Job Security: The View from the NRC

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has long been criticized for being too cozy with the power companies it is charged with overseeing. Recently, however, the NRC surprised even its most cynical critics: The Commission attempted to fire one of it's senior investigators, a man known as tough on industry misconduct and for exposing incompetence and corruption within the NRC.

Roger Fortuna, a senior official with the NRC's Office of Investigations, is under fire. The NRC campaign against him is based on charges that he mishandled a 1986 investigation of operations at the Nine Mile Point nuclear facility in Oswego, New York. The lone source of the charges, a former Nine Mile Point worker named Douglas Ellison, however, has failed to convince organizations ranging from local anti-nuclear groups to the regional U.S. Attorney's office that his allegations about Fortuna and the Oswego plant have merit.

By contrast, the NRC�not normally keen to accept criticism about its oversight of nuclear facilities�launched an all-out investigation of Fortuna and notified him that his job was on the line. The agency has employed some unusual tactics in the investigation. For example, it ordered Fortuna, on pain of losing his job, to participate in a transcribed interrogation session, and informed him that he had no right to counsel in the proceeding. Challenged by Fortuna's attorney on that point, the NRC's legal staff has yet to demonstrate the claimed "statutory authority" to conduct such sessions.

Congressional officials have since caught wind of the NRC's actions, and the House Interior Committee has convened hearings on the matter. In apparent response to congressional curiosity, the NRC hastily reassigned the official responsible for the Fortuna investigation earlier this month.

Despite these developments, Fortuna's fate remains uncertain. Last month, on his lawyer's advice, Fortuna refused to cooperate with the NRC's investigation and was promptly suspended from the agency. He is currently seeking a court order blocking the suspension until the larger issues raised by the NRC's apparent misconduct in the matter can be reviewed.

The Insurance Industry's Big Lie

The insurance industry has made an art of claiming that a "litigation explosion" is responsible for rocketing insurance premiums and that, as a result, it is necessary to reform the tort system. A rare but effective rebuttal of that position was delivered last month by Minnesota's State Commerce Commissioner, Michael Hatch. His staff re-viewed the medical insurance situation in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota and concluded that medical insurers in those three states have been gouging the consumers. While medical premiums rose more than 300 percent over the six-year period reviewed, investigators found no corresponding increase in malpractice claims against physicians.

According to the report:

• The frequency of claims per year did not change materially over the six-year period, nor did the level of claims payments.
• Fewer than one half of one percent of all malpractice claimants are awarded damages by a jury. That figure did not change over the six years studied.
• Claims determined by the insurer to be frivolous have not increased over the past six years.
• The likelihood of receiving compensation as a result of filing a malpractice claim remained constant at 25 percent.
• No punitive damages were awarded against any physician.
• The average cost of investigating and defending a claim has changed little in the last six years; costs may even be decreasing.
• Despite unchanged claim frequency and declining loss payments and loss expense, on average, physicians paid approximately triple the amount of premiums in 1987 over 1982.

For the record, the nation-wide profitability of medical malpractice insurance lines was up 45.5 percent last year, according to actuary and industry observer Martin Simons.

Government by Contract

The increased private sector involvement in government endeavors which Reagan presided over for eight years has taken its toll on the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund environmental cleanup program, according to a new study. The Office of Technology Assessment, an investigative/analytical, non-partisan branch of Congress, reported last month that heavy dependence on private contractors has prevented the EPA from developing its own base of technical expertise, impeded the efficiency of cleanups, and left Superfund much too vulnerable to fraud and abuse.

The OTA study finds that currently, 80 to 90 percent of Superfund's annual budget of approximately $500 mil-lion is paid directly to private contractors who perform on-site clean up work. While the study finds that contractors must necessarily play a significant role under Super-fund, it argues that such a huge spending imbalance in favor of private operators puts Superfund administrators at a great disadvantage. Because they cannot compete with the technical resources of the contractors, EPA officials are turning over important decision-making responsibilities to the private sector.

The OTA concludes that to remedy the situation, the EPA must develop its own technical infrastructure, which means spending a substantially greater portion of its budget within the agency.

� Garth Bray