20 



There was a very strong negative public reaction in the com- 

 ments that came in to that proposal. And instead of that proposal 

 going forward, the Congress decided to institutionalize a process of 

 its own. 



Mr. COOLEY. Well, in this process right now, and I am not a big 

 fan of litigation, but certainly a big fan of people having an oppor- 

 tunity to challenge an agency on their decision processes, but don't 

 we now fund Legal Services in order to handle problems that peo- 

 ple have with the government? Isn't that what Legal Services is 

 supposed to do? 



Mr. Unger. I am not familiar with what you are speaking of, 

 Congressman. 



Mr. CoOLEY. Well, we have Legal Services in every area, that we 

 fund with literally hundreds of millions of dollars, that handle in- 

 quiries by the public concerning the government. It seems to me 

 that we have two systems here, but one system is not communicat- 

 ing with the other. Maybe we ought to deal with one or the other. 

 But why do we have two systems that handle complaints by the 

 public concerning the agencies? That is what I am concerned about. 



Mr. Unger. Well, I am not familiar with the funding of those 

 services, but I will say that one of the purposes that the appeals 

 process does fulfill is that it does provide for the resolution of a 

 great many complaints at a much lower level in the organization 

 and at lower costs than if those issues went to litigation. There is 

 some reason to believe that if we did not have this appeals process, 

 it could indeed increase the possibility of litigation. 



Mr. CoOLEY. Well, right or wrong, let us say that in my State 

 and in my district many of the people involved in the appeal proc- 

 ess feel that the decisions were already predetermined before they 

 went into the appeal process, and that if they would have had fi- 

 nancial funds available or had an outside prosecutor or detective 

 such as people have under Legal Services that they might have a 

 little bit more input into the process. 



Mr. Unger. Having been an appeal-deciding officer in a previous 

 position in the Forest Service for several years, I can only speak 

 to my experience which is that we did not enter the appeal process 

 with a predetermined idea. We looked very hard and very carefully 

 at the arguments for and against the individual allegations. 



Mr. CoOLEY. Do you have statistics showing where people have 

 appealed and how many they have won and lost? 



Mr. Unger. Probably the closest we can come to estimating that 

 would be somewhere about five to seven percent of the decisions 

 that are appealed are reversed by our appeal-deciding officers or 

 remanded for revision. 



Mr. CoOLEY. But you don't have any statistics that show exactly 

 how many appeals 



Mr. Unger. Yes. We would 



Mr. CoOLEY. [continuing] — there are and how many of them have 

 there been 



Mr. Unger. Yes. We would be able to provide that for the record. 



Mr. CoOLEY. OK. I would like to see that — how many appeals 

 have been applied for or have been requested and how many of 

 those appeals have been acceptable to the people making the ap- 

 peals. I think it would be very interesting because we in the field, 



