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This case tells the story of the establishment and growth of public television in New Jersey, focused on the rise and fall of its first executive director, Lawrence Frymire. It implicitly raises the question of why Frymire-someone with a distinguished broadcasting career who had overseen the network of publicly-owned stations for a decade and had been responsible for getting them on the air in the first place-seemed suddenly to lose the confidence of the gubernatorially-appointed board to whom he reported. Were the motives of the board, and perhaps New Jersey's Governor, high-minded or narrowly political? What warning signs might Frymire have noted to forestall his dismissal? The case provides a vehicle for discussion about the politics of public authorities and the careers of those who work for them. HKS Case Number 1772.0

When a career public employee in a research division of the US Forest Service gets a call from a lobbyist for a coalition of environmental advocacy groups, he finds himself confronting an opportunity of which he's not sure it's right to avail himself. The lobbyist-well-versed in the specific research being undertaken by the department in which "Sammy Sockeye" works, and well aware of budget cuts affecting the quality and scope of such work-offers to "help." Her coalition would, if he agrees, exert public pressure in order to force the soon-to-be-announced federal budget to include an increase in the budget of Sammy's department. The fact that Sammy himself believes very much that the public would be better served by such a budget increase complicates the already difficult question.

Describes the efforts of the director of Job Corps to stave off the destruction of his agency by the Nixon administration. In this process, the director built extensive power bases which he mobilized in support of Job Corps. The end result was that Job Corps was not totally destroyed.