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TK: So you, did you meet on a formal basis with the commission, and if so, what was the nature of the, of the discussion between say you, representing the staff and the researchers, with the commission members themselves?

AM: I think I was in virtually all the meetings that the commissioners had after I came. There may have been once that they met on their own, but I was essentially there all the time. It varied, but I think the basic pattern on the substance of the work is that we would make recommendations, particularly on the writing, and the commissioners would discuss them and say yes or no. There were clearly, from the beginning, a handful of issues on the recommendations themselves -- should it involve money, if it should, how much, for instance -- that there was a regular public debate about. And in there, obviously there wasn't any point in making a recommendation because they all had their, they all had their views. As I remember it, I think what we did there was, was try to sort of lay out for them what the opposing views from the public were back and forth, so that they'd simply have that in front of them as they decided what they would recommend at the end. So, in all, on the recommendations themselves, they didn't need any suggestion on the direction to take, but they needed us to have (laid) the table (...) so that they had everything in front of them.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.