every food establishment in the District of Columbia. Those cards are then sorted by our Bureau of Food and Drugs and distributed out to the areas with the request that the area supervisors and their inspectors conduct an investigation of each establishment in question. At that point in time a determination is made as to whether the establishment is suitable for licensure during the coming year, and those licenses are then returned or those cards are returned to the license and permit group for either issuance or notification to the applicant of the denial of the license for the coming year. (Organizational charts referred to follow:)

(A) Department of Human Resources.

(B) Directorate for Environmental Health, Department of Human Resources. The order of July 27, 1971, transferred the Directorate unit to the Department of Environmental Services as the Environmental Health Administration, Department of Environmental Services.

(C) Department of Environmental Services.

Mr. RANDALL. All right, I expect we had better suspend at this point. The subcommittee will stand in recess until 2 o'clock.

(Whereupon, at 12:30 p.m., the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene at 2 p.m., the same day.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

Mr. RANDALL. The Subcommittee on Special Studies of the House Government Operations Committee will come to order.

Let the record show that according to the rules, this is a recessed meeting, and not a meeting initiated at this point. Therefore, it will not be necessary, under our rules, to have a minority member, or a quorum present.

We will proceed with the line of questioning of counsel when we suspended at the call of the House at about 12:30.

Mr. WASSERMAN. Mr. Hope, the question I was raising was, what were the steps in the paperwork that had to be accomplished in order to get a recommendation for disapproval or revocation or suspension of a license over to the Department of Economic Development?

In other words, what was done in the Bureau of Food and Drugs, and Environmental Health and so on up the line? What is the paperwork?

Mr. HOPE. This is as it relates to an action being taken at any point in time, and not in connection with the new regulations for a given year, is that right?

Mr. WASSERMAN. Yes.

Mr. HOPE. Normally, if we find that the establishment is deficient sanitationwise, it is then necessary to prepare a covering memorandum with attachments which would cite the specifics in the health regulations that are being violated by the establishment, prepare a covering memorandum and then this would be transmitted to the Division of Licenses and Permits for action.

Mr. WASSERMAN. The covering memorandum is to the Economic Development, the Department of Licenses?

Mr. HOPE. Yes.

Mr. WASSERMAN. What other papers are there below that covering memorandum?

How many more memorandums are written before that one is written as part of that same procedure?

Mr. HOPE. So far as I know, there are no other memorandums. This memorandum with the attachment that lists all the specific violations which have been identified in a given establishment, may be a two- or three-page document.

Mr. WASSERMAN. How long has this procedure of just a single memorandum been in vogue?

Mr. HOPE. We have been doing this, so far as I know, ever since I have been with the District of Columbia Health Agency.

Maybe Mr. Clark could speak to that in a little more specific terms. Mr. CLARK. Traditionally we have prepared two memorandums, one to the Associate Director for Environmental Health recommending disapproval of the license to the Department of Economic Development and citing the general history of the developments that led up to this recommendation.

There would be another memorandum prepared for the Director of Public Health, and I believe this is from the Associate Director to the Director of Public Health and to the Director of Economic Development, asking for the disapproval of this license, there again specifying some of the acts and giving a brief history.

We have streamlined this process in recent months so that there is now only one letter of transmittal. This goes from the Associate Director directly to Mr. Paul Green of Economic Development. This has proved to be very satisfactory.

Mr. WASSERMAN. How long ago was this procedure adopted? Mr. CLARK. I believe this was adopted some time in the month of May of this year.

Am I correct, Doctor?

Dr. SCHNURRENBERGER. It was right after our April meeting.

Mr. WASSERMAN. So that now it is just a simple memorandum from the Associate Director for Environmental Health to the Assistant Superintendent of the Licensing and Permit Division?

Mr. HOPE. Yes, sir.

Mr. CLARK. Accompanying a list of the deficiencies.

Mr. WASSERMAN. And you cut out all the other memorandums that were formerly involved.

Mr. RANDALL. In order to make the record clear, I would hope that we would indicate where this letter goes, on what levels, what echelon.

We are talking about a gentleman here by the name of Paul Green, who is obviously in the Economic Development, and a letter goes from someone who is the Associate Director of Public Health. We are not at the top echelon of either one of your departments. We are down a layer or two. I would hope that you would make that clear. Mr. CLARK. Yes, sir. That is right.

Mr. RANDALL. In other words, we are one layer or two layers below the top.

Mr. HOPE. We are two layers below in the Department of Human Resources.

As an Associate Director in the Community Health Services Administration, my immediate superior is Dr. Standard, who, in turn, answers to Mr. Philip Rutledge, who is Director of the Department of Human Resources.

Mr. RANDALL. I am sure you can anticipate that those of us who are not in District government have a little difficulty grasping this, and where we are going through these different conduits.

I would hope that we could get back to this table of organization. Perhaps counsel understands it; it is a little difficult for me.

What I am trying to say is, you have not said you are going from the head of one department to the head of the other, isn't that true? Mr. HOPE. That is true, yes, sir.

Mr. RANDALL. All right.

Go ahead.

Mr. WASSERMAN. And this change took place approximately 2 months ago?

Mr. HOPE. Yes, sir.

Mr. WASSERMAN. So that the procedure, for instance, that existed in connection with the disapproval of the restaurant license for