17 



question, you would have to look at the particular facts of the case 

 and determine whether the individual had a financial interest, and 

 that would assume again that the statute applied to the Council, 

 which it does not if the member makes full financial disclosure as 

 required. 



Mr. Kingston. Did you look in your investigation of any evidence 

 of vote trading? 



Mr. DeGeorge. I do not understand the term. 



Mr. Kingston. Well, you know, if you vote for me on this and 

 then I will vote with you and they swapped them back and forth. 



Mr. DeGeorge. My counsel said we did look at it. I do not know 

 what the conclusions were. 



Mr. Weaver. There was inconclusive evidence of anything. 



Mr. Kingston. The Secretary has power to reject or approve a 

 plan and has some authority to exert in terms of balance in a 

 Council. Do you think the Secretary is doing that? 



Mr. DeGeorge. My experience over the last three Secretaries, 

 sir, is that they generally leave the primary decision pretty much 

 to the fisheries people, the fishery staff, and do not really tend to 

 intrude on the decisionmaking. 



Mr. Kingston. Mr. Chairman, Mr. DeGeorge, Mr. Weaver, 

 thanks a lot. No more questions. 



Mr. Manton. The chair recognizes Ms. Cantwell. 



Ms. Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, Mr. DeGeorge, 

 thank you for being here this afternoon. We had a hearing earlier 

 on the reauthorization process, and I asked the Council chairman 

 who had appeared at that meeting whether they had taken any 

 steps on their own to address conflict of interest which they are 

 able to do under the Act. 



Now only three of them had taken any action to further clarify 

 conflict of interest — although many of the chairmen there thought 

 that additional changes did need to be made on this issue of con- 

 flict of interest. 



Given your experience now and understanding of review of this 

 issue, do you think that it is possible that the Councils can act on 

 their own addressing this conflict of interest? 



Mr. DeGeorge. Well, several Councils, and I do not know the de- 

 tails, ma'am, do have recusal ground rules. I would have to go back 

 and look at the specifics. 



Several of them have looked somewhat at how they basically deal 

 with this issue but I do not know the specifics. I haven't had any 

 reason to believe that they have become models or in effect some- 

 thing we would want to suggest as legislation but I know that sev- 

 eral Councils are concerned about the issue. 



Ms. Cantwell. So at best you could say it is not conclusive that 

 they can or cannot? 



Mr. DeGeorge. That is correct. 



Ms. Cantwell. My records show that we have somewhere over 

 1,000 Federal advisory committees that are similarly structured, I 

 mean as far as members being advisory in their decisions that are 

 under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. 



Do you see any uniqueness in these Fishery Management Coun- 

 cils that would distinguish them in any way to be different than 



