transparent Petri dishes

Charles Halpern is a Berkeley-based public interest attorney and a member of the prestigious Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.

In an interview with California Politics Today on Friday afternoon, January 14, 2005, Mr. Halpern characterized the first meeting of the Independent Citizens' Oversight Committee (ICOC) (the body authorized by Proposition 71 to govern the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine [CIRM] and the spending of $3/6 [the minimum cost of paying off the bonds that will be floated to raise the money] billion for bio-medical research), in San Francisco on December 17, 2004, as being in "blatant disregard" of California's Open Meeting laws. He said that the second meeting, at the University of Southern California Medical School on January 6, 2005, was "a little bit better, but they're still not there yet" in that regard.

Prior to that second meeting, Mr. Halpern sent a letter to all twenty-nine members of the ICOC, in which he said:

"I reviewed the agenda for the January 6 meeting with concern and surprise. I find that the Bagley-Keene Open Meetings Act is still not being complied with and that the Committee is being invited to rush into the core of its work without having laid an appropriate foundation.

"I write to encourage you to take charge of the mission of the Institute and to begin to function as a deliberative body, allowing due time for serious consideration of complex issues, with public involvement in the manner prescribed by California law."

Mr. Halpern goes on in some detail in that letter to outline some of his concerns about the way in which the ICOC is operating. He re-iterated these concerns during his January 14, 2005, interview with California Politics Today.

In that interview, Mr. Halpern said that the ICOC had now "at least recognized that they're not above the law, that they have to pay attention to the laws, but they haven't really taken in the idea that democratic participation is something that is going to strengthen the administration of this new program…they still treat it as if it's a necessary nuisance."

He said that the ICOC needs to more clearly define the scope of the project they are undertaking and need to make it clear what the framework is for the evaluation of grant proposals made to it. Asked about who's responsible for deciding about which interpretation of the ICOC's scope is the appropriate one, Mr. Halpern said that it is the ICOC itself.

Mr. Halpern said that despite the fact that ICOC Chair and CIRM Interim President Bob Klein's appears "very anxious to start pushing money out as quickly as possible," voices were now being raised in various quarters, including on the ICOC itself, saying "wait a second; it's more important that we do it right than that we do it quickly."

Mr. Halpern said he was pleased that Mr. Klein had, following his suggestion that he do so in his letter of January 6th, promised not to profit from any real estate transactions generated by the ICOC, in addition to his previous promise not to hold stock or any other financial interest in "bio-medical" companies.

But this is only the beginning of what needs to be done to guard against conflicts of interest, he said, adding that "as you take a look at the structure of this committee, conflict of interest is really built into it, because a substantial majority of the people who are on the committee that is giving out the money are also people who want to collect money. They are people who are executives in medical schools, in research institutes, in universities, so they are going to have to set up the rules in their role as committee members to give money to themselves in their role as executives of research and academic institutions."

Mr. Halpern highlighted the importance of making sure that rules guaranteeing transparency and prohibiting conflicts of interest apply to the operations of the Working Groups, which will be making recommendations to the ICOC about who should get the various pieces of the $3 billion pie that it is in their power to give out.

Under the rules governing the operations of the ICOC's Working Groups, as they stand now, according to Mr. Halpern, a member of the Working Group charged with deciding who gets grant money can, in his or her role as an employee of a random bio-tech company, apply to that Working Group for a grant, participate actively in the discussion of that particular grant's merits, and vote to recommend that it be funded on a public vote of the ICOC, all while the public is denied any access to the deliberations, or records of the deliberations, of that Working Group.

Mr. Halpern called on the ICOC to remedy this situation by making the Working Groups transparent to public scrutiny, echoing a suggestion made earlier in the week by former California State Senator Barry Keene, a co-author of the California Open Meeting Act, in an interview with California Politics Today.

He also said that the idea of putting the CIRM in cyberspace was an "interesting" one, and that it ought to be openly considered by the ICOC Site Selection Committee.

You can hear this California Politics Today interview with Charles Halpern in its entirety by clicking here.