DECISIONMAKING PROCESS FOR ASSIGNMENTS FOR HEARINGS

In making assignments to various hearings, many things must be taken into consideration, for both local and field hearings. For instance:

Will the hearing be open or closed?

If closed, what level of clearance is required?
What is the expected delivery date?

What is the estimated length of the hearing?

Will the hearing be printed? If so a mag tape will be required. Only 10 of the 15 commercial firms can presently furnish a mag tape.

Who is the best qualified reporter, all things considered?

If it is a field hearing, is it cost effective to send a reporter from Washington? Did the Chairman request a certain local reporter?

Is that reporter actually qualified by experience and past performance to be assigned?

The maximum number of hearings the official committee reporters can take at one time is ten since there are only ten reporters on the committee staff. Usually, since most of the Appropriation subcommittees run all day and daily copy is requested, two reporters are assigned to that one committee. That means five or six all-day hearings are all that can be carried and delivered on a timely basis with the present ten reporters.

The reason most major companies and some other reporters refuse to take Appropriations is because it is a much more demanding assignment from the standpoint of turn-around requirements, and also from the standpoint of requiring a mag tape. The Appropriation subcommittees require daily copy, if possible, and also want a mag tape, for which the House pays one dollar per page extra and no sales are ever permitted, whereas many of the Legislative subcommittees do not require daily copy, nor want a mag tape, and sale of transcripts is permitted. This naturally makes the Legislative hearings much more attractive to the commercial reporters. For the bulk of our outside coverage, we depend primarily on five or six major commercial firms in the area. These firms have made a specialty of serving the House over the years and have developed experienced staffs, reporters and transcribers as well as support personnel, who understand the requirements from the standpoint of accuracy in transcription as well as timely delivery. Certain committees require daily delivery; others are satisfied with five-day delivery.

The commercial firm is notified, usually a week in advance, if we know that far ahead what has been scheduled for the upcoming week. However, we always tell the company that the official committee reporters will be assigned first and only the overflow will be given to the commercial firms.

On a daily basis, in addition to the weekly Friday afternoon notice to commercial reporters, we make assignments to commercial reporters. This is usually done by 2:00 o'clock, if possible, prior to the date of the hearing. It is not always possible to notify and make assignments until adjournment of a hearing since, in may cases, the Chairman does not announce his intention until the end of the hearing.

REPORTER DUTIES DURING RECESS

Mr. BENJAMIN. Finally, would you now indicate what duties are performed by the employees of this office when the House is in recess or adjournment.

Mr. GUTHRIE. We have many field hearings besides the normal hearings on the Hill. I would say 5 percent of the 4,000 hearings that are covered by the House are covered on field hearings. During the month of December, when we were out of session, we had four of the reporters still training in building up their dictionaries on their Baron system. Our Baron system is leased. We had a 15,000 word dictionary with the Baron system and we were trying to build that up to some 30,000 or 35,000 words which we accomplished during December.

Mr. BENJAMIN. What happens when you complete that dictionary?

Mr. GUTHRIE. That is in order that when the tape is taken back to the office, that there are no mistranslates within the steno

graphic notes that have been taken. Many words sound alike but must be written differently. We are trying to reduce the number of conflicts within the system by raising the number of words that have been punched into the dictionary to reduce the conflicts per page in order that the page rate on production will go up.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Let me see if I understand you. My question was, What do these people do when the House is in recess or adjournment? You indicated that they are adding to their dictionary under the Baron system to get it from 15,000 to 35,000 words.

My next question is, What happens when they complete that, what are you going to do with them?

Mr. GUTHRIE. They will probably be taking some comp time off. Actually, we have not been having that much leave time because the hearings are still going on. If we have a light day, all hearings are being taken, and we are having hearings sometimes run on. Back at the close of the 95th Congress I think our Select Committee on Assassinations ran through the month of December. We were taking hearings through the last day of December.

Mr. BENJAMIN. I don't think that involves 17 reporters.

Mr. GUTHRIE. It is only 10 reporters.

Mr. BENJAMIN. But it doesn't involve 10 either.

Mr. GUTHRIE. It is not involving all 10. There is leave time at some time. They have to be able to get time off.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Are there other questions of Mr. Guthrie?
Mr. RUDD. I don't have any.

RECOMMENDED REPORTER LEVEL ANTICIPATED

Mr. BENJAMIN. Do you anticipate, once this report is complete, that is, the study of the commercial versus the corps reporters, that you will be able to give us information as to recommend a level of corps reporters?

Mr. GUTHRIE. Yes, sir, I think so.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Do you have any idea what it might be at the present time?

Mr. GUTHRIE. Not at the present time. One of the things that has been instituted is, actually once the corps came under the Clerk of the House, under the resolution is the fact that as they became House employees, that the annual salary of a starting reporter, as replacements are made, is some $7,000 less than the ones who were grandfathered in. Transcribers are being hired at some $5,200 less than what the present corps is being paid.

As we have turnovers, we have a further policy of hiring for the corps with the understanding that we will promote from within. We have been able to place stenographic reporters on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Prior to March of last year we only had shorthand writers on the floor of the House. We placed with the Reporters of Debates the dean of the corps of committee reporters, with the retirement of Edna Moyer, the chief reporter on the House floor. We have two other stenographic reporters working now on the floor of the House. We are hiring with the anticipation that we are upgrading both corps with the using of a Merit writer as qualifications for the corps, trying to scour the country to come up with the best reporters that we can possibly find, with the

understanding that we are promoting from within to the House floor in order to get people with background and that we can rely on that are very dependable reporters.

We have many committees that mandate that we only use the corps reporters. So all of those factors actually go into that report. Mr. BENJAMIN. Just in salaries alone, if we took the Reporters of Debates, including the clerk and the assistant clerk, but looking at the salaries that we have here, it would be around $560,000 to $600,000 for 907 hours which would run about $60 an hour.

If you hired a commercial reporter, how much would it cost you on an hourly basis?

Mr. GUTHRIE. I really will have to get you an answer on that, Mr. Benjamin.

Mr. BENJAMIN. Is it anywhere close to $60?

Mr. GUTHRIE. Per hour? I don't know of any commercial firms that could come in and do the parliamentary language that we have on copy in our House floor. I have known many making claims for the past two years, particularly in 1978 when the corps was placed under the Clerk of the House. But I met with House Administration many times on persons coming in making claims. But the corps on the floor, the great part of that is the fact that on revising and extending the remarks, we are trying to get the remarks back to the Members in as short a period of time as possible, within a 20 minute to 30 minute time frame, with the reporters coming back to the floor in order that we may produce a Congressional Record overnight.

WORK EVALUATION

Mr. MICHEL. May I ask a question here?
Mr. BENJAMIN. Šure.

Mr. MICHEL. What procedure or mechanism do we have, if any, to evaluate the work of our reporters? You know, the NFL with its referees will have a system by which they really evaluate how they are calling the shots.

Do we have any system here whereby we evaluate just what kind of a job they do by way of reporting? I find a real disparity between what I have said and what comes up on the record, depending on who is taking the transcription at that given time. I have marked it, especially in my own mind, a few times just to say, now, that is one whale of a good job, and another time I say, egads, was I that bad.

I am inclined to give the reporter all the breaks in the book because at times I have not been very good. But it seems to me that as important a job as that is, there would be a system for evaluating the job that those folks are doing. There are not all that many.

Mr. GUTHRIE. Is this on the floor of the House?

Mr. MICHEL. Yes.

Mr. GUTHRIE. At the present time we have a video tape, but we have also put in a Dictaphone stacking cassette. So any time a Member may walk into H-132 to listen to what has been said, if he has any question about what is on the hard copy transcript that has been taken to the floor for him to check and revise.

Of course, we also have a video tape on the television to listen to the same thing. But the immediate thing would be to go to H-132 to listen to a cassette that could be played back at that time. We have them in 15 minute stacking cassettes. That is one of the reasons why we changed two years ago with the Congressional Record. We put the time frame on the Congressional Record in order, with the coming of the television, so we can tell any Member exactly when this transpired on the floor.

Mr. MICHEL. That doesn't really specifically answer my question whether or not there is a real evaluation of those persons who are employed as Official Reporters.

Mr. GUTHRIE. Only the Members would be making the evaluation. If you have a particular time on the floor where there is a bad copy being handed back to you, we would love to know about it because we know which reporter is taking that particular turn. Mr. BENJAMIN. Ben, let me go back to my previous testimony. Rough calculations showed $60 an hour. Of course, your response was that the expertise that you have in your corps could not be duplicated by commercial firms. I would tend to agree, but what would a commercial firm charge?

Mr. GUTHRIE. We have never actually made that inquiry, to tell you the truth.

Mr. BENJAMIN. They bill you $12 million a year. You have some idea what you are paying per hour.

Mr. GUTHRIE. It is paid by page.

Mr. COLLEY. You are referring to floor reporters and Ben is focusing on committee reporting.

Mr. GUTHRIE. Actually, both corps have been in for 100 years, the Official Reporters of Debates as well as the Committee Reporters have been in existence for the last 100 years. We have never since that time, to my knowledge, because of the confidentiality of the transcript, made any studies as to having an outside firm come in to give us a page rate on the floor.

Mr. BENJAMIN. The reason I use the floor reporting is because through the wisdom of Mr. Hartnett of the Recording Studio I determined that the House was in session for 907 hours. I cannot tell you how long the committees were in session so I cannot take a comparable figure for the committees.

But my question, again, is about hiring a commercial reporter, wherever you place them. How much will it cost you approximately for an hour?

Mr. GUTHRIE. I will try to come up with an answer for you. [The following was provided for the record:]

It is difficult to estimate a cost per hour for hiring a commercial reporter, since the firms presently contract on a per page rate. However, the following rates may be helpful to you.

Above rates include two additional copies. Copies in excess of two are charged at the rate of $.15 per copy. Prior approval of the Committee on House Administration must be secured to purchase more than two copies.