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Mr. AHEARNE. Commissioner Hendrie and I support the amended plan.

The Commission wishes to express its gratitude for the careful review which the Congress is giving to the NRC reorganization plan. In the Commission's view, this review has already accounted for important improvements in the plan.

I would like to go on, if I could, and give a few of my own comments, speaking personally.

Mr. BROOKS. That is not unreasonable.

Mr. AHEARNE. I would like to start out by commenting that when I was made the Chairman back in December, it was made clear to me that I was an interim Chairman. So my comments on what role a Chairman ought to have are, I believe, from the point of view of one who will not be in that role of the new Chairman as the President has made clear that once a vacancy occurs he will appoint a new Chairman from outside the agency. Said vacancy should be occurring at the end of June.

The history of the roles of the Commissioners and the Chairman in this agency is replete with mistrust. Our general counsel has pointed out in a paper to the Commission that the full access provision is a direct outgrowth of bitter disagreement that existed among members of the Atomic Energy Commission in the mid-1950's based upon a mistrust of the then Chairman.

The Kemeny Commission and the Rogovin Special Inquiry Group recommended a single administrator. John Kemeny, Governor Babbitt, Mitchell Rogovin, Richard Pollock of Critical Mass, and—for whatever it was worth-I, all recommended a single administrator be chosen for this agency. The President did not do so, and I suspect because of mistrust on the part of many, perhaps strongly on the part of Congress, against a single individual heading the agency. The administration chose to opt for a strong Chairman form.

The first reorganization plan submitted nearly a month ago was an attempt to construct a strong Chairman's role, although even that had some flaws in it in making it a truly strong Chairman.

However, that also engendered strong mistrust on the part of my colleagues and, clearly, on the part of some in the Congress.

The administration has now sent up a revision, an amended reorganization plan, and I have had only less than a day to review it, so my views are tentative. But it continues, I believe, to still have some flavor of mistrust. In this case, there is still the mistrust of the Chairman, so that the nomination of senior officers of the agency is about as much authority as the Chairman can be trusted with. The Chairman nominates, the full Commission must approve, and only the full Commission can remove. Therefore, one fundamental principle of management, that is, that the authority to hire and fire should go with the responsibility to manage, is not in this plan.

It does have the potential for the responsibility for these individuals to be to the Commission rather than to the Chairman, and perhaps that is as the plan desires.

I note that the plan states that the Chairman is responsible to the Commission for assuring that the staff of the Commission is responsive to the requirements of the Commission. However, he or she will not hire or fire these individuals or even direct them. Those authorities are mandatorily delegated to the EDO.

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The plan continues the history of ambiguity that exists in the Atomic Energy Act and then was carried over into the Energy Reorganization Act by stating, "The Chairman must be responsible for a set of functions," for example budget development, and then says he or she must delegate those to the EDO. After having said that they must be delegated, the plan then says, "subject to the Chairman's direction and supervision." So they must be delegated, but not quite.

However, after saying these negative things, I have concluded that, on balance, I support the amended plan. It does have some good features.

It does define the Commission's roles to be those of policy formulation, rulemaking, orders, and adjudication-areas in which, in the past, as Mr. Wellford pointed out, the Commission has not concentrated enough.

It does control the ability of individual Commissioners to task the staff. The full information requirement is to provide that full information to the Commission-collegial-in its functions, that is, the Commission's functions.

It does, for the first time, put all of the non-Commission-level staff into a management chain, in this case under the Executive Director. I believe it is an honest attempt to improve the management system of this agency.

Currently, there are five nominal managers of the agency, perhaps six. The reorganization plan brings it down to two, perhaps one, and I will leave open which one that is, but it does have the potential of being much better than the current system.

I think there is much greater likelihood of getting two people to effectively work together than to getting five or six, particularly in such areas of such great controversy as the ones which are the subject of the Regulatory Commission's business.

Therefore, although I am quite happy to have been with Kemeny, Rogovin, Babbitt, and Pollock in calling for a single administrator, I believe it is now time to settle on the possible rather than desirable and come down in favor of this amended reorganization plan.

Those are my comments, Mr. Brooks. I am sure my colleagues would appreciate the opportunity to make a few of their own. Mr. BROOKS. Thank you.

We have their statements. If they have anything they want to add to that, we certainly will be pleased to hear it.

Mr. Hendrie, would you wish to add anything or Mr. Gilinsky. Mr. Bradford?

Mr. HENDRIE. Mr. Chairman, you have, as you said, a statement which referred to the earlier version of the reorganization plan. It was forwarded to you with a new cover on it but it is just my remarks on the Senate side. I suppose it will have to go in the record, but I have also provided you this morning with a statement on the amended reorganization plan, and I would like it understood very clearly that those remarks of mine on the amended reorganization plan are, in fact, the testimony I give here this morning.

Let me submit it for the record and simply note the first paragraph of that testimony, Mr. Chairman, which is that I think the amended reorganization plan, as it now stands before you, is workable, is a considerable improvement over the present statutory basis for organization of the NRC, and I strongly recommend it to you.

Mr. BROOKS. Without objection, it will be included in the record at this point. Thank you very much.

[The statement follows:]

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Mr. Chairman, members of the Subcommittee, I am pleased to be able to present my personal comments on the amended version of Reorganization Plan Number One of 1980 which we have just received.

To get directly to the point, Mr. Chairman, I think the amended Reorganization Plan Number One as it now stands is workable, is a considerable improvement over the present statutory basis for organization of the NRC, and I strongly recommend that the Congress encourage its adoption.

The amended Reorganization Plan cures several of the defects which I found in the previous version submitted to the Congress. First, the access to information about the Agency's matters so essential for each Commissioner to carry out his responsibility is now assured and I regard the criticisms of the previous version on this point to be satisfactorily resolved. Second, under the amended Reorganization Plan the Commission retains the right of approval of the principle staff officers of the Agency. I think this is an important provision. I would have preferred the amended plan to have included among these officers the Executive Legal Director of the Agency but the decision of the Administration has been to exclude that office and I would not propose to delay approval of the Reorganization Plan on that account. Third, the appointment of members to the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards is, under the amended Reorganization Plan, very nearly as it is at present, a provision that I had recommended.

The amended Reorganization Plan in addition now makes explicit the place of the

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Executive Director for Operations in the Agency's management. I find the
provisions relating to the Executive Director for Operations to be useful
and I believe there is advantage in having the Executive Director's function
made explicit in the statute.

In earlier discussions of various reorganization plans for the NRC, I have recommended a draft plan prepared by the NRC's Office of the General Counsel that more clearly retained for the collegial Commission the position of being the ultimate authority in the Agency. That draft plan by the General Counsel was drawn in part from a charter that I recommended for the Commission late last year and in part from the original version of the Administration's Reorganization Plan. But we are now well down the road in terms of consideration of these various plans. The plan which is before you now for approval is the amended Reorganization Plan Number One of the President. I conclude it is time to stop talking about other possible plans for the reorganization of the NRC and to focus upon the document in hand. As I have said, I give my support to the amended Reorganization Plan that is now before you. Thank you.

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