The issue of NTSF “membership”would resurface in 2017 when the charter underwent its second revision. Unlike the 2011 revision, the decision to revise the charter in 2017 was made by DOE instead of by the NTSF Planning Committee. DOE agreed to give the Planning Committee the opportunity to review the proposed changes. One key change was the inclusion of several detailed definitions of types of participants. Despite DOE-GC having approved the language of the 2011 revision, FACA concerns again were the driver, with the new definitions spelling out that NTSF “members”must be: …officers or employees of the Federal government or elected officers of State and Tribal governments (or their designated employees with authority to act on their behalf ) who engage in the NTSF working groups or committees. This includes elected officers and employees of State regional groups (SRGs) and authorized inter-Tribal organizations. The NTSF Chair approves new members, as appropriate (NTSF 2019, p. 1). The revision also added sections on voting and, at the request of the SRGs and TRMTC, on the process of revising the charter. Regarding the latter, the new charter states that revisions to the charter may be proposed by any Planning Committee member or the NTSF Chair independently. All proposed changes, however, “will be prepared by a subcommittee of the Planning Committee, as needed,”with the membership of the subcommittee including “at least one Tribal member and one State member” (ibid., p. 4). Another key issue in the 2017 revision was the desire by the Western states to include as NTSF members representatives of the affected units of local government (DeNinno and Snyder 2018, pp. 1-2). These governments are Nye County in Nevada, where Yucca
Mountain is located, and the neighboring counties in Nevada and California. Although Congress conferred special status upon these counties in the NWPA (NWPA Section 116(c)(1)), the majority decision of the NTSF Planning Committee was not to include these counties as NTSF members. The rationale was twofold: 1. The NTSF is about all DOE shipments, not just future shipments to be conducted under the NWPA; 2. The NTSF has a well-functioning structure that would be challenged by the addition of a new class of members; and 3. If the needs of the local governments are not being addressed through the current NTSF structure, there are other solutions besides fundamentally changing the NTSF’s purpose (NTSF PC 2018). In September 2019, members of the NTSF Planning Committee “almost unanimously voted to approve” the revised charter (NTSF PC 2019). ANNUAL MEETINGS In the early days of the NTSF, the SRGs took turns hosting the annual meetings, which grew from one day and 150 attendees to a three-day event of 200 attendees, with meetings of the SRGs and TRMTC, ad hoc working group meetings, plenary sessions, breakout sessions, Transportation Tracking and Communications System (TRANSCOM) training and user group meetings, and, frequently, tours and other training. In 2014, TRMTC began assisting the SRGs with hosting responsibilities, becoming a co-host of that year’s meeting as well as those that followed in 2015-2018. In 2019, TRMTC was the sole host for the first time, hosting that year’s annual meeting in Arlington, Virginia. The NTSF has consistently met in May or June each year. In 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting was cancelled. Instead, the Planning Committee organized a series of virtual meetings to bring content from the 2020 agenda to the NTSF members. It is no exaggeration to say that the NTSF is now a must-attend event for all states and Tribes that are engaged with DOE’s transportation cooperative agreements. In addition, many DOE offices with responsibility for shipments regularly attend. The Planning Committee develops the agenda over several months with input from SRG and TRMTC members. This collaboration ensures that the content and format of the meeting have wide appeal and include the exchange of information among all parties —not just a one-way information push from DOE to the states and Tribes. The NTSF annual meetings also differ from the TEC/WG meetings in that they take place annually as opposed to semi-annually. Scheduling the SRG and TRMTC meetings in conjunction with the NTSF annual meeting creates the advantage of reaching a large number of state and tribal personnel in the audience, as well as having access to these attendees as potential speakers on state or tribal matters. The committee and task force members also benefit because they can engage in national outreach that previously, with the TEC/WG, was restricted to a few representatives of each member organization.
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