OUR CAPTIVE AGENCIES
Morgan, Edward P.
Our Captive Agencies by EDWARD P. MORGAN Agenuine jim-dandy of a handbook on how not to run the government, or at least an important part of it, was released recently. This is James M. Landis'...
...Air travel, for example, is getting faster, heavier, and infinitely more complicated...
...Indeed one covey of managerial consultants hired to survey the rickety Interstate Commerce Commission recommended the creation of an opinion-writing section for the ICC, so the commissioners wouldn't have to write their own rulings...
...New fuels and energies, atomic and other kinds, raise new problems of distribution and price structure...
...He said the President should issue an executive order carefully dealing with the ethics of government employes and their duty to reject and refrain from receiving ex parte contacts, that is to say, contacts in the interest of one side only...
...Too often they have become captives in the very fields they are supposed to regulate...
...This," said Landis, "significantly emasculates the Commission's power to deal with the spate of deceptive advertising that floods our newspapers, our periodicals and our air waves...
...f Last September the Federal Power Commission announced it would take thirteen years to clear up its pending 2,313 producer rate cases and with the 6,500 new cases expected during that interval, the Commission couldn't pull up even with its work until the year 2043 even if its staff were tripled...
...The Federal Communications Commission was called an extraordinary spectacle of vacillation and drift, probably more susceptible to back-door influence than any other...
...But to have the facts laid out by an expert on the Federal bureaucracy in clear, declarative sentences that a layman can understand and influence peddlers will find hard to cover up—this is a matter of more than passing importance, particularly when it lands, as it does now, on the launching pad of a new Administration, with specific recommendations for remedies...
...By the time the Commission has proved its case, the advertiser may have gone on to merchandising some other product...
...of the breakdown of the administrative process...
...second-rate personnel...
...But the Federal Trade, Power, Communications, Interstate Commerce, and other Commissions are not even doing the jobs they are supposed to do today...
...But to me Landis' most meaningful recommendations dealt with personnel...
...poor men will wreak havoc with good laws...
...If the advertiser of a drug states that 'four out of five doctors' recommend it," the report said, "to prove the falsity of such an allegation, much massing of evidence ensues...
...White House unconcern over what the agencies are doing...
...Landis also urged the development of a national transportation policy, not now-through creation of a new Cabinet post but initially through the executive office of the President...
...Many of them soon find, however, if indeed they didn't know it already, that the side door or the back door provides quicker access for their errands than the front entrance...
...The cost of pursuing a license or an administrative remedy through the agencies has mounted so that in many situations the small businessman can't compete...
...He proposed that agency chairmen be picked by the President to serve at his pleasure instead of the irresponsible, lead-erless, round-robin rotation as practiced in the Interstate Commerce Commission...
...f There is a lack of policy formulation within agencies, an almost complete barrenness of such activity—except in conflict—where groups of agencies are concerned, such as in transportation and public health...
...In other words, quality attracts quality...
...f Organization has become so fuzzed up with extraneous paper work that commissioners make decisions on a virtual assembly-line basis, Seldom knowing much of their content...
...f Key parts of basic reports are rarely read by the individuals supposedly responsible for ultimate decisions...
...Almost every student of government, from the sophomore political science major on up, knew this already...
...The appeal of a job can also be destroyed if the President, through design or neglect, permits his prejudices in behalf of political associates or friends to dictate the disposition of individual items of business...
...Landis made a number of specific recommendations to remedy the sorry state into which the agencies have fallen and to restore their effectiveness...
...Landis depicted the FPC as such a captive of the oil and gas industry that it not only was unwilling to assume its responsibilities under the natural gas act but assumed a contemptuous attitude "of refusing in substance to obey the mandates of the Supreme Court of the United States and other Federal courts...
...Congress has got to play ball with the agencies under these same rules, too, or the game of good administration will be called on account of rain of improper intervention and influence from Capitol Hill...
...The redolent scandals over the allocation of television channels should still be fresh enough in the country's nostrils to recall the unsavory procedures that passed, until recently at least, for business in the FCC...
...The result all too often has been that special, private interests— meaning business interests and even now and again labor interests— could manage to dominate the very agencies by which they were supposed to be regulated...
...There were, however, barbed bouquets for every agency...
...This is James M. Landis' report to the new President on the regulatory agencies...
...One was the creation of a new post in the White House to ride herd on them...
...Good men can make poor laws workable," he said...
...As long as the selection of men for key administrative posts is based upon political reward rather than competency, little else that is done will really matter . . . "Good men are primarily attracted by the challenge inherent in a job...
...His conclusion: they are in simply awful shape...
...Landis, former dean of the Harvard Law School and onetime chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, starts with the inescapable conclusion that we can't do without these agencies...
...Some of the Landis report's strongest criticism hit the Federal Power Commission "as the outstanding example...
...ing and international interchange of messages—all of which call for some sort of Federal licensing and supervision...
...Landis skipped over one vital emphasis...
...by contrast big firms spend large amounts on public relations techniques to create a national atmosphere helpful toward whatever they are trying to get from the agency involved...
...This article is adapted from two of Mr...
...Good men cannot be attracted...
...the talent will be lured if there is proper attention given the challenge and the other basic points cited...
...another figured he had to make one every five minutes of his workday...
...And so on into the near future...
...To skeptics who shrug these charges off as generalities from the wild blue yonder, here are some specifics to bring them down to earth: % As of June 30, 1959, more than al third of the proceedings before the ?avil Aeronautics Board had been pending for more than three years...
...if they see that [their] colleagues . . .[and] staffs . . . are not measurable by standards they believe to be appropriate...
...It accused the FPC of such inaction and disregard of consumer interest that state utility commissions have been ranged against it to protect the public against monopolistic and excessive rates...
...Spectacular instances of executive, legislative, and industry interference with the disposition of matters before the agencies have been uncovered," Landis reported, "including bribery among high government officials...
...f Lobbying in the worst sense has been prevalent in the White House itself over the issues of what airlines shall fly what international and overseas routes, assignments which by law are the ultimate determination of the President...
...One commissioner calculated he had made 18,000 decisions in five years...
...Salary is a secondary consideration, provided only that it is high enough to enable them to meet reasonable standards of living comparable to their positions in the society . . . Tenure is another consideration of more importance than salary, for with tenure goes independence and the opportunity for long-range planning...
...Other criticisms: inordinate delays in disposition of cases...
...whether we like it or not we are in for more, not less, regulation...
...President Kennedy has persuaded Landis to take that job himself—temporarily...
...Morgan's recent commentaries on the Landis report...
...Meanwhile the advertiser can go right on making his claim because the Commission has no power to issue interlocutory cease-and-desist orders on the basis of a prima facie case...
...non-existence of even the most essential coordination between agencies...
...The front door is open to the public, ceremonially at least, but the public seldom thinks of representing its own interests...
...Basic challenges have been missing in the last decade," the report continues...
...Communication satellites open whole new spectra in transmission channels for broadcastEDWARD P. MORGAN is the prize-winning nightly newscaster for AFL-CIO...
...Landis cited instances of how advertisers were able to capitalize on delays in procedures of the Federal Trade Commission in order to defeat regulations...
...People with business in Washington usually migrate sooner or later, after seeing their Congressman, to the doorstep of one of the regulatory agencies...
...Transportation and freight rates require radical adjustment...
Vol. 25 • February 1961 • No. 2
