Page images
PDF
EPUB

do not recommend for it. I could say they did not recommend against it but we are not going to engage in that type of argument, I know. Mr. CURRY. I would think, not having recommended for it when the task force recommendation for it was specific

Mr. HOLIFIELD. As a matter of over-all recommendations for the different regulatory recommendations, they did recommend and I read it to you, "we recommend that all administrative responsibility be vested in a chairman of the commission." And now I want to get the first paragraph here of the Independent Regulatory Commission Report which says in this report, the Commission on Organization has confined itself to a discussion of the organizational problems of these agencies and does not deal with their quasi legislatíve functions. So they are not interfering with the quasi judicial or quasi legislative. The only thing they are recommending here is in regard to organizational structure and the administrative concentration of authority. You will agree with me on that point?

Mr. CURRY. I think that is what they had in mind, but I think that the danger is that the language that is in the plan is susceptible of results that will be very inimical to the independence of the Commission because the Chairman is given these various powers of appointment or assignment of cases. He can turn over cases to whomsoever he pleases. He himself can even appoint apparently the hearing examiners provided for by the Administrative Procedure Act.

Incidentally, there are a large number of examiners with the Interstate Commerce Commission who are not subject to the Administrative Procedure Act and their appointment, their promotion, their regulation, would be entirely left to this chairman.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. And to agreement with civil service.

Mr. CURRY. To the civil-service agreement which was a voluntary agreement. He could end that agreement.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Do you think he would have power to end that agreement without action of the Commission if the Commission made that agreement?

Mr. CURRY. I think he would. Now, whether he would do it or not is something else. What I am speaking of is he might. You might say, having a benevolent monarch, so to speak, but in our system of government, we have to provide checks and balances.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. That is right.

Mr. CURRY. Against a man that may not be that type.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. We are regulating for the office and not for the individual.

Mr. CURRY. That is right.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. I want to call your attention to the last paragraph at the bottom of page 5 of your statement, Mr. Curry. The argument that you make there is that each Commissioner has control of one bureau and he becomes familiar with the work of that bureau. not true?

Mr. CURRY. That is true.

Is that

Mr. HOLIFIELD. You go further and say that it contributes toward better understanding of the technical matters called for in decision of litigated cases.

Now, you take that man who is familiar with that work and you transfer him to the chairmanship of the Commission where you have the broad, over-all responsibility which he did not have with the

STATEMENT OF J. NINIAN BEALL, CHAIRMAN, LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE, ASSOCIATION OF INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION PRACTITIONERS

Mr. HOLIFIELD. We have as the next witness for the committee Mr. J. Ninian Beall, who is chairman of the legislative committee of the Association of Interstate Commerce Commission Practitioners. You may proceed, sir.

Mr. BEALL. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, my name is J. Ninian Beall. I am an attorney at law and a practitioner before the Interstate Commerce Commission. I am chairman of the legislative committee of the Association of Interstate Commerce Practitioners. My address is Continental Building, Washington, D. C.

I have been practicing before the Commission more than 30 years and for a number of years I was general counsel for the American Trucking Associations.

I have been instructed by the association to appear at appropriate congressional committee hearings and voice its opposition to Reorganization Plan No. 7 involving the Interstate Commerce Commission. The reasons for the opposition are, in brief, as follows:

1. On its face, plan No. 7 would appear to contemplate promoting efficient administration. Careful consideration of the plan leads to the following conclusions: (a) It will fail as an administrative efficiency plan; (b) it carries a serious potential threat to the independence of the Commission; and (c) it is vague and indefinite.

The association does not believe that plan 7 will promote administrative efficiency. It saddles on the Chairman of the Commission so much in the way of administrative duties that he would be reduced to the status of an "administrative officer" buried in details, rather than a Commissioner. The burden placed on the Chairman would necessarily mean that the Commission as a whole, would lose the informed advice and services of the Chairman even though he might vote on decisions.

The Commission operates through bureaus, each of which reports to a particular Commissioner. Under the present plan of operation, each Commissioner can be, and is, well informed with respect to the operations of his assigned bureau. Plan 7 would make the Chairman responsible for all of the bureaus. The practitioners' association does not believe that a Chairman could possibly assume all of the administrative duties now being performed by 11 Commissioners without a substantial loss of contact and efficiency.

The division of bureau responsibilities among the several Commissioners has been in effect for many years. The practitioners' association has not found that there is any need for reorganization. If and when there develops need for a change in the administration of minor details, an administrative officer, who is not a Commissioner but would be responsible to the Commission, would seem to be the proper solution.

Coming to matters of more fundamental concern, plan No. 7 would concentrate in the Chairman vast powers bearing on the judicial and legislative functions of the Commission.

duty of the Chairman to learn all of the intricate and complicated details of the specialists in these different departments. It would be merely a matter of over-all supervision just like any supervisor has of subordinates who deal in specialized departments.

I know you are familiar with that principle in industry. The man that has the supervisory authority does not always, he is not always the specialist in a particular department but he is able to take the matters of broad, administrative decision and make them on the basis of the facts presented to him by the specialist from that department. It seems to me you are belaboring the position there when you make the argument that the Chairman would necessarily have to learn all of the complicated detail of each department.

Mr. CURRY. He would not have to do that exactly.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Delegated now to administrative assistant, I believe, in each one of these departments. The Commissioner has an administrative assistant, undoubtedly, to take care of these details.

Mr. CURRY. Administrative Bureau that deals with some of them. But the point that I wanted to make was that the Bureau of Finance is just one of 15 bureaus. I am just using that as illustrative and to indicate that the Commissioner there knows that work. He knows the personnel. His experience has shown that certain ones in that Bureau can do a job. Certain ones are not as competent, not as skillful; have not the perspective and are not the ones that should be charged with that work.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. I think any good department head, though, gives to his subordinate who is head of a subordinate department certain discretion in his own department and then only asks him for results, he does not overrule the detailed allocation of work and the assignment of responsibilities within a department just because the over-all authority is placed in him. That is delegated as a matter of practical procedure, is it not?

Mr. CURRY. Of course, the director has a good deal to do with the running of the bureau. I did not mean to intimate that he would not have a head of the bureau who would do a great deal toward running the bureau, but what I meant was that under the present plan when you have 11 Commissioners, who distribute the work of 15 bureaus among them, each of those Commissioners acquires a considerable familiarity with the work of his particular bureau, with the men in his bureau whose talents he knows-who are the producers, the men who know the business, and he himself, and this is a by-product that I think is highly important-he himself acquires by contact with his bureau a specialized type of knowledge that makes him more valuable on the Commission.

Now, if the executive and administrative duties, the task, in other words, of recruiting that force and putting men on and who will be promoted and who will be kicked around is in one central chairman, it is our view that that will tend toward breaking down a system now that has worked well and that certainly has contributed toward a fair-minded, independent, nonpolitical disposition of cases and that is something which we are interested in from the standpoint of the public.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Curry.

STATEMENT OF J. NINIAN BEALL, CHAIRMAN, LEGISLATIVE COMMITTEE, ASSOCIATION OF INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION PRACTITIONERS

Mr. HOLIFIELD. We have as the next witness for the committee Mr. J. Ninian Beall, who is chairman of the legislative committee of the Association of Interstate Commerce Commission Practitioners. You may proceed, sir.

Mr. BEALL. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, my name is J. Ninian Beall. I am an attorney at law and a practitioner before the Interstate Commerce Commission. I am chairman of the legislative committee of the Association of Interstate Commerce Practitioners. My address is Continental Building, Washington, D. C.

I have been practicing before the Commission more than 30 years and for a number of years I was general counsel for the American Trucking Associations.

I have been instructed by the association to appear at appropriate congressional committee hearings and voice its opposition to Reorganization Plan No. 7 involving the Interstate Commerce Commission. The reasons for the opposition are, in brief, as follows:

1. On its face, plan No. 7 would appear to contemplate promoting efficient administration. Careful consideration of the plan leads to the following conclusions: (a) It will fail as an administrative efficiency plan; (b) it carries a serious potential threat to the independence of the Commission; and (c) it is vague and indefinite.

The association does not believe that plan 7 will promote administrative efficiency. It saddles on the Chairman of the Commission so much in the way of administrative duties that he would be reduced to the status of an "administrative officer" buried in details, rather than a Commissioner. The burden placed on the Chairman would necessarily mean that the Commission as a whole, would lose the informed advice and services of the Chairman even though he might vote on decisions.

The Commission operates through bureaus, each of which reports to a particular Commissioner. Under the present plan of operation, each Commissioner can be, and is, well informed with respect to the operations of his assigned bureau. Plan 7 would make the Chairman responsible for all of the bureaus. The practitioners' association does not believe that a Chairman could possibly assume all of the administrative duties now being performed by 11 Commissioners without a substantial loss of contact and efficiency.

The division of bureau responsibilities among the several Commissioners has been in effect for many years. The practitioners' association has not found that there is any need for reorganization. If and when there develops need for a change in the administration of minor details, an administrative officer, who is not a Commissioner but would be responsible to the Commission, would seem to be the proper solution.

Coming to matters of more fundamental concern, plan No. 7 would concentrate in the Chairman vast powers bearing on the judicial and legislative functions of the Commission.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. We are in disagreement, of course, on that, Mr. Beall.

Mr. BEALL. I want to try to support it with an explanation.

The assignment of work and cases would rest exclusively with the Chairman. This concentration of authority in a Chairman would run throughout the entire organization of the Commission and reach from the individual Commissioners, through the bureau heads, to the examiners, and the entire staff. Independence of thought and action would be impaired, as duties and opportunities for service would necessarily be circumscribed by concurrence in the views of the Chairman.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. At this point I think it would be well to call your attention to the fact that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Vinson, exercises this type of over-all administrative allocation of cases throughout the 48 Federal courts as well as to the other eight Justices, and I do not believe he has ever been accused of trying to influence the results of the deliberations of the courts.

Mr. BEALL. Mr. Chairman, I respectfully suggest that there is a vast difference between a situation involving the Supreme Court or any other court and the Commission.

The members of the Commission are appointed for terms of only 7 years. The Associate Justices of the Supreme Court and the Justices of the United States district court are appointed for life, and it makes them quite independent whereas a 7-year tenure is no independence at all.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. There is no doubt that there is more independence on the part of the Justices of the Supreme Court, but I point out that the terms of 11 Commissioners are quite staggered and there is overall independence, I think, which certainly these men should, and I believe they do, practice.

Mr. BEALL. They do now and have all along, and we want that independent position maintained. That is what we do not want to lose. That is what we are fearful of.

At present the Chairman is elected by the Commission; but, under plan No. 7 the Chairman would be appointed by the President, and, with minor exceptions, none of the Chairman's administrative actions could be reviewed by the Commission. All work and case assignments would become the exclusive prerogative of the Chairman, as distinguished from the Commission. The independence of everyone in the organization would be jeopardized under plan 7. The Commissioners themselves, individually or collectively, would have no voice in the assignment of work or cases. Everyone knows that much of the work of the Commission is of such national economic importance that it necessarily carries political interest. In short, plan No. 7 would have the practical effect of destroying the independent status of the Commission, and the transfer of its functions to the executive department.

The Commissioners are appointed for comparatively short terms and it is reasonable to presume that reappointment would be influenced by the views of the Presidentially appointed, powerful Chairman.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. How can you make that argument when all the Commissioners are now appointed by the President and if he does not like

« PreviousContinue »