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Mr. FAHY. Mr. Wigglesworth, it will be the head of the regular staff

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Of the agency?

Mr. FAHY. Yes, sir; I think that is the way actually in practice it will operate.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Is he going to examine him and interview him, and check him up in the field again?

Mr. FAHY. No, sir.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. There will not be any of that?

Mr. FAHY. No, sir; if, on the register, he is eligible for the position. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. What use is a nongraded register considering the broad scope of legal work in the Government? It must be a minimum standard that puts him on there?

Mr. FAHY. You are exactly correct about that. He must qualify according to a minimum standard but the register will not be unlimited in size and will represent the best available men-to the number fixed-selected from all those who apply. As to whether the particular general counsel wants John Brown on the register, or Sam Smith, in preference to John Brown, is a matter of his choice.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. But the job has got to be done all over again, has it not?

Mr. FAHY. No, sir; not at all. In either event, he is eligible for the position. That is fixed after he is on the register.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. But his capacity is not determined. He may be fitted to become general counsel for some large agency or he may be fitted only for some legal clerical job.

Mr. CUSTER. Mr. Chairman, if I may interrupt Mr. Fahy again for just a moment; I think Mr. Cannon could, in a few words, give to the members of the committee a statement respecting the selective certification processes which have been going on over the years. It would clarify the situation.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. I am familiar with the work of the Commission outside of this legal field that we are talking about now. I am trying to get clear in my mind what use a nongraded register is, for practical purposes.

Mr. FAHY. At the present time the men are graded. There is a civil-service grade.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. I understand that they would not be, under this new proposal.

Mr. FAHY. They will be graded in order to obtain a place on the register. But they are not ranked with relation to each other on the register.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Nor with respect to a particular position or classification of position?

Mr. FAHY. That is true. But their qualifications will be in the record; if you are looking for a particular man, with particular qualifications, the information is available, and the chief of the legal staff has a range from which to choose.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. Assuming that the Federal Power Commission wanted two attorneys. How would they select them from that list? Mr. FAHY. The head of the legal staff of the Federal Power Commission would make his selection from the list.

Mr. FITZPATRICK. How? Would he have to go over the entire list to see who had the practical experience for that position?

Mr. WECHSLER. I think I can answer that. It is quite clear that with an unranked register, the Board will have to provide an information service for the benefit of general counsel, so that men who have had a special experience of a particular sort in which the general counsel is interested, could be picked out.

Mr. HOUSTON. You would have to catalog the whole list, in other words?

Mr. WECHSLER. We would catalog the list, but it would have no legal force; it would simply be an information service that would help the General Counsel to decide who are the people worth interviewing. I think there are two answers to your question, if I may give them. One is, this process will shorten by 90 percent, perhaps, the effort that is now being made by general counsels to find competent men; and second, the characteristics of all these men on the register will be cross-indexed and cataloged, so that if he says, "I want a trained examiner," or "I want a man to do this, that, or the other type of work," we can give him in a very short time a list of 20 or 30 men who have had the kind of experience he is looking for.

At the present time, some of these general counsels are spending an enormous amount of very valuable time looking for competent men. This register will guarantee that all of the men to be considered have certain minimum qualifications which are relatively high qualifications for Government positions.

Mr. WOODRUM. Mr. Wigglesworth, Mr. Fahy answered one of your questions in such a way as to leave me a little bit confused, as to whether I understood him correctly.

It is not contemplated that the Board is going to examine all of the attorneys who are already employed by the Government?

Mr. FAHY. No. There will be no register as to them, of course. Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. I thought this proposal applied to all attorneys in the service, as well as those desiring to enter the service.

Mr. FAHY. I would like Mr. Wechsler to answer that question, if he may. They acquire their civil-service status through the processes of the Board.

Mr. WECHSLER. Under the Ramspeck Act, and the Executive order, there will be a covering-in process for the incumbents of legal positions. The plan of the Board is to follow as closely as possible the procedure that will be employed by the Commission for covering in incumbents of nonlegal positions included within the act and the Executive order that will be eligible for status.

The method of operation is prescribed by the statute. There must be the recommendation of the head of the agency. Then the Board will come in in two ways. First, it will do the routine work of receiving the recommendations from the heads of the agencies, receive the forms; second, the Board is authorized to prescribe a noncompetitive examination, such as the Commission prescribes for covering in incumbents. That examination, it is contemplated, will be based primarily on work done.. That is to say, it is another way really of referring to the recommendation of the head of the agency. It is not contemplated that incumbents will be called in for new examining processes, except perhaps in case of doubt, where there is a real question submitted by the head of the agency.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. So that every lawyer in the Federal service, with a few exceptions, is subject, for retention in office, to the approval

by your Commission, although he will not go on the register if approved?

Mr. WECHSLER. That is right; if he gets civil-service status by covering in, then he has the rights of a civil service employee for transfer, reinstatement, and, of course, retirement security.

PROPOSED INCREASE OF EXPENDITURE

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. One other question. Mr. Fahy. I understand you have been operating on about $57,000 or $58.000, and you want to go to $100,000 now, and you tell us you are contemplating proposed regional boards throughout the country. Mention was just made of the requirement of an informational service to make the results of your work available.

What do you look forward to in terms of size and expense, ultimately, if you are going to set up boards all through the country? Mr. FAHY. Well, those boards will be voluntary boards.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Entirely voluntary?

Mr. FAHY. Yes, sir.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. Do you think $100,000 is going to be the maximum that you are going to require for this work, as we go further along?

Mr. FAHY. That is pretty hard to say, sir.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. What do you foresee, in a general way? Mr. FAHY. As far as I can foresee now, it will be the maximum; yes, sir.

Mr. WIGGLESWORTH. You do not look forward to any continuing expansion?

Mr. FAHY. No, sir; I think very moderately, if at all. But I do not see a large organization. As a matter of fact, I think the estimate contemplates 26 employees, which is rather small, for dealing with 6,000 lawyers and recruitment for an indefinite period of time. I think it is a rather economical operation. The work would have to be done by some one if it were not done in just this manner, assuming that these lawyers are to remain in the civil service, and that new employees who come into the Government on legal status are going to be civil service employees.

COVERING IN ATTORNEYS NOW IN GOVERNMENT SERVICE

Mr. WOODRUM. I would like to ask Mr. Cannon what would be the process of covering in the attorneys who are already in the Government service? What would be the requirements as to age and other qualifications? Have you any rules formulated for that yet?

Mr. CANNON. No; we have no standards set up for passing on qualifications.

Mr. WOODRUM. Are there any age requirements?

Mr. CANNON. No, sir; only that they have not passed the retirement age.

Mr. WOODRUM. Will there be any age limitation?

Mr. CANNON. In covering in incumbents?

Mr. WOODRUM. Yes.

Mr. CANNON. No, sir.

Mr. WOODRUM. Will there be a requirement that they be members of the bar?

Mr. CANNON. Yes, sir.

Mr. WOODRUM. Then you are automatically going to throw out of the Government service a great many of them who are now holding legal positions, who are not members of the bar. That will be a sizable group that will go out, the first shot out of the box.

Mr. CANNON. There may be some recourse to those individuals, through reassigning their duties.

Mr. WOODRUM. Well, that is rather indefinite.

Mr. CANNON. Within the agencies.

Mr. WOODRUM. I may be wrong about this, but I do think that there are a great many lawyers in the Government service who are not members of the bar, who are holding legal positions.

Mr. CANNON. My information is not to that effect.

Mr. WECHSLER. There have been only two cases that have come to our attention. Both of them are in the War Department, and they are now before a committee of the Board to see whether some special dispensation ought not to be made concerning them.

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Mr. WOODRUM. You think there are very few of those cases, do you? Mr. WECHSLER. So far as our present information goes, yes. think, myself, that retroactivity may be objectionable in these qualifications, just as in any other new rules, and we might have to meet that situation.

Mr. REILLY. If I may say one word, Mr. Chairman; it has been the practice, in making schedule A appointments for the general counsel to be required to submit a certificate of admission to the bar on behalf of the particular appointee.

Mr. WOODRUM. I think it would be well if you would give some thought to that. It seems to me that the Government process ought to be very liberal and very elastic with reference to these people. I know that it has not been so in a great many other departments. I know that in the covering-in process, in some other agencies, under the Ramspeck bill, great hardships have been worked by arbitrary rules imposed on people who were there, who had been there for years, performing a service and performing it satisfactorily, and who now have to face some sort of examination that they cannot pass. And yet they are doing their job and doing it well.

Mr. RAMSPECK. There has been nobody covered in under the Ramspeck bill yet.

Mr. WOODRUM. Not under the Ramspeck bill, but under the Executive order. They have been covering them in and holding examinations.

Mr. RAMSPECK. The bill only became effective the 1st of January. Mr. WOODRUM. I understand that.

Mr. MITCHELL. Mr. Chairman, may I say that the Commission is prepared to be very liberal in giving credit for experience, and if they are doing the job well, there is not going to be much chance of anything like that happening.

Mr. WOODRUM. I know that that ought to be the case, because I know there are very competent people who are doing work, and who have been doing work, especially those who have gotten up into the middle section of life, who are not very good at taking examinations of any kind.

Mr. MITCHELL. That is true, and we are certainly giving that thought.

Mr. HENDRICKS. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate their saying that they are going to do that.. I have seen these things happen before, and there ought to be some way of assuring us that if they get this appropriation those men who are capable, whether they are members of the bar or not, are going to be considered, and are going to be kept in their positions. Unless that assurance is given in some way, I am not at all inclined to vote for this appropriation.

Mr. HOUSTON. You mean those who are already in?

Mr. HENDRICKS. Yes. The fact that they are not members of the bar should not preclude them from holding their positions.

Mr. STARNES. I would like to know why it is necessary to set up this Board and at the same time maintain the Commission's procedure; or why the Commission's procedure was not satisfactory. I have heard no particular complaint in all the years that I have served here, or before I came here, about the Commission's examination of members of the bar and others who wanted to obtain legal positions in the Government. I just cannot understand the necessity of superimposing a board over an old, established, independent agency.

Mr. WOODRUM. The attorneys heretofore have not been under civil service. The President appointed the Board to serve a situation and make recommendations as to what, if anything, should be done; and the Board was divided on two plans, as I recall it. This is one of the plans.

Mr. HOUSTON. Is it still a requirement that as to those getting a salary of $5,000 or more confirmation is required by the Senate, even though the position is under the supervision of the Board? Mr. FAHY. That is not affected by this.

Mr. STARNES. I was under the impression that a great many of the attorneys in the Federal Government did have a civil-service status. Mr. WOODRUM. Only in one or two departments, as I recall it. Mr. WECHSLER. 900 out of 6,000, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WOODRUM. I think that covers the situation, gentlemen.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 1942.

TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY

STATEMENTS OF DAVID E. LILIENTHAL, CHAIRMAN; GORDON R. CLAPP, GENERAL MANAGER; T. B. PARKER, CHIEF ENGINEER; G. O. WESSENAUER, ACTING MANAGER OF POWER; NEIL BASS, CHIEF CONSERVATION ENGINEER; A. M. MILLER, DIRECTOR OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING; ACCOMPANIED BY JAMES P. POPE, DIRECTOR; W. C. FITTS, Jr. GENERAL COUNSEL; E. A. SUNSTROM, COMPTROLLER; MISS MARGUERITE OWEN, WASHINGTON REPRESENTATIVE; PAUL W. AGER, CHIEF BUDGET OFFICER, AND ARTHUR S. JANDREY, ASSISTANT TO THE GENERAL MANAGER

ESTIMATES AND APPROPRIATIONS

Mr. WOODRUM. We now take up the appropriations for the Tennessee Valley Authority. The item is as follows:

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