another House subcommittee for ALA in October.  That hearing dealt with a variety of issues related to the Library of Congress, including the process it follows in making significant changes in cataloging policies.  Testifying before a Congressional committee is one of those things that is a bit daunting the first time. But after that initiating learning experience it is easy.

I was one of five witnesses.  The others represented the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a union of professional employees in EPA, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and the EPA.  Rep. Brad Miller of North Carolina chaired the hearing.  At times he was the only member of the House present.  There were a number of concurrent hearings on March 13 vying for their presence.  The minority party was represented by Rep. Ralph Hall of Texas.  Mr. Miller was well informed about the topic and made an opening statement that laid out the issue in brief; Congress had told EPA to restore its library system and Congress was not happy that it has not received evidence of progress.
Each witness had five minutes to make an oral statement.  This was an abbreviated version of the text of the full testimony document submitted for the record prior to the hearing.  Mr. Miller was prudently indulgent, allowing witnesses to run over the House five-minute limit for oral testimony.  Despite many revisions and deletions to those drafts that went back and forth between Washington and Richmond, mine ran 5 minutes and 30 seconds–a good 30 seconds briefer than any other witness.

After all five witnesses had made our statements, Mr. Miller and Mr. Hall each had five minutes to ask the panel questions.  Mr. Miller started out by addressing the EPA representative and noted that four witnesses had one interpretation of the situation and EPA had another significantly different interpretation.  Four of us had painted a picture of secrecy, intransigence, and indifference by EPA; EPA painted a picture of a situation that the rest of us wish were true.  Mr. Miller asked a number of pertinent questions of the witnesses.  Mr. Hall took about half of his allotted question time. Mostly he complained about the slowness with which EPA makes decisions about permits for oil refineries in Texas.  It was clear from Mr. Miller’s facial expressions as he listened to the witnesses as well as from his questions that he was not pleased with the current state of affairs.  He grilled the EPA witness on the process by which it is putting together a report due to Congress on March 31.  Apparently a lot of work remains to be done on that report.  He also advised the other witnesses to clear our calendars on March 30 and 31 in case EPA really follows through and asks stakeholders for comment on a draft of the report, one of the steps EPA says it plans to take.

My time on behalf of ALA and its ongoing fight to assure citizen access to government information was time well spent.  I know it was a lot more fun to be one of the other witnesses than it was to be the EPAs witness!

For a summary of ALA’s position on the issue, see its Washington Office’s "District Dispatch" blog and scroll down to the March 13 entry.