The U.S. Sentencing Commission"s lone remaining member said on Thursday that President Joe Biden should urgently nominate enough new commissioners to allow it to operate and help implement a major 2018 criminal justice reform law. Senior U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, the only commissioner left on the seven-person commission and its acting chair, said it was frustrating that the panel was unable to enact new policies and that he had urged the White House to nominate new members. "I would be surprised and dismayed if nominees are not sent to the Senate by the early part of next year," Breyer, who sits in San Francisco, said in an interview with Reuters. The commission lost its quorum in January 2019, a month after former President Donald Trump signed into law the First Step Act, bipartisan legislation aimed at easing harsh sentencing for non-violent offenders and at reducing recidivism. Breyer said the lack of quorum meant it could not provide guidance on how to implement the law, creating a "vacuum" in which judges inconsistently decide whether inmates under the measure can secure compassionate release amid the COVID-19 pandemic. "Some people were granted compassionate release for reasons that other judges found insufficient," he said. "There was no standard. That"s a problem when you try to implement a policy on a nationwide basis." Breyer said the White House"s "rather busy agenda" has likely kept it focused on other matters but that he understood nominees were now being vetted. The White House had no immediate comment. Without new members, he said, the panel also will remain unable to update advisory sentencing guidelines, including in ways that could guide judges to impose shorter sentences than the guidelines currently advise in some instances. "I think it"s urgent because it"s important to make sentencing relevant to the views people have today," he said. The commission"s seven members must include four federal judges, and no more than four members can be from the same party. Openings have occurred as prior members" terms expired. Trump tapped five nominees in August 2020, but the Senate never acted on them. Breyer"s own term expired on Oct. 31. Breyer, who former President Bill Clinton nominated to the federal bench, can remain on the commission for up to a year more unless a replacement is confirmed. The U.S. Judicial Conference, the judiciary"s policymaking arm, recommended six judges in April for potential nominations. But Biden has yet to nominate anyone.