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Volume 2, Number 1
BOTH HOUSES OF CONGRESS REPUDIATE CIVIL RIGHTS COMMISSION
Before adjournment, the House and Senate in Committee worked out a compromise on FY 1987 funding for the U. S. Civil Rights Commission which substantially reduces the Commission's budget and restricts use of the monies.
The Senate had reduced the Commission's appropriation by 50 percent from $11.8 to $6 million and placed restrictions on the expenditure of the monies while the House eliminated future funding for the Commission, with $11.8 million provided to close down the agency by the end of 1986.
The bipartisan compromise provides $7.5 million for FY 1987, with $2 million to be used for the Regional Offices, and $700,000 for the Office of Federal Civil Rights Evaluation. The Staff Director had planned to close the Regional Offices, and to merge the Evaluation Office with the Office of General Counsel. Senators Warren B. Rudman (R-NH) and Neal Smith (D-IA) in a letter to the Commission Chair reiterated the intent of the Conference Committee concerning the Commission's appropriations.
The conference agreement... earmarks $2,000,000 for regional offices to be operated by the Office of Regional Programs and $700,000 for Federal civil rights monitoring to be performed by the Office of Federal Civil Rights Evaluation. In earmarking funding for civil rights monitoring activities, the conferees intend that the Office of Federal Civil Rights Evaluation increase its monitoring of Federal civil rights enforcement activities.
Additional restrictions provide that the agency may not spend more than $20,000 on consultants, $40,000 on mission-related contracts, or $135,000 on temporary or special needs employees. Additionally, the agency may not employ more than 4 Schedule C employees (political appointees), and Special Assistants to the Commissioners are limited to 150 billable days at a GS 11 level. Similarly, the Chair may not bill the agency for more than 125 days, and the other Commissioners are limited to 75 days.
The Congressional action responded to a General Accounting Office audit that found serious mismanagement at the agency and detailed abuses in personnel practices, travel payments, and financial records. Specifically, GAO found that the Commission had hired consultants and temporary and political employees in place of career staff, and that while Commissioners are appointed as part time employees of the Federal Government, Chairman Clarence Pendleton and his assistant had billed the government at an almost full-time rate.
Ralph G. Neas, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, characterized the congressional action as "a bipartisan repudiation of the reconstituted Civil Rights Commission, which has become a sham and a national disgrace. Not one member, Democrat or Republican, stood up in committee or on the floor of the House or Senate to defend the commission" (Wash Post, 10/19/86, All). Mr. Neas in a prepared statement said "The Leadership Conference applauds the bipartisan attempt to do something about the disgraceful situation at the Commission. Regrettably, the Commission has become a perversion of its original statutory role. Indeed, for the past several years, the Commission has been nothing but a propaganda office for the Meese Department of Justice."
Al Latham, staff director of the Commission, was quoted to say "We are disappointed as much about the earmarks and other restrictions as about the funding level itself, because it is an attempt to micromanage the agency from the outside. That really should be left in the hands of the people who are properly appointed here" (Wash Post, 10/19/86).
  
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