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The NELAC Institute (TNI) was established to assist the old NELAC in becoming self-sufficient. It was felt that a new non-profit consensus development organization was needed to replace NELAC which during its last reincarnation was an organization of States and Federal agencies. However, there may be even more legal issues with the new TNI structure than with the old NELAC.
TNI is established as a non-profit membership organization. As such, it is legally no different from any other membership organization. This means that the members of TNI including the PT Board, the NELAP Board, and the TNI Board of Directors are acting as individuals and not as representatives of their employers. Steve Arms within TNI speaks for Steve Arms not for the State of Florida. Similarly, the official representatives of the organization, the Board of Directors, have the same responsibilities as any other corporate board. They are individually and jointly responsible for the actions of TNI. This raises serious questions about the legal value of the decisions of the TNI PT Board, TNI NELAP Board, and the Board of Directors since their decisions are the decisions of individuals within a separate structure and have no regulatory weight within the legal systems of the NELAC States.
What this means in reality is that a laboratory that loses accreditation as a result of negligent action by one of the TNI Boards can now take legal action against TNI. Under the old NELAC structure this was never an option since the decisions of NELAC were made by regulatory bodies acting as regulatory bodies.
Similarly, ANSI has approved TNI as a consensus standards development organization. However, TNI only uses the ANSI approve procedures for the operation of its Expert Committees. The TNI PT Board and the TNI NELAP Board are operating with a separate set of procedures which are not consensus procedures and not based upon the ANSI approved procedures. Therefore, the actions of these two Boards are clearly not part of the consensus development system of TNI and are therefore probably not legally part of the TNI NELAC Standards. For these reasons, TNI PT Board and TNI NELAP Board decisions may not carry any regulatory weight in the NELAC States with have adopted the “NELAC Standard” into regulation but have not and probably cannot adopt the individual decisions of these Boards into their regulations since they are vested interest positions not consensus based positions.
NELAC has struggled with reorganization for three years. It is time for the general membership of TNI to become involved and require that its Board of Directors address these issues directly. The original concept of NELAC was a consensus organization of all stakeholders working together to develop a system that would improve environmental data quality. We as a membership organization need to set aside our vested interests and require the Board to establish a structure which is a true consensus organization where every stakeholder has an equal voice and vote in every decision of every Committee and Board within the organization.
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