following: Transmitted herewith for filing are the original and two copies of the (1) Complaint in the referenced action; Emergency Motion For Expedited Briefing Schedule To (2) (3) Civil cover sheet; (4) Summons in a civil action. Please execute the summons and return it to the messenger who is filing these papers; COVINGTON & BURLING Nancy Mayer Whittington May 11. 1994 Page 2 Please date-stamp one photocopy of these documents and return the date-stamped copies to me in the self-addressed stamped envelope enclosed herewith. Enclosures Sincerely yours, Jackson R. Sharman III 1959 NEWRY B. GONZALEZ TEXAS. CHA-MIGAN STEPHEN NEAL, NORTH CAROLINA BARNEY FRANK MASSACHUSETTS JUDITH RENABUT II, MASSACHUSETTS WEBI MFUME, MARYLAND MAXINE WATERS, CALIFORNIA BILL ORTON, UTAN JIN BACCHUS, FLORDA HERBERT C KLEIN NEW JERSEY CAROLYN & MALONEY, NEW YORK LUCILLE ROYBALLARO CALIFORNIA WYDIA M. VELASQUEZ, NEW YORK CLEO FIELDS. LOUISIANA MELVIN WATT, NORTH GAROURA CALVIN M. DOOLEY, CALIFORNIA I have reviewed your letter dated May 2, 1994, rejecting my appeal My decision to pursue litigation was not made lightly. As the James Barker, Esquire May 11, 1994 At issue is full disclosure. In this context, the question of partisanship deserves review. While I may have differed in judgment with given observations of individual members in various investigations, I have supported all Banking Committee oversight investigations of the S&L industry and, indeed, suggested a probe be initiated against an S&L identified with a Republicar. Governor, Fife Symington. It was accordingly, with dismay, that I read of my committee chairman's effort to bolster the Executive's position vis-a-vis Congress in his instruction by letter of March 10, 1994, to both the RTC and OTS not to produce documents requested by me and in his instructions by letter four days later that regulators need not answer questions concerning the failure of Madison Guaranty at then scheduled RTC oversight hearings. Indeed, among the items being withheld -- on facially tenuous "personal privacy" grounds is correspondence between the RTC and Members of Congress. In our dispute the fundamental proposition that I am advancing is simply that in relationship to the oversight role assigned to it under the rubric of the Constitution, Congress has authority to seek and review documents of federal government agencies. Under precedent and due to decentralized practicalities, Congress has devolved this particular authority to Committees which have jurisdiction over various federal agencies and federal programs. As the ranking Minority Member of the Committee of jurisdiction over the agencies responsible for regularion of savings and loan associations and disposal of assets of failed institutions, I have a particular responsibility to the Congress to oversee related Executive Branch policies and actions. With the same political party in control of both Houses of Congress as well as the Executive Branch, the responsibility of the Ranking Member of a committee with oversight responsibilities for an Executive agency takes on enhanced dimensions. The Constitution did not envisage that a Member would be required to default on his or her individual responsibilities simply because a political determination may be made by an Executive branch agency to withhold documents pertaining to a particularly embarrassing circumstance. In the past several decades, Congress has let the public down_by not vigorously overseeing laws and policies that apply to the S&L industry. The costliness of this failure to perform vigorous oversight is evidenced by the quarter trillion dollar bill the taxpayer has been forced to honor, a small part of which relates to a failed institution in Arkansas, Madison Guaranty. The reason for this particular oversight investigation relates to the lessons that nced to be learned, particularly as they apply to the role of state governments in regulating Atate-chartered, state-regulated institutions in the backdrop of a federalized deposit insurance program. In this dispute about who is entitled to speak for Congress in the context of Congress' right and obligation under Article I of the Constitution to conduct oversight of the Executive branch, Chairman Gonzalez' letters contained an implicit and unprecedented philosophical assertion that not only does a chairman have the exclusive right to obtain oversight documents from the Executive branch, but the right to deny such documentation to other Members and the right even to deny inquiries about issues clearly germane to the subject of hearings. An RTC oversight hearing was scheduled under requirement of law, Section 21A (k) (6) of the Federal Home Loan Bank Act (12 U.S.C. $1441a (k) (6)), and there is no provision in that law for exceptions to Congressional oversight that relate to a single state and its institutions. The U.S. Congress wrote a law applicable to all 50 states, not 49, and the oversight of our laws applies throughout this country. Just as in America no individual is above the law, no state is beyond its reach. Just as no individual is entitled to violate the law out of ignorance of it, no person, even the chairman of a congressional Committee, is entitled after the fact to be sole interpreter of a law's meaning or serve as a censor of another Member's inquiries. Од In The precedent of the Banking Committee is clear with respect to the So we have had now over the years since 1989, a very long |