By Daniel Barlow , Barre Montpelier (VT) Times Argus, February 5, 2008
5 Feb 2008 // Vermont's once-active advisory committee on civil rights has all but disappeared in the past 14 months.
Ten of the 14 members of Vermont's advisory committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights were forced to step down in December 2006 after federal officials applied new term limits for state civil rights committees.
Since then, the committee has languished as it waits for its new membership to be approved by federal civil rights officials, who are facing accusations from Democrats in the U.S. Congress that political affiliations have consumed a bipartisan effort to protect people's civil rights.
"There has been some party politics playing out on the U.S. commission and as far as I can tell it's playing some sort of role here too," said Eric Sakai, a former chairman of Vermont's advisory committee who still has a few more years to serve before term limits would force him out. "We had a great group of people willing to serve too."
Without the approval of its new membership, the group can't meet or work on civil rights issues, Sakai explained. During his tenure with the committee, renewing the charter every two years had never become an issue, he said.
"We held an informal meeting last summer and submitted the membership list to the federal government to be rechartered," Sakai said. "So far, nothing has happened."
Vermont is not alone with this predicament. At least 37 other states are waiting for the federal government to approve the charters for their civil rights advisory committees, according to the office of U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.
Civil rights advocates point to a December 2004 memo to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission from the U.S. Department of Justice that allows the Bush administration to boost the number of conservative members on the eight-member commission as evidence that politics has affected the civil rights watchdog organization.
The law that created the commission 50 years ago called for no more than four members of one political party to serve on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. But the 2004 Justice Department memo allowed President Bush's administration to appoint two commissioners who had recently changed their party affiliation from Republican to Independent, leaving only two Democrats left as members.
"The continued politicization of the commission — aided by the Department of Justice — is ripe for Congressional oversight," Leahy said in a statement released Monday. "This Bush administration has manipulated the Civil Rights Act to pack what, by law, should be a bipartisan panel with a majority of Republican members. It is wrong, it should end, and the commission should promptly approve the charters of Vermont and dozens of other states that, for over a year, have gone without."
Leahy sent a letter to Civil Rights Commission Chairman Gerald Reynolds last week asking why the charters for a vast majority of the states have not been approved. He asked for a response by Feb. 1; his staff said Monday he has not yet received a response.
"These trends are troubling given that state advisory committees have long played a key role in fulfilling the commission's fact-finding and reporting mission," Leahy wrote in the letter. "It is my understanding that without these charters, the state advisory committees are unable to conduct their critical work and the capacity of the commission to investigate and report on civil rights is greatly under-mined."
A call for comment to the Civil Rights Commission's regional office in Washington, D.C., was forwarded to the commission's headquarters, also in D.C. No one answered the phone Monday afternoon at that office.
Kim Cheney, a Montpelier attorney and former Vermont attorney general, served on the advisory committee for nearly 20 years before he stepped down due to the new term limits. He said Monday that he is "appalled" at what has happened to the committee.
Cheney said he first saw resources for civil rights investigations pulled away during President Ronald Reagan's administration, when the local branch office in Boston for the Northeast was shut down. Funding and staff for the federal commission were whittled away during later administrations, he added.
"We were one of the most effective committees in the country," Cheney said. "Vermont was ranked at the top of effectiveness for civil rights advisory councils because the issues we raised usually resulted in changes in behavior or new legislation."
Although it has no formal authority to investigate or hold hearings, the civil rights advisory committee has had a clear influence on policy coming from Montpelier. The body issued two major reports on racial harassment in Vermont schools in the past decade and most recently had held hearings on the use of racially insensitive school mascots.
The advisory committee had turned its attention to Vermont's immigrant population and their challenges in overcoming a language barrier to acquire social and medical services, Sakai said. The group also had planned to look at the state's high rate of incarceration of black males, he added.
Hearings held by the committee in the late 1980s led to the revitalization of the Vermont Human Rights Commission, the organization that investigates civil rights complaints, according to its executive director, Robert Appel.
He said its absence is felt in Vermont.
"There are only a few organizations in the state dedicated to civil rights issues," Appel said. "It's a real loss to no longer have them giving a voice to people who are disenfranchised."