Summary

This document presents selected results of GAO's survey of officials from 45 interstate compact commissions that address environment and natural resource management issues. Such commissions are created to administer and implement the provisions of interstate compacts, which are agreements between two or more states that are designed to resolve problems or concerns that transcend state lines. For the purposes of this survey, we used the term "commission" to refer to a compact's governing body. To collect information on the structure and governance of these interstate compact commissions, we administered a Web-based survey. We received a response rate of 80 percent. The selected results we present relate to commission type, structure and composition, authority and powers, accountability, dispute resolution, amendments, congressional consent, commission budget, and compact issues. A more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology is contained in our report "Interstate Compacts: An Overview of the Structure and Governance of Environment and Natural Resource Compacts", GAO-07-519 (Washington, D.C.: April 2007). We administered the survey from August 2006 to November 2006 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.