Posted on 03/12/2017 8:27:10 AM PDT by pabianice
NTSB Chairman Christopher A. Hart spoke in Houston, TX, on February 16, 2017, at the Texas Southern University Monthly Research Seminar, “Transportation Safety: Challenges for Continuing Improvement.” His speech came while the Trump Administration is making big changes to some government agencies, including packing them with political appointees who have no experience and have expressed intentions to cripple the very agencies they’re supposed to be leading.
It’s unknown whether the Trump Administration will seek to undermine the National Transportation Safety Board. In his speech, Hart explained the structure of the NTSB and its traditional insulation from inter- ference by politicians. He said, “The agency is led by five Board Members who are nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate. The most important aspect of our independence is that the Members serve fixed terms, and the terms are staggered. Most political appointees, by contrast, serve at the pleasure of the President. In the real world, that means that if the appointee does something that is politically challenging or unpopular, the appointee may be out of a job. Serving in fixed terms helps to insulate Board decisions from lobbying by a manufacturer, an operator, or a union that is dissatisfied with our investigation of an accident that they are involved in.
“In addition, very few political appointees have a substantive knowledge requirement. Our enabling statute, on the other hand, requires that at least three of the five of us have some relevant expertise. Moreover, the statute helps to create party balance by permitting only three of the five of us to be of the same political party as the President.
“The purpose of these requirements is to help ensure that our determinations of causes of acci- dents, and our recommendations to help prevent more accidents, come from the facts and the evi- dence of our investigations, rather than from polit- ical forces or lobbying. The structure that Congress gave us does this very well.”
As a pilot and a subscriber of NTSB Reporter... I am calling Bullwinkle on this one!
Stick your subscription where the sun doesn’t shine!
Table slapped... I’m OUT!
From my experience with this sort of thing, I think the best approach is to allow Congress to give executive branch departments the authority to draft regulations, but to require all such regulations to be approved by Congress before they can be enforced.
Sorry — “As the world HAS gotten more complex ...”
Obama appointee Hart’s term ends 03/17/17...
Obama appointee T. Bella Dinh-Zarr term ends 3/2017
Obama appointee Robert L. Sumwalt term ended 12/31/2016
Obama appointee Earl F. Weener term ends ?????
arg...
Hart’s term ends 12/31/2017 - his Chair ends 3/17/2017
Dinh-Zarr term ends 2018, her Vice-Chair ends 03/2017
No, NTS Board independence will not be crippled under President Trump - but Christopher Hart’s wife and daughter will still “date” the football team...
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