RE: Facilitation of advisory groups

[Rich Puchalsky <rpuchalsky@att.net>]

Elizabeth Carlson writes:
"Just a short follow-up to my last message. I sense from the tone of many messages in this dialogue that TRUST is a huge issue with EPA and pollution/cleanup issues. I wouldn't be surprised if lack of trust is in fact pervasive in such matters and throughout much of the country, so routine use of 3rd party facilitation could indeed be a very important and necessary action."

It's only a matter of time before the third party facilitators become corrupted as well.  Once these kind of processes become common, there will be more than one place to get facilitators from.  So who will be hired to facilitate?  Those facilitators biased towards whoever is hiring them.  Once the other facilitators realize what's going on there will be pressure on them to change, as well, or go out of business.  Eventually the third-party facilitators will have the same reputation as whoever is paying their bills does.  The same kind of thing happens with testing labs, contractors, etc.  It's why there are Republican pollsters and Democratic pollsters, but strangely enough (for a supposedly technical occupation like polling) none that serve both parties.