An independent commission proposed on Thursday that the US Olympic Committee, a "constant source of embarrassment," answer to a much smaller oversight board under a permanent boss and report annually to Congress.
Commissioners ended their five-month review of the scandal-plagued committee by recommending a wholesale restructuring. Changes should be in place by January next year, the year of the next games, commissioners said.
"The situation has deteriorated to such a degree -- and the time to the 2004 Athens Olympic games is so short -- that drastic measures to reform the USOC must be undertaken immediately," they said in their 70-page report.
The five-member commission, appointed by a Senate committee, said the new leadership should include an assembly taking in representatives from the participating sports, athletes, communities and the public at large.
Overseeing the committee should be a board of directors with nine members, down from 124, they said. The board would also have four additional members with limited voting rights.
The report said with a 124-member board and USOC's policy to reimburse them for expenses, it costs the USOC about US$250,000 to hold one board meeting.
"It's too large, too expensive and too ineffective," said Roberta Cooper Ramo, co-chairman of the commission and a former president of the American Bar Association who helped salvage the Olympics' reputation after the Salt Lake City scandal.
The report said the committee should be required to report to Congress each year on its finances and work, that it adopt whistle-blower protections and that the new structure be reviewed every 10 years. The committee now reports to Congress every four years.
"The USOC is in disarray and in crisis," Ramo said. "It needs to be reconstructed quickly and drastically."
Donald Fehr, head of the Major League Baseball Players Association and the other commission chairman, said: "We found no belief out there that things should stay as they are. There is a universal belief that things that needed to be done needed to be done quickly.
"Things began to unravel so much there was a widespread public demand for change."
Similar steps were proposed in an internal task force review appointed by the committee itself. That task force reported its findings in April.
The changes are meant, in part, to alleviate friction that has long existed between the committee's paid chief executive officer and its volunteer president.
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