8-18-2001: WASHINGTON (AP) - Avoiding the spotlight of federal open meeting laws, members of President Bush's Social Security commission plan to meet in private next week in what critics say is part of a growing attempt to govern by secrecy.

The 16-member commission plans to split into two groups Wednesday morning for closed meetings at a Washington hotel, in which they will discuss fiscal and administrative issues related to creating personal Social Security accounts. Later in the day, members will join for a meeting of the full commission, and it will be open to the public.

``Everything has been completely open. These are the first meetings where the commissioners are trying to have a little time where not every word they say is going to be broadcast to the world,'' said commission spokesman Randy Clerihue. The morning sessions will be attended only by commissioners and staff, he said.

``This commission is in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of the law,'' Clerihue said.

Public-interest advocates said the President's Commission to Strengthen Social Security is trying to skirt the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which requires open meetings, by gathering in subgroups. The law defines a meeting as deliberations of at least enough members to take official action.

``You do find these games being played,'' said Rebecca Daugherty of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

The commission's subgroup meetings are ``exactly what the statute is designed to prevent,'' said Washington lawyer Eric Glitzenstein, who specializes in open government laws.

The commission is ``circumventing the open meetings requirement by basically splitting into two parts,'' he said. ``To me that's just a flagrant violation of the letter and spirit of the statute.''

Dan Callahan, an attorney for the Social Security Administration, said the subgroup meetings were permitted under the law. ``The full commission will review the work of the subcommittees in the public session so the subcommittees' work will be presented to the public,'' he said.

Critics cite a pattern of attempts to circumvent the law. Other examples:

-Vice President Dick Cheney has refused to turn over documents to the General Accounting Office, an investigative agency of Congress, that detail deliberations on Bush's energy policy. Doing so would unconstitutionally interfere with the White House's duties, he said.

-The White House balked at giving a Senate committee access to documents involving decisions to roll back several major environmental regulations. The administration relented after Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Government Affairs Committee, threatened to subpoena the documents.

- A Health Care Finance Administration advisory committee was accused of violating federal law in 1998 by conducting closed meetings even though its members included nongovernment officials. HCFA removed insurance company officials and restructured the committee.

- The Clinton administration ran into trouble with the same law in 1993 when Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care reform task force kept its meetings closed.

Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, who was a House Ways and Means health subcommittee spokesman at the time, criticized the advisory panel as ``another troubling episode of the administration having a secret health care task force. They should open their meetings immediately.''

Bush's commission is to recommend a plan this fall to let younger workers invest some of their Social Security payroll taxes in the stock market. Any plan would still require congressional approval.

``The best way to do the public's business is under the scrutiny of the public,'' said Celia Wexler, senior policy analyst with Common Cause, a government watchdog group.