Panels compete for credit on classification bills

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is set to mark up legislation Wednesday to deter what critics call overclassification of government documents, in a move apparently aimed at pre-empting bills passed last month by the House Homeland Security Committee.

An Oversight and Government Reform Committee spokeswoman said the panel is scheduled to vote this afternoon on two bills, which were being finalized Tuesday night.

One involves document classification. Another aims to address so-called "sensitive but unclassified information," a broadly defined-designation many agencies have used increasingly in recent years to restrict access to documents that are not officially secret.

The two bills appear generally to be governmentwide versions of two declassification measures introduced by Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee Chairwoman Jane Harman, D-Calif., that cover just the Homeland Security Department. Her measures set new procedures for labeling information as too secret for dissemination and roll-back obstacles to release of sensitive but unclassified information.

The Oversight panel spokeswoman said she was unaware of any jurisdictional dispute with the Homeland Security Committee, but several people familiar with the Oversight bill plans said staffers there were surprised and displeased when the other committee approved Harman's bills June 26.

The Oversight staffers consider the matter, particularly the sensitive-but-unclassified designation, "their" issue, sources said.

"They are acting like they've decided it's ours," one aide said. "They are going to do it, whether Homeland Security likes it or not."

One information policy expert familiar with the Oversight committee's plans said the panel is considering the bill at the full committee level, without a separate hearing, in an effort to move the measures quickly before the House considers Harman's bills.

"They are trying to catch up," said Steven Aftergood, a government transparency advocate with the Federation of American Scientists.

A Homeland Security Committee aide said Harman's bills may come up next week in a package of bills the House hopes to take up with a bill reauthorizing the Homeland Security Department. That would give her bills a separate and possibly quicker path to passage than the pending Oversight committee measures.

The aide said the Oversight committee contacted the Homeland Security panel after Harman's bills passed, generating "constructive conversations."

"It's flattering that they've moved so quickly to take up an idea that we've been working on for years and apply it goverment-wide," another Homeland Security panel staffer said.

The White House recently issued an executive order aimed at streamlining sensitive but unclassified designations.