193 



- 9 - 



statutes as the NOAA general counsel had found to have been 

 implied in the statute, Congress simply exempted council members 

 and executive directors from the federal conflicts of interest 

 prohibition altogether. This action appears to have been utterly 

 unprecedented for it is apparently the only example in the entire 

 United States Code in which there has been a direct statutory 

 waiver of the federal conflict of interest laws. While it 

 unquestionably got the NOAA general counsel's office out of its 

 dilemma, it did little to save the public from the consequences 

 of conflicts of interest in these management decisions. 



It is also worth mentioning a couple of other changes to the 

 original statute along the way which have helped to reshape the 

 system of checks and balances the authors of the Act originally 

 had in mind. At the time the Act was enacted there was some 

 concern as to whether the council system would survive judicial 

 review on the grounds that it was an improper delegation of 

 legislative authority. One of the protections against this 

 possibility that was built into the Act was the role of the 

 Secretary as an intermediary with the power to review and 

 promulgate measures independently of the councils. In particular 

 the Secretary had the discretion to hold a hearing on council 

 action between the formulation and the implementation stages of a 

 management plan. 11 



11 see Comment, Judicial Review of Fishery Management 

 Regulations under the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 

 1976 . 52 WASH. L. REV. 599, 620 (1977) (authored by Christopher L. 

 Koch) . 



