26 



We also were receiving reports that the prices were either stable 

 or falling for most of the whitefish finished products — pollock fil- 

 lets, whiting fillets, and other products along that line — as a result 

 of renewed efforts by the Russian fleet which had recently been re- 

 moved from the strictures of their planned economy, and was out 

 trying to make it in the new world economy. They were simply 

 flooding the market with new products. 



That being the case, the economic analysis that had been pre- 

 pared originally to justify the action no longer worked. There was 

 no confidence in Washington that this proposal would have a posi- 

 tive economic benefit to the Nation. 



We have a published guideline for interpreting National Stand- 

 ard 4 of the Magnuson Act that has been on the books for a 

 number of years. The guideline says the council can allocate among 

 those various sectors of the industry, but they can only do so if 

 they can demonstrate a national benefit. 



That being the case, the objective in Washington in dealing with 

 this problem was to try to preserve the status quo. Our original 

 best guess as to how that should have been done would be to have 

 issued an emergency rule that would have fixed the percentage 

 shares of Pacific whiting at the shares that were obtained by both 

 sectors in 1992. 



My office advised the decisionmakers that they did not have the 

 legal discretion to do that because they had used an emergency 

 rule in 1992 to address this same problem. The Magnuson Act 

 places a 180-day limit on the duration of an emergency rule. 



We were thus faced with a choice of either rejecting everything 

 the council submitted to us or approving parts of it. A decision was 

 made after extensive consultations between the National Marine 

 Fisheries Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminis- 

 tration, the Department of Commerce's General Counsel's Office, 

 and the Office of Management and Budget, that the council provi- 

 sion that came closest to maintaining status quo between these two 

 sectors was to take the council's 30,000 metric tons reserve and ap- 

 prove it, rejecting the balance of the council's proposal. 



At the time that decision was made, we expected that would 

 result in approximately 42,000 metric tons going to the shoreside 

 sector, and 100,000 metric tons going to the offshore sector. That 

 represented, in fact, an increase of the shoreside's percentage share 

 of this resource of between 2 and 3 percent, and a corresponding 

 decrease in the offshore sector. 



So, compared to the status quo, the action taken by the Depart- 

 ment of Commerce at least served the council's intent to some 

 small degree of protecting the shoreside employment. 



We do not work in a perfect world. We deal with the record that 

 is given to us by the council. I might say that Mr. Schmitten had 

 warned the council that their proposal was at some risk of being 

 disapproved in Washington, that Mr. Schmitten abstained from the 

 vote approving this action, which should have been a signal to the 

 council that they may have difficulty with it, and that the decision 

 was made by people in Washington whose jobs are to make these 

 kinds of decisions. 



People involved in this decision were, with one exception, all 

 career employees of the Federal Government who have no vested 



