--proposals to establish a congressionally authorized commission for all the territories; --a Department of late 1981; Interior review of federal laws laws begun in -~-a study by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) on the impact of federal fishing laws on the Pacific territories; and --passage of the 1983 and 1984 Omnibus Territories Acts provided some legislative remedies to particular law problems, such as a temporary exemption to Guam of provi- Sions of the Clean Air Act. Many territorial officials acknowledge these efforts to remedy the problems and indicated that greater awareness of the territories’ the unique constraints should order be given to avoid to circumstances development. greater the voice in can help to overcome many of These officials formulating believe federal types of problems experienced in they laws in the past. They also believe the federal government must continue to address federal constraints to the territories' quest to become more economically self-reliant. — NMI laws commission In 1980 the Northern Mariana Islands Laws Commission was established, pursuant to the 1976 covenant agreement between the NMI and the United States, to survey all U.S. laws and. determine ' whether they should apply to the NMI. The. Commission has recommended several changes to existing laws, including exemptions from some provisions of the Clean Air Act, extending certain rights and privileges of citizenship to NMI residents, and clarifying the applicability of federal torts claims to NMI residents. The Commission is continuing to review laws and has been positively received by both the NMI and the Congress. Proposal for congressionally authorized laws commission In February establish a 1980, federal President Carter proposed commission to survey the legislation to applicability of all federal laws to Guam, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. The President believed a broad-based review was necesSary to "make sense out of the somewhat confused pattern of fed- eral laws that now apply or fail to apply to the territories." The proposed commission failed to receive sufficient congresSional support. Other attempts have been made to create such a commission, including legislation introduced in 1982 and 1983. According to a 1983 House Committee on Interior and Insular 9000240 33