The Ash Council's Report on the Independent Regulatory Agencies

Abstract

* On January 31, 1971, President Nixon released to the public a booklet entitled A New Regulatory Framework: Report on Selected Independent Regulatory Agencies. The Report represents a year's work by the President's six-member Advisory Council on Executive Organization, popularly known as the Ash Council.' The Council studied several Federal agencies: the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Federal Power Commission, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Civil Aeronautics Board, and the Federal Maritime Commission. The Report notes at the outset that it is now almost routine practice to condemn the commissions for a lack of resourcefulness, insensitivity, and for a general inability to respond effectively to the pressing problems within the scope of their responsibilities.2 The Council then recommends several major changes in the structure of our regulatory system designed to tackle these failings. The Council's major recommendation, which it would apply to all agencies except the FCC, is to abolish the job of commissioner with a fixed term of office, and to substitute single administrators directly responsible to the President. In replacing collegial bodies with single heads, it would hope to increase efficiency and at the same time to strengthen Executive control over, and perhaps support for, agency policies. Moreover, the adjudicatory functions of the agencies would be de-emphasized. Agency chiefs would have only 30 days to review the decisions of hearing examiners; ordinarily, cases would proceed directly to a new Administrative Court, composed of specialized judges appointed for fifteen-year terms. Finally, the Report makes several detailed recommendations concerning individual agencies. It would merge the ICC, CAB, and FMC into a single transportation agency. It would transfer the CAB's promotional, subsidy-granting activities to the Department of Transportation. It would separate the FTC's consumer-protection responsibilities from its antitrust activities, and vest the latter in a new Federal Antitrust Board with a chairman and two economist members.3 It would transfer responsibility for the Public Utility Holding