A recent proposal by Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph Lieberman to make Congressional Research Service reports more easily accessible to the public could pose constitutional challenges, according to Harold Relyea, a well-respected CRS analyst who retired in January after more than 30 years of government service. "While you could get 400 members of Congress to agree to let them out to the public, all it takes is a few others to argue constitutional privilege," he told a Washington College of Law "Sunshine Week" conference on Monday. Lieberman wrote to Senate Rules Committee Chairman Charles Schumer this month calling for a sanctioned, automatically updated clearinghouse for CRS documents so "those with power and those without have equal access to this important resource."

A more workable approach could stem from the Rules Committee's authorization last Congress for CRS to create software to let senators place individual reports on their Web sites, Relyea said. The next step could be building an overarching IT framework that would allow the public to search for CRS reports across senators' sites, he said. Other than a "passing generic reference" in its enacting legislation, CRS is not statutorily obligated to publicly distribute reports, Relyea pointed out. By contrast, the Government Accountability Office and Congressional Budget Office do have that requirement. In the past, CRS experimented with publishing summaries of its work but appropriators ended that practice. "Clearly appropriators have not been sympathetic to making CRS reports available to the public," he said.

During his luncheon keynote, Relyea also touched on the Bush administration's narrow definition of materials that apply to the Presidential Records Act. He said that law is in need of review, particularly with respect to the Office of the Vice President. After controversies over former Vice President Dick Cheney's withholding of information, "we need to look at that whole darned office," he said, noting the office lacks a charter to spell out what recordkeeping and disclosure rules apply. Relyea said the 1978 statute will continue to cause problems as electronic filing usurps paper-based records. "There's always room for improvement," he said.