RALPH HOAR
IN MEMORIAM

Raging Hoar Moans
NHTSA Officials Flock to Industry

Folks who study these matters have identified-and accept as predictable-that regulatory agencies and the people who work there will become identified with the regulated industry. The rate at which senior officials are leaving NHTSA to work for the industry makes the two entities appear at times seamless, if not unseemly. The trend has prompted one wag to say that the agency is at least doing one thing well: training experts, lobbyists and regulatory guides for the industry.

Barry Felrice, the country's chief auto safety rule writer for most of the Reagan-Bush years, recently suggested that people who leave NHTSA to work for the industry, as he did, carry with them a safety advocacy point-of-view that might not otherwise get heard. We would embrace that notion if there wasn't so much evidence to the contrary: If we didn't have Mike Finklestein, who left NHTSA to assist beleaguered Japanese manufacturers, whining at SAE meetings about the unfairness of NHTSA's defect investigation procedures; OR General Curry opining in court that the Pinto got a "bad rap," OR Al Slechter, one of NHTSA's early defectors to Chrysler, engineering a letter from members of Congress as a warning to NHTSA during its minivan latch investigation.

It's the American Way, proclaimed Curry, when asked if he thinks there is anything untoward about cashing in on public service after leaving the government. Curry's been strutting around the country at $340 an hour--which is about the going rate for NHTSA retreads-- absolving manufacturers from responsibility for Bronco II's that roll over and car roofs that crush.

There is one piece of good news in these post-NHTSA arrangements: There is no ambiguity about who's picking up the tab and whose interests are being represented. The discomforting part, if we're being charitable, is not knowing when the dynamics and influence of that relationship began.

(key: Ex-NHTSA)

OPTSF398

11/30/97