May 17, 1965
PAGE 10683
"THE CITIZEN'S ROLE IN FORMULATING REGIONAL GOALS" -- ADDRESS
BY SENATOR MUSKIE
Mr. HART. Mr. President, our Detroit newspapers described the dramatic arrival, last Tuesday, in Detroit, of the junior Senator from Maine [Mr. MUSKIE], to the accompaniment of screeching police sirens. Having delayed his departure from Washington in conscientious fashion, in order to be able to vote on the poll-tax amendment, offered by the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. KENNEDY], Senator MUSKIE arrived in Detroit barely in time to make his speech.
I have received word that Senator MUSKIE'S remarks on that occasion were very well received. I agree that they were thoughtful and informative. This will not surprise any of us, in light of the leadership Senator MUSKIE has given Congress and the country in developing and improving intergovernmental relations, in response to the urban crisis. His services in this area attract less attention than certain other of our activities do; but I am certain that historians will note, and will thank Senator MUSKIE for, his recognition of this subject as one of the highest priority, and for giving to it his exceptional talents and energy.
I ask unanimous consent that his May 11 speech, entitled "The Citizen's Role in Formulating Regional Goals," delivered to the Forum for Detroit Area Metropolitan Goals, be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the address was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
THE CITIZEN'S ROLE IN FORMULATING REGIONAL GOALS
(Address by Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE before the Conference for Transportation and Regional Development sponsored by the Forum for Detroit Area Metropolitan Goals, Detroit, Mich., May 11, 1965)
Two years ago, I had the privilege of joining many of you in commemorating "Metropolitan Community Day." As a result of that community wide conference, your Forum for Detroit Area, Metropolitan Goals was established. This, in turn, led to today's Conference on Goals for Transportation and Regional Development.
Senatorial modesty, of course, prevents me from assuming that my participation in the earlier conclave had anything to do with these subsequent salutary events. It is flattering enough that you invited me to return. So I am delighted to be back in Detroit and I commend your constructive efforts to create a metropolitan community.
In keeping with one of the basic themes of this conference, I shall undertake to examine "the citizen's role in formulating regional goals." In a democratic system, such as ours, the choice of governmental personnel is deliberately made in an open process. This is done so that many elements in our population can have their own spokesmen in the inner circles of Government. The process is premised on the fact that the people who select the Government thereby determine the character of public policies and programs.
Everyone concerned at all with politics is likely, at one time or another, to make an effort to see that positions in government and party are filled by the men who will do what they want done. As a result, nominations and elections, as well as appointments and removals, are accompanied by the maneuvering of several forces.
Under our Federal system, the contestant who falls to influence the selection of officials at one level may always turn to another, to find a sympathetic ear in the legislature or Congress, even if he does not have a friend in city hall.
If his candidates lose elections at every governmental level, the citizen still has many ways of impressing his views on the decision making process. He may work for causes and issues instead of party. He may seek bipartisan or nonpartisan support. Office doors are usually open to our citizens, especially to citizen groups; and civic leaders are heard. It is through this system that we probe our problems and overcome our crises. It is through this system that the citizen carves out a role in formulating governmental goals.
We confront a critical period of American life. We must choose our course for the years ahead. We must choose now between national greatness and national mediocrity, and this choice involves both our international posture and our domestic policies. Our decisions at home are fully as significant as those abroad; we cannot impress the world with our ideas, our technology, and our ideals if we stagnate, if we permit ourselves to drift at home.
The crisis created by the emergence of a metropolitan America constitutes the most important domestic problem facing us today. It is the most difficult series of human, economic, and political problems that we have ever faced. It is the greatest threat to our traditional Federal-State-local relations.
Yet this same crisis provides us with the best opportunity to implement President Johnson's ideal of a creative federalism for it opens up to groups like your own the broadest opportunity to exercise civic leadership.
Do citizens, groups like your own really have a place in today's world or politics? Some would say "No." Yet our record reveals to me that if we are willing to tackle decisive issues, to face and to resolve the real urban problems, then the answer must be an emphatic "Yes."
I do not have to burden this audience with an extensive explanation of all of the dimensions of this urban crisis.
You are aware of the problems that go with overlapping and competing jurisdictions of the local government.
You are aware of the disparities between the costs and the benefits of governmental services among local governments in urban areas.
You are aware of the imperfect performance of such major governmental functions as urban transportation, water supply, sewage disposal, and air pollution control, due to the spread of a metropolitan population beyond the jurisdiction of individual governmental units.
You are aware of the restrictive State constitutional provisions that inhibit the easy adaptation of local government to meet present and prospective needs.
And I am sure you are aware of the lack of coordination among the more than 50 Federal programs that directly affect urban areas.
Yet, awareness itself is not enough-as you so well know.
Central to all of these problems is the fact that the metropolitan area has become, in effect, a new kind of community. Many of its citizens, however, have little or no sense of belonging.
Further, while the metropolitan community is still only an infant, and new to its new civic life, it threatens to deprive some of the old units of their former significance. Loyalties to these old units may be lost, without being transferred to the new and more effective regional communities.
The urban regional problem, then, -- s the problem of restructuring the level of government which serves directly the most populated parts of America. Local governments in metropolitan areas must achieve the capacity to cope with today's nearly unmanageable problems. The adaptation of local governments in metropolitan areas is a prerequisite for renewed vitality for urban America.
This is a job of constitution making in the classical sense.
Jefferson and John Stuart Mill viewed local government as the schoolhouses of a democratic citizenry. But our preoccupation with the National Government and with the legal concept of State sovereignty has led, unfortunately, to an easy acceptance of the idea that local government is artificial.
Moreover, few citizens find in local government the sense of achievement necessary to attract and hold their attention, much less to capture their imagination. Some, who despair, are reminded of Byron's stanza:
"I live not in myself, but I become a
Portion of that around me: and to me
High mountains are a feeling, but the hum
Of human cities, torture."
Even at the turn of the century, Lord Bryce was complaining of the lack of talent in urban public life. If it was difficult even then to attract and hold first-class leadership, the fragmented maze of today's emerging metropolitan areas makes the tasks of recruiting, training, and holding top-flight leadership all the more difficult. Yet this is one of our greatest national needs, and this must be one of your primary responsibilities.
I, for one, agree with Jefferson that live local democracies are essential to the health of a national democracy and your presence here indicates that you share this view.
You, in the Detroit metropolitan region, have shown that you have foreseen the federalism of the future.
The traditional concept of intergovernmental relations has two dimensions.
First, as a horizontal proposition, it presupposes three levels of government -- Federal, State, and local -- with separate powers and personnel, with independent constituencies and decision making processes.
Second, as a vertical proposition, it assumes that there are many shared governmental activities that involve all levels in significant and continuing responsibilities.
Most politicians and many academicians tend to accept one or the other of these views. Yet the record reveals that both of these views are accurate descriptions of the remarkable history of American federalism. As we face the urban crisis, however, it seems to me that we must expand the horizontal concept of intergovernmental relations by establishing a new decision making process at the metropolitan level. We must also add a new perspective to the vertical relationships by gearing more of our joint-action programs to the growing needs of metropolitan areas as a whole. The development of this new design of federalism will require courage, creativeness, and concern from civic leaders at all levels.
I stated earlier that the problem of restructuring the local governments in metropolitan areas is a job of constitution making in the classical sense. The development of this new design for the federalism of the future is merely another dimension of the same problem. The would-be metropolitan constitution maker, therefore, would do well to follow the example of the Founding Fathers and recognize the three types of constitution Aristotle analyzed in his famous treatise on politics.
There is the social and economic constitution, that provides the community's ethnic and social structure and determines what is politically possible.
There is the ethical constitution, that embodies a community's way of life and gives it a sense of shared purposes and ideals.
And finally, there is the legal constitution with its ordering of offices and powers, which institutionalizes the principle of justice implied in a community's way of life and which is made possible by the economic and social system.
If an enduring constitution for a community is to be created, each of these must be related to the others and to the individual citizen's needs as a political, social, and moral being.
In classical terms, then, the search for the bases of a metropolitan community is the search for:
1. Potential regional leaders;
2. Responsive and responsible institutions and procedures through which they can function; and
3. A set of ideal goals that reflect the permanent interests of the area's entire citizenry.
What is being done at the Federal, State, and local levels to give recognition to these first principles and to facilitate the emergence of effective metropolitan communities? The balancing of old local loyalty against a new regional responsibility is always difficult.
And the harmonizing of local demands for independence with the need for coordinating and planning programs of metropolitan significance is not easy. Yet you have achieved considerable success in performing these difficult feats.
You have grasped the intergovernmental implications of your projected 44-percent growth during the next decade and a half. You have pioneered in developing the voluntary regional council, as a dynamic but practical compromise between the extremes of regional inaction and drastic reform.
The Supervisors’ Intercounty Committee, the Detroit Metropolitan Area Regional Planning Commission, and your forum, both singly and collectively, constitute an institutional expression of the fact that yours is an emerging regional community.
The Supervisors' Intercounty Committee serves as the important political leadership arm of this triumvirate. The committee is authorized by law to study the common problems of your six-county area and to make recommendations to member counties. Yet the committee has never forgotten that there must be a political impetus if its recommendations are to gain local acceptance.
The close ties that exist informally between the committee members and the other regional bodies on the one hand, and the county officials on the other, help to explain why the supervisors' committee has become an outstanding example of interlevel collaboration.
The Detroit Metropolitan Area Regional Planning Commission is the professional planning member of the triumvirate. It is responsible for guiding the current physical development of your metropolitan area and planning for its future needs. It is also responsible for making available any data on the economic, social, and physical aspects of your six-county area.
The Metropolitan Fund and this Forum for Detroit Area Metropolitan Goals perform a vital function that is frequently ignored in other urban areas. As private groups, you are in the unique position of stimulating the interest of citizens and public officials alike in long-range regional goals.
Because you are the only metropolitan wide vehicle for this kind of public discussion, you are uniquely equipped to inform the public of the area's future needs, to encourage public discussion and debate of regional problems, and to formulate-with the effective participation of both citizens and public officials-the new goals that will implement your search for the good society here in Metropolitan Detroit.
Every citizen must be helped to understand the relationship of specific proposed improvements to the overall theme of orderly growth. But understanding is not, by itself, an adequate goal.
Every citizen must also be convinced that his own best interests warrant active participation to convert these proposals into realities.
You give the citizens a grasp of what the other members of the regional triumvirate are concerned with.
You have involved many elements of your diverse metropolitan community in a continuing program of face-to-face discussions.
You have recognized that the real menace of the metropolis is not so much in the technical need to provide better public services, but the far greater practical and political problem of citizen participation and control over important affairs at the metropolitan level.
Your efforts have provided the Detroit metropolitan area with its equivalent of an institution that still functions well in my State, Maine, for you have at work here the regional equivalent of the New England town meeting.
The State and Federal Governments must also join in building the foundations of effective metropolitan communities. Both have tended to react to the challenge in a haphazard fashion.
Michigan's response, however, has been better than that of many other States. Your new State constitution contains a section which allows local governments to join in a variety of ways to achieve a common solution of their common problems.
Interlocal contracting, for example, is authorized, and the use of multipurpose metropolitan districts is encouraged.
Further, the legislature's authority to deal with urban area problems is fully protected.
These provisions, however, should be regarded as only beginnings, for there is a clear need for more adequate State leadership and attention with respect to your metropolitan problems. The State, after all, is the depository for most of the legal power to act in urban affairs, and it must come to accept a genuine role in the field.
I'm still enough of a Hamiltonian, however ever, to believe the Federal Government also has a special role to play in helping civic institutions adapt to their new regional environment.
The national character of many metropolitan questions makes this mandatory. More than 50 Federal programs are now operating in our urban areas, and most of them have been enacted since 1950. The future is not likely to reverse this trend.
Authority and effort are needed in Washington -- as well as in the urban areas-to assure that each of these programs contributes not only to its more limited program goal, but also to the general goals of our emerging metropolitan communities. Three current case studies indicate that Washington is responding to this challenge.
The proposed Intergovernmental Cooperation Act of 1965 (which I introduced this year and which 39 Senators cosponsored), is of paramount importance to you here and to all other metropolitan regions in the country. Last month, we held a week of hearings on this measure.
Title IV of bill merits your special consideration, since it establishes a national urban assistance policy. Under it, each Federal executive administering urban programs is obliged to coordinate his actions with those of other Federal agencies and his plans must be part of or consistent with local and areawide planning efforts.
Another section of this title stipulates that applications for grants and loans under certain urban programs would be reviewed and commented upon-but not vetoed-by a regional planning body composed of elected officials from the general units of local government. This section is designed to strengthen areawide planning and to assist Federal agencies in their evaluation of grant applications.
It will not create undue delays. But it will protect the integrity of regional planning objectives from subversion by a fragmented and uncoordinated Federal approach to urban development. Equally important, it helps to implement one of the basic goals of this conference and of your forum.
A second case study of Federal responses to urban problems is covered in the proposed Water Quality Act of 1965, which I was privileged to introduce in this session. The bill has now passed both Houses of Congress. It increases grants for the construction of municipal Sewage treatment works and provides financial assistance to municipalities and Other bodies for the separation of combined sewers. Of special concern to you is the provision that the grants may be increased by 10 percent for projects which are part of a comprehensive regional plan. This incentive approach has worked well in the "open space" program. It will strengthen our attempt to curb water pollution. And I am convinced that this device should be extended to other Federal programs.
A third proposal would create a broad instrument for dealing with the urban crisis at both the national and the grassroots levels.
I have cosponsored President Johnson's bill to establish a Department of Housing and Urban Development.
I believe this legislation is needed to improve the administration and coordination of the principal Federal programs which provide assistance for the housing and the development of the Nation's urban communities.
I am convinced that it will help promote interstate, regional and metropolitan collaboration.
I am certain that such a department will provide better technical assistance and information-including a clearinghouse service -- to these units of local and State government.
No one of these three national proposals alone will solve the urban crisis, nor will State and local efforts alone suffice. But when combined, they offer meaningful ways of implementing the concept of "creative federalism" and of giving local officials a better than even chance of establishing the foundations of a vital metropolitan community.
The town was once the place where many public decisions were made and carried out. Then it was the city. Now it is the region, with its combination of cities and towns. These developments have not been sudden for as Vachel Lindsay wrote of Springfield, Ill.:
"Record it for the grandsons of your son
A city is not boarded in a day:
A little town cannot complete her soul
Till countless generation pass away."