February 21, 1973
Page 4884
MAYORS PLEAD FOR SOCIAL PROGRAMS
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, this morning the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations held hearings on the impact of the President's proposed budget on the Nation's cities. Twelve deeply concerned mayors – representing the legislative action committee of the National League of Cities-U.S. Conference of Mayors – painted a deeply disturbing picture of the disastrous impact which the proposed cutbacks in social and human resource programs will mean to the people of our cities.
The mayors who testified this morning were Mayor Moon Landrieu of New Orleans, chairman of the committee, Mayor Joseph Alioto of San Francisco, Mayor Lee Alexander of Syracuse, Mayor Stanley Cmich of Canton, Ohio, Mayor Peter Flaherty of Pittsburgh, Mayor Roman Gribbs of Detroit, Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Mayor John Lindsay of New York City, Mayor Henry Maier of Milwaukee, Mayor Norman Mineta of San Jose, Calif., Mayor Patricia Sheehan of New Brunswick, N.J., and Mayor Wesley Uhlman of Seattle. Mayor Kenneth Gibson of Newark was prevented from appearing personally, but submitted a written statement.
Mr. President, because the testimony of the mayors has such relevance to the ongoing national debate about the President's budget proposals, I ask unanimous consent that these statements and a statement on manpower programs submitted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors be printed in the RECORD at this point. I urge my colleagues to heed the pleas of the mayors.
There being no objection, the statements were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
STATEMENT OF MOON LANDRIEU, MAYOR OF NEW ORLEANS, LA., AND CHAIRMAN, LEGISLATIVE ACTION COMMITTEE OF THE U.S. CONFERENCE OF MAYORS
Mr. Chairman, as Chairman of the Legislative Action Committee on the United States Conference of Mayors, I wish to express our individual and collective appreciation to you for inviting us here. We are grateful for this early opportunity to officially set before the Congress our views on the Administration's proposed Fiscal 1974 Budget.
In order to deal with such a massive document in a single morning as fully as possible and with a maximum of dispatch and a minimum of duplication, each of my fellow Mayors will confine his statement to a single problem raised by the proposed Budget or to the major impacts of the Budget on his city. My role as opening witness is, first, to present an overview of what we as Mayors foresee in our cities if Congress adopts the Administration's proposed budget and, second, to recommend some alternative courses of action.
And let me assure you that we have not come here to wage an all out defense of every categorical grant program devised in the previous decade. Many, if not most, of those programs were effective ... others have not been. Many, if not most, were needed and appropriate at the time, but their time may have passed.
We generally support the Administration's ultimate goal of consolidating various grant-in-aid programs provided the new system is adequately funded. Grant consolidation is a logical and progressive step for the Federal Government to take in meeting the varied needs of local governments as diverse as Houston and New Orleans.
Yet between now and that program's opening volley in July of 1974 the battle may be lost. For the Administration in its budget plans for FY '73 and '74, has brought the center city to its knees with crippling cutbacks and reductions and the frequent suggestion from the Executive branch that these urban losses be made up with general revenue sharing is the most curious irony of all [for it may represent a failure by the Administration to even accurately measure the enormity of the budget cuts and their effect upon urban areas.]
From the perspective of Mayors, what does this Budget mean?
It means shifting more of the tax burden of this nation from the progressive federal income tax to regressive local sales and property taxes.
It means reducing not only the federal government's role, but also its basic commitment to advancing the general welfare.
It means an end to the Emergency Employment Program, a dismantling of OEO, and a cutback of Model Cities – all of which have been used by many Mayors to bring minorities into the mainstream of government service.
It means a six to twelve-month break in our already-inadequate pace in renewing our blighted neighborhoods.
It means that low-income housing and sewage treatment plants and hospitals and new towns will not be built.
It means suddenly being informed that "a legacy of parks" is a local, rather than a national, responsibility.
It means a 4% increase in funds for Criminal Justice purposes with details to be supplied later as to the nature and extent of a role for City Governments.
It means the status quo in Urban Mass Transportation funding and a 24% increase in highway funds for an Urban Transportation Program to operate within a framework which is yet to be ironed out.
The proposed budget means all of this, Mr. Chairman; and to those Mayors who have constitutional or statutory responsibilities in the fields of public education, welfare, and health it has additional meanings. Each of these meanings will be addressed in the statements of my fellow Mayors – in statements borne out of frustration, desperation, anguish and outrage.
We feel so strongly, Mr. Chairman, because we trusted in assurances by the Administration that the enactment of General Revenue Sharing would not mean a cutback in funds for categorical grants-in-aid. Our understanding that General Revenue Sharing was to be "new" money goes back at least to July 8, 1969, when a meeting was held at the White House attended by Governors, County Executives, and four Mayors accompanied by the Executive Vice President of the National Leagues of Cities. Our understanding was given support in the State of the Union Message of January 22, 1971, in which President Nixon proposed going beyond General Revenue Sharing to what he later called "special revenue sharing". The President said:
"I propose that the Congress make a $16 billion investment in renewing State and local government. $5 billion of this will be new and unrestricted funds, to be used as the States and localities see fit. The other $11 billion will be provided by allocating $1 billion of new funds and converting one-third of the money going to the present narrow-purpose aid programs into Federal revenue sharing funds for six broad purposes."
In other words, The President not only confirmed our understanding that the unrestricted general revenue sharing funds were to be all new funds, he offered still another $1 billion of new money to be added to the six broad purpose programs which he would create by conversion of one-third of categorical grant programs.
Secretary of the Treasury, Connally, was quite explicit about revenue sharing in his statement before the House Ways and Means Committee on June 2 and 3, 1971. Secretary Connally said:
"As the money will be in addition to existing programs, each State, city, and county will benefit directly: Each will receive revenue sharing money in addition to any benefits, services, or money it is now obtaining from the Federal Government."
The U.S. Conference of Mayors, Legislative Action Committee, testified before Ways and Means the week following Secretary Connally's testimony. We stressed two points in our testimony:
First, that as Mayors we had raised local taxes to our legal or economic limits. Second, that mostly we needed this new federal fiscal assistance for basic services such as fire, police, and garbage which were beyond the scope of the categorical grants. The President understood the kinds of basic services which cities were being forced to cut. The example he had used in the State of the Union Message was the cutbacks in "trash collections" in San Diego and Cleveland.
Sixteen months after our appearance before the Ways and Means Committee the State and Local Fiscal Assistance Act of 1972 became law. We knew that the Administration remained committed to our understanding that general revenue sharing was new money and was to be used primarily for basic services. We knew this because the Department of the Treasury issued a booklet entitled "What General Revenue Sharing Is All About." It contains the following question and answer:
"Question: Will any programs be terminated because general Revenue Sharing has begun?
"Answer: No Revenue Sharing does not mandate any cuts in existing programs. The purpose of the Revenue Sharing law is to allocate additional funds to state and local governments to augment existing programs and certain capital expenditures."
As late as January 19, 1973, many of the Mayors in this room received verbal assurances at the White House by Domestic Affairs Council staff that even though the Budget would assume the expiration of the Emergency Employment Act that the Mayors would like what the Budget provided for other urban programs.
Imagine our shock, our dismay, our confusion when the Budget was released calling for no money for Model Cities, a token amount for Urban Renewal, an end to numerous categorical programs. Our shock was further compounded when we saw that the section of the Budget providing for the dismantling of OEO also contains the following language:
"If constituencies of individual communities desire to continue providing financial support to local community action agencies, general and special revenue sharing funds could be used."
This is directly contrary to Secretary Connally's response to Congressman Landrum in the Ways and Means hearing in which the Secretary said, ". . . there will be no Federal bureaucrats to tell the cities or States how they can spend it."
But enough of history. We must deal with the situation that now confronts us. In the weeks and months ahead we will be calling upon the Congress to join with us in dealing with the situation.
We will be calling for:
1. A modified Emergency Employment Program targeted for areas of hardcore unemployment. (Mayors Sheehan and Cmich will speak to this.)
2. A proper role for cities in both Law Enforcement Assistance and in the proposed Urban Transportation Program.
3. Adequate FY '74 appropriations, especially in the fields of housing and urban development and employment. (This will immediately confront both us and the Congress with issues of spending ceilings, impoundments, inflation, and the role of elected officials at all levels in the reordering of national priorities. Mayor Lindsay has a statement addressing these issues.)
4. When the appropriate Congressional Committees take up the question of block grants we will be seeking opportunities to insure that any such legislation properly deals with our concerns about "Hold Harmless", a growth factor, and planning and management resources. (Mayor Mineta's statement will deal with the issues raised by a block grant for Community Development.)
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, we as Mayors simply cannot accept a philosophy emanating from Washington which says that programs which have not met expectations are to be eliminated and programs which have met expectations are now local responsibilities (without federal resources). Eliminating programs does not eliminate the problems those programs were designed to cope with.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
TESTIMONY OF WES UHLMAN, MAYOR,
CITY OF SEATTLE
Senator Edmund Muskie, Chairman: Honorable Chairman and Committee Members, I am very grateful for this opportunity to address you on an issue which is of the utmost concern to the city whose people I serve and to myself personally.
As much as I might wish, I cannot change or soften the gravity of the crisis before us. The proposed Executive Budget for 1974 poses a direct and serious threat to the life of Seattle and its people, and to every urban center in the nation. Its recommendations endanger the viability of municipal government, the stability of the urban economy, the quality of the physical environment, and the individual lives of citizens. In short, the whole fabric of urban community in America is threatened.
This is not hyperbole. Rhetorical embellishments are not necessary. The figures speak plainly for themselves.
The Presidential impoundments and the proposed Executive Budget represent a loss of $97.8 million in projects serving Seattle. In terms of 1972 funding levels for programs directly administered by the city government, over $25 million would be lost, and another $52 million placed in jeopardy. Under this budget, the city government could lose a sum equal to its General Fund for 1973, well over half of the federal funding it is currently receiving.
These dollars, despite the opinion expressed in the White House, represent programs which have held real benefit for individuals and for the total community.
For an aging blind man, the President's budget will mean no more new braille books ... and back to loneliness and isolation.
For a black mother finally off of welfare and into a job, the President's budget will mean no day care center for her children ... and back to welfare.
For a youngster who has dropped out of school, the President's budget will mean no possibility of a job from Neighborhood Youth Corps ... and back to the streets.
For an elderly person unable to leave his room, the President's budget will mean no one to come and help cook a meal ... and back to a life of unending monotony, without dignity.
For an Indian family, the President's budget will mean no public health hospital to turn to in an emergency ... and back to the precarious existence in the shadows of a white society which does not care.
For all of the people in Seattle's inner city, the President's budget will mean an end to the progress which it has enjoyed for the past five years. It will mean no more Model City Programs.
It will mean that a steadily declining crime rate could begin again to climb. It means no more development of needed parks. It means no hope of initiating a program of long overdue housing rehabilitation and development.
For the city's minorities, it means the end of programs which have recruited and trained them for jobs in city government, and thereby raised minority employment on the City's payroll from 3 % to over 13% in less than five years.
For all the city, the President's budget could represent a loss in direct and indirect employment and business of a quarter of a billion dollars. It will force unemployment back up, and negate two years of effort to lower unemployment from a high of 12% to a current 9%.
This is what the President's budget will or could mean just on the face of it, without trying to compute the loss of many state, regional, and county programs affecting the city, without trying to calculate the impact of the transfers of program authority from the city to other levels, without trying to figure out the changes in funding formulas, and without trying to anticipate future freezes and impoundments.
The President has offered three basic justifications for his proposed budget. He has said that it will combat inflation, that it will eliminate programs that have failed, and that it will revolutionize the delivery of social services under the banner of the new federalism. For my own part, I must challenge all three of these premises.
First, and very simply, I cannot accept the sacrifice of social programs in the name of preventing inflation, when there is at the same time proposed a $4 billion increase in the Defense budget, particularly coming at the conclusion of a war. I cannot accept this rationale, when the President refuses to recommend the reform of the inequities and privileges of the Federal tax system which help to promote inflationary business activity.
I agree with the President that some of the programs initiated as experiments under the New Frontier and the Great Society have not met expectations. I cannot condone, however, throwing the baby out with the bath water, nor can I understand why the Administration has not acted to apply the lessons of these programs in instituting new and better approaches to meet social needs.
Above all, I cannot accept this explanation when military programs which fail year after year to meet their objectives or exceed their budget by billions of dollars are not treated with the same severity as social programs. In all conscience, I must ask you how many years sooner might our prisoners have come home if this criterion of failure had been applied as forcefully to our commitment in Vietnam as it is to our commitment to America's cities.
Finally, on the issue of new federalism, I can only respond with confusion and dismay.
I, like most of us in this room, I am sure, applauded the President's call for a new American revolution, for the transfer of responsibility from a burgeoning national bureaucracy to the state and local governments.
In this spirit, we accepted general revenue sharing. Its intent was simple: give the cities back a portion of the funds which they have paid out so that they could avoid bankruptcy. Many of the mayors in this room, including myself, came to Washington again and again to lobby for general revenue sharing because we knew that without it, our governments could not fill the growing breach between the demand for additional city services, let alone new ones, and the local revenues available to us. In essence, we turned to the world's largest and most efficient tax collector for the same consideration afforded an ailing defense contractor.
But general revenue sharing has not turned out to be the savior we had hoped for. Even with revenue sharing, the City of Seattle faces a possible deficit next year of almost $7 million, solely because of inflation and higher labor costs and with no expansion of services or employment.
Special revenue sharing presents even dimmer prospects. Of the anticipated program losses I described earlier and itemized in the attachments to this testimony, special revenue sharing would make up barely half.
If these revenue sharing proposals and the Executive Budget are the new federalism, then I must say that cities have been deceived. We have been given greater responsibilities, but we have been denied the resources and the tools needed to fulfill them.
The new federalism has turned out to be a Trojan horse for America's cities. A gift left behind by an administration retreating from its basic responsibilities to the citizens. A hollow gift filled, not with enemy troops as in ancient Troy, but with impoundments and program freezes, with lopsided funding formulas, with broken promises and cynical pretexts, and with an Executive Budget that will spell disaster for human services and community development in every city in the nation.
Just before I left Seattle, I told a forum of over 300 citizens concerned about revenue sharing and the President's budget that the situation was not hopeless because there is still a Congress in this country. You, gentlemen, and your colleagues in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, are truly our only hope.
STATEMENT ON MANPOWER PROGRAMS
(Submitted on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Mayors)
The Administration's Fiscal Year 1974 Budget proposes a drastic reduction of Federal support for job creation and manpower training services. This stark impact is not obscured by the proposed expansion of authority of State and local governments over manpower programs. Nor can the reduction be hidden by the decision to stretch out expenditure of funds for the Public Employment Program through Fiscal Year 1974 or by the decision to reduce Fiscal Year 1973 expenditures for manpower training by recissions of existing appropriations.
In simplest terms, the Administration's Budget proposes to eliminate more than 50 percent of the funds presently available for job creation and manpower training.
It proposes to terminate the Public Employment Program (PEP). While this is to be accomplished by phasing out the program through Fiscal Year 1974, such a phase-out process does not conceal the fact that there will be some 180,000 less job opportunities in the public sector than there will be if PEP is continued.
It proposes no monies for summer programs for youth – no funds for jobs for young people, no support for recreation or transportation programs. Thus, nearly three-quarters of a million young people will not have a job this summer that did last year. It means that there will not be recreation and cultural programs for some two million young people. And it means that approximately a million young people will not have access to employment, recreational or cultural activities because there will be no funds for transportation support.
It proposes to reduce training services provided to the nation's unemployed and disadvantaged by over 35 percent.
PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM – PEP
The Budget proposed by the Administration makes no request for the continuation of the Emergency Employment Act of 1971. It proposes that the full $2.25 billion authorized for FY 1972 and FY 1973 be appropriated and spent. However, these funds will be used to phase out the program through Fiscal 1974.
This extended period for phasing out the program would ease the burden which Program Agents – State, County and City governments – will face in placing participants in unsubsidized employment or laying off does not change the fact that there will be no funds to continue the jobs created under PEP and that there is no alternative offered to help meet the public service needs of State and local governments.
PEP, to date, has had some 234,000 participants nationally. These participants have worked in some 181,000 jobs created under this program. Two hundred and twelve (212) cities of a population of 75,000 or more have served as Program Agents under the program. One-third of the jobs are administered by these cities. Countless more cities, of less than 75,000 population, employ PEP participants in their role as subagent to County or State governments.
The impact of the elimination of PEP is staggering. At the simplest level, it means that 181,000 employment opportunities which existed this year will be gone next.
It means that 181,000 man years of public service in State and local governments which has provided this year must be eliminated or will require additional local revenues to continue. No time extension without additional funds can obscure that fact.
Who are these people that PEP's elimination will throw back into a still glutted labor market? These are not, as has been too frequently implied, the temporarily displaced or the readily employable. Over 50 percent of the PEP participants of city Program Agents are members of minority groups and over 40 percent are disadvantaged. They are 40 percent veterans, nearly three-quarters of whom are veterans of the Vietnam era. Some 25 percent are under age 22. Twenty-five (25) percent have less than a high school education. These are not the characteristics of the readily employed.
What will be the impact on public services in our cities and States? The real toll that will be taken can only be measured city-by-city. We do not have the time to do that here. But let me give you some examples. In Canton, PEP meant that we were able to maintain the existence of the municipal transit system which otherwise would have closed. In Shreveport, the addition of Fire Department personnel resulted in an improved insurance rating for the city with the result that the average homeowner saves up to $20 per year on fire insurance premiums. In Denver, the response time for emergency medical services was cut in half. In Rochester, New York, PEP's elimination will result in the closing of six recreation centers and will wipe out the 40 percent increases in maintenance and repair of municipal property.
These are but several examples of the expanded public services which PEP made possible. In addition, over 60 percent of the city Program Agents utilized PEP to provide new and long needed public services. Drug abuse and rehabilitation clinics were initiated in Jersey City, Honolulu, Long Beach, Duluth, and Hayward, California, among others. Environmental protection programs were initiated such as recycling centers, riverbank stabilization, conduct of environmental impact studies, emissions inventories and pollution surveillance and compliance units. Consumer affairs units, programs for the elderly, paramedical services, security guards for housing and educational facilities – all of these were among the innovative and new programs which PEP enabled cities to undertake.
The statement of Dr. Jon Lindolf, Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Maine testifies to one more aspect of PEP's impact. Dr. Lindolf conducted training sessions for participants hired to fill the 90 teacher aide positions created with PEP funds in Maine. In expressing his feeling that the program had important effects on the public school systems in Maine, he noted–
"The introduction of aides, who in many cases are more truly representative of the socioeconomic status of students in the community, effectively improves communications between students and teachers. Secondly, the notion that education is best conducted with a pupil-teacher ratio of 1 to 30 has increasingly been recognized as a notion that places impossible burdens on teachers. The introduction of extra personnel with varying degrees of training effectively reduces the student-teacher ratio by half or more and makes possible successful individualization in the educational process."
If PEP is eliminated, what will happen to these teacher aides in the State of Maine?
The legitimate demand for increased public service is a constant in our cities. Every study conducted in the last 7 years, including a survey undertaken recently by the Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty, reveals that States and local government could effectively use three to five times the number of employees that are now employed under PEP. And PEP's implementation has proven that the use of the word "effective" is valid.
SUMMER YOUTH PROGRAMS
The Administration's Budget proposes no summer program funds, be it for employment through the Neighborhood Youth Corps Program or assistance for recreational and cultural programs through the Recreation Support Program (RSP) and the Summer Youth Transportation Program (SYTP).
What the Budget offers is a cruel choice. If we want to undertake summer youth programs, we must either take funds from the already reduced monies available for manpower training services or we may be given the option to use some of the PEP monies for summer employment opportunities. In effect, the option is to prevent a parent from receiving needed training or eliminate a parent's PEP job in order to provide a summer job to their children.
The consequences of the elimination of these programs are made apparent by the results of the programs in the summer of 1972.
Funds for Summer Neighborhood Youth Corps provided 740,000 jobs for young people.
Funds for Recreation Support ($15 million) provided recreational and cultural programs which served over 2 million young people.
Funds for Summer Youth Transportation ($1.5 million) made transportation available to some one million young people for the purpose of employment, and recreational and cultural activities.
This is what will not happen this summer, under this Administration's proposed Budget.
And it should be noted that the need is even greater than the past summer's program could meet. A survey was conducted by the National League of Cities and U. S. Conference of Mayors of the cities' 1973 needs for summer youth program support. A copy of the results of that survey is submitted with this statement.
In summary, it indicates that the present real needs are some one million summer employment opportunities, nearly $25 million for recreation support and over $3.5 million for transportation support.
MANPOWER TRAINING SERVICES
In the area of manpower training services (those authorized under the Manpower Development and Training Act and the Economic Opportunity Act), the Administration proposes a budget authority of $1.340 billion for FY 1974. And it must be noted that this total includes $40 million transferred from OEO to the Department of Labor for migrant programs. Thus, comparisons with prior years' funding levels means that the figure for manpower training services for FY 1974 would be only $1.300 billion.
This figure compares to a Fiscal Year 1972 appropriation of $1.682 billion and a Fiscal 1973 anticipated budget of $1.549 billion, or reductions of 28 percent and 16 percent respectively.
We use the word "anticipated" for the FY 1973 budget authority with a purpose. The Administration, as part of its Fiscal Year 1974 budget proposes to reduce the Fiscal Year 1973 budget by some $375 billion. Thus, they now show an appropriation for Fiscal 1973 of $1.174 billion. This $375 million reduction is to be accomplished by rescinding $284 million of the already approved EOA appropriation and a revised request for appropriations under MDTA which is $91 million less than had initially been requested and included in the vetoed DOL-HEW appropriations bill.
This means a nearly 25 percent reduction during the present Fiscal Year. And this reduction is being accomplished with or without the benefit of Congressional action by means of budget cutbacks and enrollment freezes which were initiated administratively in December and which still continue.
By the Department of Labor's own statistics, this means there will be a reduction, in this Fiscal Year, of 25 percent in the number of man-years of training provided under MDTA and EOA programs. Again, using the Department's own figures, there will be a reduction of over 50 percent in the number of new enrollees in manpower training programs between Fiscal 1972 and Fiscal 1973. More than 700,000 potential enrollees will not be served this year. More than 130,000 man-years of training will be unavailable.
And that is within this Fiscal Year only. The Department's statistics project another decrease of 11 percent, or over 40,000 man-years of training in Fiscal Year 1974, compared to Fiscal Year 1973.
The Administration's budget states that they will move administratively to decategorize and decentralize manpower programs. This is a goal which we have long sought and continue to support, although we believe that its achievement would be better realized through comprehensive reform legislation. But while we support the goal, its accomplishment at the funding level proposed in the Budget will be a pyrrhic victory.
TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE ROMAN S. GRIBBS, MAYOR OF THE CITY OF DETROIT AND PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES
Thank you for inviting the Mayors of America's major cities to be heard on the proposed Federal Budget for Fiscal 1973-74.
In expressing my profound concern over the direction of his budget, I speak not only for my city, Detroit ... where the effect may well be paralytic ... but, as President of the National League of Cities, I speak for all urban centers in this country, struggling against poverty, disease, poor housing, unemployment and crime.
The President's budget for 1974, the financial vehicle for national priorities, would decimate many of the programs designed to contain and combat the social evils that plague our cities.
These budget cuts will most drastically affect minority groups, the poor, the aged, and the ill. These cuts will give impetus to a new cycle of decay in American cities. If the cities decay, it will be a betrayal of this country's expressed commitment to its people. And this Nation cannot long endure without vital cities.
The President made a major point in his inaugural address, his State of the Union Address, and again in his budget message, of his philosophy that, both the power to decide issues and the responsibility for those decisions must be returned to the American people ... to the local level. I share this view. However, I vigorously dissent with his statement that local governments are not maintaining their fair share of the burden of government.
In his Inaugural address, the President said:
"Let us encourage the individuals at home to do more for themselves, to decide more for themselves. Let us locate responsibility in more places, and let us measure what we will do for others by what they will do for themselves."
I submit that the central cities of this country are doing just that ... they are doing much for themselves.
What we have done for ourselves in Detroit is to impose a utility users tax and a 2% city income tax, at maximum statutory levels, on the already heavy burdens of federal and state taxes – an income tax which is paid mainly by the city resident with only token payment by the commuter.
Thus those people who can least afford it are shouldering the major burden of support for a local government which is hard pressed to keep its head above the flood of poverty, unemployment and other ills endemic to the big city.
The President in his Inaugural speech also says:
"General Revenue Sharing and Special Revenue sharing programs can help considerably in achieving this goal (of local decisionmaking and local responsibility.) They provide for State and communities with financial assistance in a way that allows them the freedom and the responsibility necessary to use those funds most effectively."
Let me give you my reaction to his proposals for these two types of revenue sharing separately.
The whole intent and philosophy behind the passage of General Revenue Sharing was a recognition of the stark fact that the basic needs of American cities had outstripped their financial resources. General Revenue Sharing was the Congress' and the President's answer to the cities' plea for outside additional help.
If the President terminates and phases out many of the categorical federal programs which provide the cities with assistance in the vital areas of health and community redevelopment, and says it is to be replaced with General Revenue Sharing, what will be the City's gain? All the extra, let me repeat, extra, financial support we expected from General Revenue Sharing, will be wiped out if these funds must be substituted for lost programs. The use of this substitution logic is completely contrary to the expressed intent of General Revenue Sharing ... and a personal commitment the President made to us.
Special Revenue Sharing should be a good idea. I welcome the responsibility of making my own decisions about where the funds should go in Detroit. I welcome being held responsible for those decisions. I agree with President Nixon that:
"Federal programs to assist state and local governments have become a confusing maze, understood only by members of a new, highly-specialized occupation – the grantsmen"
However, I cannot condone the dual purpose here – Special Revenue Sharing is being promised, but only after phasing down and in some cases phasing out vital programs which have taken years to build to their present level of service. The President is not only condemning our cities to flounder next year, but his budget will adversely affect them in the years beyond as program momentum is lost.
In justifying an impoundment of urban renewal program funds, the President has said:
"Federally-assisted housing programs have been plagued with problems, and their intended beneficiaries have thus been shortchanged."
I am not so naive as to suggest that nothing can be done to improve our housing and urban development programs.
These programs do exist. They affect human lives. They do alleviate real human miseries. Can I tell Detroiters to wait three years for safe, warm homes, while the President irons out his program flaws?
In other areas, especially those of hospital construction, and unemployment, the President's generalizations ignore urgent needs in Detroit and other urban centers. He has condemned the Hill-Burton construction act as having outlived its usefulness, claiming that a shortage of hospital beds no longer exists. I invite the President to tour our Detroit General Hospital, with its crowded, illequipped, outmoded facilities. Without Federal aid, the City will not be able to build a new Detroit General Hospital, and consequently will be unable to provide its residents with adequate health care.
Speaking to the issue of unemployment, the President has said:
"During the past two years, the Federal budget has provided the fiscal stimulus that moved the economy toward full employment. Now, however, instead of operating as a stimulus, the budget must guard against inflation."
With this thought, he has apparently doomed the Emergency Employment Act Program.
While it is true that unemployment nationally has fallen from 6.4% to 5.5% in the past year, Detroit's employment picture is not so optimistic. Last year, Detroit's unemployment averaged 10.67%. This January, the figure is still high – 8.2% – in terms of people, this means that 54,000 Detroiters are still unemployed. If the public employment program is discontinued, over 2,500 city and board of education workers would be back among the unemployed. In addition, the 18,000 young people employed last summer under the neighborhood youth corps programs could not be hired. The O.E.O. cuts would mean a staff reduction of 600 in Detroit's Community Action Programs – not to mention the much needed services they provide the community.
Assistant Labor Secretary Michale H. Moshow, has suggested using General Revenue Sharing to retain those programs. Let me again emphasize that General Revenue Sharing was allocated to the cities of America in recognition of a need for extra revenue, not to replace funding for on-going Federal programs.
The 20% Federal cut in other manpower programs would also cut the staff of Detroit's Office of Manpower Planning which is funded on a CAMPS grant. This reduction would impede our capability to respond to the severe unemployment problem which will arise, especially if the public employment program is allowed to end, and H.E.W. and H.U.D. programs are phased out.
In the category of Manpower Programs we estimate that if the Public Employment Program is phased out, and other manpower Programs are reduced as the President has proposed, Detroit will lose $7 million next year.
The President has ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to allocate only $5 billion out of an available $11 billion for fiscal years 1973 and 1974 for the construction of municipal water pollution control facilities. Over the next 16 months, this will mean the loss of $123 million to Detroit in Federal support, an action which will cripple Detroit's plan to meet the Federal Environmental Protection Agency's Pollution Control Standards.
Detroit's Lead Poisoning Control Program has been highly successful in combating a serious problem in our City with its large number of older homes. The President has proposed constricting and eventually phasing out this program.
The PRESCAD Program in Wayne County has already been limited by funds to reach only 25,000 of the 80,000 young people in our area who should receive their services. Both PRESCAD and the Detroit Maternal Health and Infant Care Programs are being cut by 40% to a total 1974 funding level in Detroit of $1.5 million as compared to $2.5 million in 1973.
PRESCAD provided the only significant program of dental care for indigents and the greatest part of our medical care programs for children and adolescents. This cut will be felt deeply.
Public housing operation subsidies have been frozen. As you are aware, subsidies for the operation of existing public housing have been limited to a 3 % annual increase, based on 1971-72 spending levels. Expenditures, primarily in the area of salaries and employee benefits, have grown at a rate higher than 3%. Through careful use of operating reserves built up in past years, the Detroit Housing Commission may be able to maintain its current level of services for a limited period. A City subsidy of $1.5-$2 million or an equivalent cut in services will then be required. I am informed that several cities have already begun suits against H.U.D. over such unrealistic funding limitations.
In housing, Urban Renewal and Neighborhood Development Programs, the President has set aside no new money, and has killed all new programs. If these reductions are allowed to take place, Detroit's Community Development and Urban Renewal efforts will be set back by at least two years – given the lead time necessary for such programs to show results.
The President intends to dismantle O.E.O., killing the Community Action Program entirely. This would translate into a loss of $6,100,000 for Detroit. It could deal a tragic blow to what little faith the minorities and disadvantaged had in the system and its concern for them.
Our Model Cities Programs, just now gaining momentum and chalking up results, will be cut 45%, or 13 million dollars.
Reductions in other sensitive human resources programs including Parent and Child, Concentrated Employment Program and the Neighborhood Youth Corps Summer Program will mean a $5,490,000 loss to us in Detroit.
I believe the President is making a grave mistake in his wholesale cut in human resources and community development activities. Special Revenue Sharing must be used to conceal total revenue cuts. The money he saves in 1974 will exact a tremendous cost in human misery. I predict there will not really be any savings at all because these problems will not cure themselves. As they are left uncured, they will increase and treatment of them will become even more expensive in the years ahead.
We in Detroit have worked long and hard to preserve and enhance our cities' human and economic resources. The proposed budget cuts would be a giant step backward for Detroit and America's cities. We urge Congress to take positive action to continue and strengthen the real federalism – by providing the funds and the programs so urgently needed by our urban centers.
TESTIMONY OF NORMAN Y. MINETA, MAYOR OF SAN JOSE, CALIF., AND CHAIRMAN OF THE THE U.S. CONFERENCE OF MAYORS COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Senator Muskie, Members of the Committee, I am Norman Mineta, Mayor of the City of San Jose, California and Chairman of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Community Development Committee.
In my testimony today I would like to address three items which are in President's budget, or should I say in some instances are noticeably not in the budget, which are of vital concern to the cities.
They are (1) the issue of the Administration's so-called Community Development Special Revenue Sharing which is proposed by the Administration to commence in Fiscal 1975; (2) the budget or lack of one to fund community development activities during the FY '74 transition period, during which time the Administration indicates that cities are supposed to prepare for the advent of the so-called Special Revenue Sharing measure, and; (3) the Administration's unfortunate freeze of the federally assisted housing programs for which the budget seems to suggest no concrete remedies.
I. THE ISSUE OF DO CITIES SUPPORT COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT SPECIAL REVENUE SHARING/COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT GRANT CONSOLIDATION
Let me begin by clarifying one very important semantic issue. It is that the so-called Special Revenue Sharing measure which was proposed by the Administration two years ago and is once again called for in the President's current budget is not revenue sharing in the sense that we have been using that term in connection with the general revenue sharing measure which passed Congress last year.
Instead it is a concept of grant consolidation which would provide for the merging of several existing categorical grants-in-aid into a single block grant to be allocated to the units of local general purpose government on a formula basis. An application would be required and funds would be used by those governments for the defined, consolidated and eligible activities enumerated in the Act, in accordance with local priorities.
As to whether we favor the Block Grant method of allocating funds to cities for Community Development purposes, let me point out that the U.S. Conference of Mayors has repeatedly acknowledged the difficulties that the continual creation of separate, narrow categorical programs has posed for cities.
It was the stated policy of the USCM as early as 1967 to seek grant consolidation legislation. In terms of the specifics of the Community Development Block Grant legislation which almost passed Congress last session, I have to point out that over two years ago – in November, 1970, to be exact – our USCM legislative staff was already assisting the House and Senate Housing Committees in the drafting of their own community development block grant bill. That effort was joined by the Administration when the President's bill was sent to Congress in March of 1971.
As to the President's specific proposal, we of course, have not seen what the Administration will propose in this year's version of their bill. But the specifics of the yet to be introduced Administration measure are not the issue. For we are confident that through the fine cooperation we have had in the past with the substantive committees of both Houses, we will be able to fashion Community Development Block Grant legislation which will be responsive to cities' needs.
Returning to the point then of our position as to the President's so-called Community Development Special Revenue Sharing proposal, our position is that we are not only grateful for the support we have so far received from the Congress, but we are delighted that the Administration has once again chosen to support the Mayors' proposition that Community Development grant consolidation should take place. We did not support the President's original bill in many of its details when it was first put forth two years ago. I would not be surprised to find that we will not support all of the key details of his resubmitted bill this year. But what is important is the President's continued support for our concept that there be Grant Consolidation.
Within the context of the Congressional process, we are confident that we can work out the details of a satisfactory piece of legislation.
Senator Muskie, I would like to add at this point that I find myself in basic agreement with most of the points you raised in your address before the Intergovernmental Relations Committee of the National Legislative Conference and your remarks in introducing S. 834 earlier this month.
As you know San Jose is participating in and is attempting to positively influence the development of such efforts as planned variations, the use of Chief Executive Review and Comment, and annual arrangements.
We also share your concerns over the difficulties involved in focusing General Revenue Sharing funds on relevant local problems. In fact, a member of my staff has written management guidelines dealing with the issues you raise as they relate to Annual Arrangements and General Revenue Sharing, which have been published by ICMA for use by the City Managers throughout the nation, which I will submit for your review.
But the point I agree with you most heartily on is when you said, "when faced with the legitimate call for a more efficient Federal structure, and for greater attention to the capacities of local government to judge and meet local needs ... my own response ... is to reform the grant process, not junk it."
The Community Development Block Grant, in our judgment, would be such a reform.
I believe it would be useful to remind the committee of the salient elements we feel should be in such legislation. They are:
1. That the allocation and distribution of funds be made directly to units of general purpose local governments;
2. That the consolidated activities include at least HUD's major Community Development programs of urban renewal, neighborhood facilities, open space land, basic water and sewer facilities, and model cities;
3. That the authorization and appropriation for the Consolidated Community Development Block Grant Program be adequate to cover the pressing needs cities have to carry out the activities being consolidated. I should point out that the President's budget calls for a $2.3 billion appropriation commencing in FY 1975. That figure is close to the recent annual program levels for the programs the President's budget proposed to consolidate. May I suggest that we in no way agree that the current appropriation levels for the present programs of urban renewal, open space land, etc., are adequate to meet America's domestic needs.
4. That adequate provision be provided to insure a minimum funding guarantee ("hold harmless") to those cities currently involved in federally funded community development activities so as to enable such cities to maintain their existing capacity and momentum if they wish to do so;
5. That the definitions in the list of eligible activities describe a broad, flexible physical development instrument which can and should include necessary supportive social services and on-going executive planning and management activities;
6. That there be a requirement that each community, prior to funding, file an application setting forth evidence of a locally determined comprehensive community development plan which demonstrates that the community has addressed its slums and blight problems, its low and moderate income housing problems, and its needs to improve the delivery of social services in conjunction with its basic community development program;
7. That the federal grant should equal 100% of the project cost and that there be no local share requirement;
8. And that the measure provide a programmatic link between the allocation of community development block grant funds and the distribution of federally assisted housing resources.
II. THE ISSUE OF TRANSITION
We have said that we support not only the concept of the Community Development Block Grant, but that it is our concept. Further, with continuing Congressional support the prognosis for a successful legislative effort which would implement this concept of providing aid to local governments seems to be favorable. Therefore, assuming the development and ultimate passage of such a measure, we must focus our attention on the period of transition required to move from the present use of the collection of categorical grants affecting Community Development to the simpler block grant.
The President's budget proposes that the Block Grant begin on July 1, 1974, some 16 months from now. As the Committee of course knows, this legislation has yet to be introduced into the 93rd Congress let alone enacted. Given that fact together with the manner in which the national funding mechanism for the block grant will function in that it will require local communities to develop and submit an acceptable plan for the utilization of these funds prior to the receipt of funds, the contemplation of a 16 month transition period may constitute a reasonable and realistic schedule.
Keep in mind that what is involved here is a shifting in the way we have been addressing our community development problems for the past several years. Under the present categorical grant-in-aid system we address our community development needs in part by filing hosts of applications for Federal assistance, each drawn up within the narrow terms of the specific categorical programs guidelines and drawn against the vicissitudes of specific congressional appropriations and administrative allocations. In each instance the federally assisted community development action involved is dependent upon the separate favorable approval of each specific application. Under such a system the potential for fragmentation or dilution in impact of our local community development effort through the favorable funding of some programs and not others is very high. This provides overwhelming obstacles to our ability to deal with our community's development requirements in a comprehensive fashion.
While the block grant will eliminate the potential of piecemeal funding of an overall community development effort, it will bring with it a whole new set of "problems'' that locally we will have to face.
Principal among these is that each local government will now have to carry out some rather sophisticated priority planning as to which of its host of community problems will receive priority attention. The block grant, irrespective of the authorization/appropriation level, will not provide adequate funding to cure our community development problems in the first year – or for many years. As an example, under the community development block grant legislation which passed the Senate last year, assuming a $2.3 billion national appropriation San Jose would have received an annualized block grant of some $6,385,000. But in San Jose we have for some time identified some $656,000,000 in needed community improvement for which these funds could be addressed.
The point is that locally it will be incumbent upon us to rationalize a total program of community development in order to effectively utilize the sparse block grant funds. It will probably mean shifts in personnel, reassignment of duties, and a host of local actions. We welcome the responsibility to be held accountable for our community's development priorities; and we will welcome the removal of the narrow guidelines which have sometimes hamstrung us when we wanted to move boldly, and often protected us when the people in our communities asked us why we were proceeding in a particular fashion. But the point is also that the block agent is not a panacea and for some of us the local transition actions which will be required are going to be tough.
Does the President and his Administration seek to help us with the task of transition which lies before us? Have they been trying to help stabilize as many of the community development variables as possible? Absolutely not! In a most insensitive and perhaps even inhuman fashion they have compounded our task of transition by callously freezing, curtailing, abolishing, and repudiating many of the essential elements of our community development effort.
On January 5, 1973 they brought to a halt – froze – the open space, water and sewer program, public facility loan, and all federally assisted housing programs.
On February 1, 1973 by administrative fiat, without so much as a phone call to a single mayor, let alone Congress, they administered a disastrous halving of the Model Cities program by reducing the national program level for that program by some 45%.
The President's budget essentially calls for no new monies for any of HUD's Community Development programs in FY 1974, with the minor exception of a token amount needed in order to close out a number of urban renewal projects.
Further, the budget in terms of the language itself, goes on to repudiate the merits and usefulness of some of our most effective community development programs ... the very programs which we and they are proposing to consolidate into the block grant.
In short, rather than trying to help the nation's cities in making the transition from the categorical grant system to the block grant, they have compounded our effort by cutting the new program commitments for the programs I have just mentioned from $2.9 billion to a token $500 million, and questioning the wisdom of some of the principal components of the block grant itself.
The Administration has apparently made two assumptions, each equally invalid. The first is that we mayors want the Block Grant so desperately that we will endure anything to get it. I can tell you, Senator, that under these circumstances imposed by the administration's concept of transition, I would rather fight than switch.
The second equally invalid assumption implicit in the impoundments, freezes, and the President's budget is that the nation can survive a year and one-half of no programs. To that let me suggest a truth that every mayor knows first hand – and that is that America's problems cannot be postponed any more than they can be ignored.
Our position is simple. There must be provision for the full funding of the categorical grant/ community development program during the transition period .... right up to the commencement of the Block Grant.
We, therefore, urge this committee to make its feeling in that regard known to the members of the Appropriations Committee.
III. THE ISSUE OF THE FEDERALLY ASSISTED HOUSING PROGRAMS
Let's turn now to our position on the federally assisted housing programs, which is one of utter amazement and disbelief.
1. As you know the President, in a unilateral action, without any prior consultation with the Congress, terminated the assisted housing programs on January 5, 1973. The Administration's budget, released several weeks later reaffirmed the January 5 moratorium, and gave the details of the size of the impoundments resulting from the freeze. The budget shows no funds to be available during the next 16 months for new commitments, although the Administration has indicated that some low level of new commitments would be permitted "to meet statutory or other specific program commitments."
I am not a constitutional lawyer but let me say that if the unilateral action terminating these housing programs was not unconstitutional, it most certainly was unethical and immoral. By such action the Administration is reneging on our nation's commitment to try and provide a decent home in a suitable living environment for every American family.
2. In terms of understanding the devastating impact of this action, you must look beyond the mere budgetary impact of the federal dollars that now will not be spent and look at local impact in terms of the housing efforts which now will not happen.
Because of the housing moratorium, the level of new commitments for HUD assisted housing programs in FY 1974 will drop by 93 % from the FY 1972 level.
[FY 1972 – 426,924; FY 1974 anticipated level is 29,800]
The level of new commitments in FY 1973 will drop by 62% from their originally anticipated level,
[500,800 units in the original FY 1973 budget; 195,000 units in the adjusted budget.]
Because there were housing units already committed to contract or approved before the January 5, 1973 freeze, there will be a continuing level of new construction starts in FY 1974. While this FY 1974 level only represents a slight reduction in construction starts from the anticipated FY 1973 level, it represents a 27% reduction from the level of new housing starts in FY 1972.
Construction will drop off drastically in FY 1975 because of no new commitments in FY 1974.
[FY 1974 – 232,400 projected; FY 1973 – 259,100 originally anticipated; FY 1972 – 322,025 actual new starts.]
The moratorium on new commitments will leave unused substantial amounts of existing contract authorization for the rent supplement, Section 235 and 236 programs. The total for these three programs, $531.1 million, could produce some 485,500 new housing units for low and moderate income families.
All of this tends to make a mockery of the ten year national housing goals established in 1968, and will by the end of FY 1974 place our national housing effort some 45 % behind schedule.
The President's decision not to spend these housing program funds and not use the contract authority available under the Section 235 and 236 programs will have a profoundly adverse economic impact locally. Not making good on the anticipated new housing starts which would have been spread over FY '73, '74, and '75 will result in a loss locally of $7.5 billion in new housing construction activity, with a total economic impact including related facilities and services of $19.3 billion. We estimate the employment loss at 2.2 million man-years.
3. I have previously indicated our commitment to the concept of comprehensive community development and our support for legislation to provide a block grant in this regard. The President's pronouncement would also indicate his concurrence with such an objective. What the President's action relative to the housing programs ignores is the fact that a significant part of the requirement for the effective use of the Community Development Block Grant will be predicated upon the local community's ability to address their housing needs. In most major communities this will require the provision of low and moderate income housing. I am not referring solely to the absolute necessity for using such housing programs as relocation resources in order to facilitate efforts such as urban renewal. Rather I am suggesting that the provision of housing for persons of all income levels including low and moderate income has become an integral part of the business of providing for the quality of urban life; a factor in industrial location; and part of the whole issue of comprehensive community development. We simply cannot meet our contemporary urban needs without the subsidized housing programs.
4. We acknowledge that some existing housing programs may not have functioned as well as they should have. In some areas we ourselves have pointed out the difficulties with them. One of the key issues for example which causes us problems has been the very minimum amount of impact we mayors have been able to exercise over the utilization of these programs, which at present depend primarily on the relationship between the developers and HUD.
Notwithstanding these problems, it would seem that the appropriate way for a civilized nation to conduct responsible government would be to not truncate these vital, but perhaps imperfect, existing programs until viable alternatives had been created.
We are prepared to support and participate actively in the development of legislation which would modify as necessary the federally assisted housing programs so that they might be of greater benefit to the people they were designed to serve ... namely the people of our cities.
IV. THE ISSUE OF THE IMPACT OF ALL THIS ON OUR NATIONAL URBAN POLICY
I would like to close my testimony with a brief caveat regarding the long term consequences of what has been proposed by the administration and what we are proposing as it relates to our National Urban Policy.
I have been focusing on our immediate concerns over the budget slashes in the programs for housing, model cities, water & sewer, parks and the like. These matters get our priority attention because they affect the immediate issue of our survival. But as mayors, we have become increasingly aware of the enormous consequences that other federal policies are having in undermining our efforts to restore and revitalize urban areas.
I will not presume further on the committee's time to discuss this point other than to say that we now realize that there is a wide but identifiable array of federal policies beyond those we have been discussing, which taken together constitute an inadvertent national urban policy, a policy which in many instances is counterproductive to our community development efforts. Elements of this inadvertent policy include our national tax policy which both encourages depreciation of old center city structures and, aided by federal housing policy, encourages home ownership in the suburbs. We now recognize that the impact of national monetary policy, patterns of military procurement, highway policy, welfare policy, etc., when taken together have had effects far more profound in terms of the contemporary design of urban America than have our specific urban programs. Therefore, as we attempt to deal with the budget crisis we have at hand, we will also be working to increase the public awareness of the nature of our inadvertent national urban policy, and to focus national attention on the need for Congress and the Executive to take remedial action to alter the harmful consequences of these existing policies.
TESTIMONY OF MAYOR HENRY W. MAIER,
MAYOR OF MILWAUKEE
Senator Muskie, and members of the committee.
The budget document before you contains a series of broken promises to the Mayors of America.
Those who will suffer most from those broken promises will be the poor, the elderly, the untrained, the unemployed, the sick, the school drop-outs and other victims of poverty who are concentrated in our cities. Those who will pay for them will be the local property taxpayers.
The last time a group of mayors lined up jointly at a congressional witness table, we were testifying on behalf of the general revenue-sharing bill enacted by Congress in the last session.
The mayors were united behind that witness table, and behind the bill, because we had been assured, not in general terms, but explicitly, that general revenue-sharing was not to be a substitute for on-going Federal categorical programs. That explicit assurance was given by the President himself at a meeting held at the White House with the governors, mayors and county officials.
Consistent with this understanding, the President in his budget message cites revenue-sharing as something that "will help state and local governments avoid higher taxes."
But when we read the budget itself, we find that the rhetoric of the message has not been reconciled with the reality of the reductions.
Or, to put it more bluntly, the President is breaking the promise he made to us at the White House.
Explaining the termination of grants for local community action programs, the budget states:
"If communities desire to continue providing financial support to local community action agencies, general revenue-sharing funds could be used."
In phasing out open space land programs, the budget reads:
"Provision of local open space is a low priority use of Federal resources. Local communities may continue to provide public open space through the use of Federal shared revenues."
In cutting off grants for public libraries, the budget declares:
"With the increasing availability of general revenue funds, states and localities will be able to continue programs formerly supported by Federal categorical assistance programs."
Gentlemen, when you add up the effects of the Presidential impoundments of funds already appropriated by Congress, the freezing of HUD programs announced by outgoing Secretary Romney, and the deep slashes in the Presidential budget before you, we find the cities to be worse off financially than before general revenue-sharing was enacted. I shall demonstrate that specifically when I later discuss how the cutbacks will affect my own city's programs.
On top of this, we find the President's budget saying to the people whose programs were not administered by the city government, such as the school board, county government, and social development commission in the case of my city – if you want these programs continued, go to city hall and have them financed out of general revenue-sharing funds.
Milwaukee received about $11 million in general revenue-sharing funds the first year. The social programs administered by agencies other than the city are slashed by more than $20 million by the President.
The attempt to substitute general revenue-sharing funds for categorical aid programs represents a gigantic double-cross of the rural poor and city poor of America. General revenue-sharing funds were distributed across the board to every municipality in America – the gold coasts of suburbia as well as the bankrupt inner cities and rural townships. Through general revenue-sharing, the rich suburbs get richer, through categorical cuts, the inner cities and rural townships get poorer.
The mayors who campaigned across the country for revenue-sharing are the victims of a cruel hoax if these cuts are allowed to stand.
But this is not the only hoax. Before the election, President Nixon had promised relief for local property taxpayers by having the Federal Government take over some of the costs of education now borne by the local property tax. That promise has now been forgotten.
Now another hoax is being perpetrated. President Nixon is creating the impression – and a lot of our citizens, particularly businessmen, are buying it – that all he is proposing is a ceiling on national expenditures to avoid inflation and prevent a tax increase; and that within that ceiling the money can be spent on domestic priorities if Congress so chooses. But, as you gentlemen know, President Nixon declared at a press conference following submission of the budget that if Congress were to restore these cuts in city programs, he would veto them; and if Congress passed them over his veto, he would impound the funds.
The final and inevitable result of these reductions in city programs through the freezing of funds and the deep slashes in the budget, will be to transfer the burden onto the back of the already over-burdened local property taxpayer.
The President says the budget must be cut to prevent inflation and avoid a tax increase. We do not quarrel with him on that score. We do quarrel with him on where he thinks the cuts should be made.
What should be the number one priority in domestic needs – the problems of urban America – becomes the lowest priority in the President's budget.
Programs for cities were slashed from $4.2 billion to $2.7 billion. Programs affecting the poor, the elderly, the unemployed, the untrained, the sick and the young were slashed by $7 billion.
At the same time, the total budget was being increased by $11 billion including an increase of $4.7 billion for the second biggest Pentagon budget in history even after the withdrawal from Vietnam.
Let me tell you how these cuts will affect one city – the City of Milwaukee. The figures for New York, or Detroit or Chicago would be much more dramatic and overwhelming, but if you look at the Milwaukee figures, you get some measure of the magnitude of the impact in our cities generally.
The city of Milwaukee itself will lose $75 million next year. That's the equivalent of $425 for every family in the city.
The social programs administered by other agencies were slashed by another $20 million.
That's a total of $95 million which will be taken out of our local economy next year. Can you imagine the outcry if the President had closed 20 defense plants in Milwaukee which were generating $95 million in our economy?
In health services, we lose more than $700,000.
In anti-pollution and other funds to improve the environment, we will lose more than $20 million.
In funds for job training, we would lose almost $5 million.
In funds for economic development, we would lose more than $400,000.
For housing and neighborhood renewal, we lose almost $49 million. Part of that is represented by the loss of 840 units of low income housing which our housing authority was ready to put under contract this year. As you know, Secretary Romney placed an 18-month moratorium on all subsidized housing. As a result, we will not be able to build this or any other low income housing for the next 18 months, and we have no indication from the administration as to what we can do about low and moderate income housing after the 18-month period of freeze. During that 18 months, we should be building, not only these 840 units which have been snatched away from us, but another 6,000 units of low and moderate income housing lost to freeway construction, to take care of people uprooted by other public actions and to reduce the heavy backlog at our public housing authority.
How much of these losses will we recover if the special revenue-sharing block grants are passed?
Next year, not a penny, because as you gentlemen know, but which unfortunately the country as a whole does not understand, special revenue-sharing legislation is not due to take effect until July, 1974.
None of the cuts I have outlined would be affected by the education, manpower or law enforcement special revenue-sharing measures. The community development special revenue- sharing bill would provide us only $10.5 million out of the $49 million lost, because as you know, the community development bill does not provide any funds for housing assistance programs which former Secretary Romney put under freeze.
But more than money, the cutting off of these funds affect the people of my city – the kinds of neighborhoods they live in, the cleanliness of their rivers and our lakes, housing for our elderly, health, jobs, economic vitality, indeed the very quality of our life.
General revenue-sharing was not intended to replace categorical aids, special revenue sharing will not replace the loss the cities will suffer, and the presidential freezing of funds makes a mockery of Congress and an unwanted stepchild out of our cities.
By all rights, our cities deserve to be our nation's number one priority. Our cities deserve more, not less, if this Nation is to grow in greatness – if we are to preserve the domestic tranquillity and improve our quality of life.
TESTIMONY OF MAYOR JOHN V. LINDSAY
The Administration has taken the unprecedented step of unilaterally imposing levels of federal expenditures through impoundment and other techniques, enforcing on the Nation's cities and suburbs its own arbitrary choices of programs to be funded or cut.
We have seen this policy at work in the steady, deepening failure, beyond prudence, beyond economy and efficiency, to release funds appropriated by Congress to meet even minimal national priorities.
We have thankfully passed through a tragic and dreary decade of war abroad and want at home. Now many Americans in city and suburb, middle class and poor alike, legitimately expect a new thrust toward domestic solutions. But, instead, we see shrinkage, retraction, and abandonment of vital programs: a freeze on public employment programs; a moratorium on housing; a recision of veterans benefits; a cutback on legal services; a slashing of day-care centers, and more. Finally, we see the ultimate conclusion: a take-it-or-leave-it budget that may be enforced, whatever Congress decides.
Let me tell you what this perverse policy means to my City in real programs and hard numbers
HOUSING
In the past three years, New York City has broken all records for tax-assisted housing starts – averaging 25,000 units a year. This year we are ready to start another 30,000 units of low and moderate income housing. The federal moratorium on housing funds has stopped that massive housing construction program – and it has destroyed the financing for 6,000 units, now in construction.
WATER POLLUTION CONTROL
New York City is moving forward with the Nation's largest water pollution control program to clean our waterways well ahead of every other city in the Nation. Our comprehensive secondary treatment program costing $2 billion is now hindered only by a failure of federal financing – by the decision of the President to allot $664 million less to New York State and its localities than Congress required in the Water Pollution Control Act Amendments of 1972. Instead of 55 percent federal funding, we are only receiving 5 percent. Although we are proceeding, our City will be penalized for its rapid management and massive commitment and my City has felt compelled to institute legal action in the Federal Courts to order compliance with the 1972 statute.
MANPOWER
Under the Emergency Employment Act, New York City has provided 3,300 jobs for those in need, many of whom are Viet Nam veterans. The 1974 Federal Budget proposes to eliminate that vital program entirely. At the same time, the Department of Labor has just frozen enrollment in the City's other manpower programs – the Job Corps, New Careers, On-the-Job Training, and the Concentrated Employment Program. And, make no mistake, freeze means kill when the City is receiving approval for contracts totalling only $1.5 million out of total requests of $9.4 million. There is no worse breach of faith than to deny jobs and training to those eager to work.
HIGHER EDUCATION
Our free-tuition City University System – the only one in the Nation – which pioneered open enrollment for all high school graduates, to the greatest benefit of the sons and daughters of our blue collar working families, has anticipated $4 million in aid for veterans under Section 420 of the Higher Education Act – except that now there's a request for recision of the appropriation that would have provided this vitally needed assistance.
And there are a host of other program reductions which will affect the daily lives of millions of New Yorkers. We have been told that these cuts are necessary for responsible economic policy.
But is it responsible to cut child nutrition programs for ghetto youth, compensatory education for the disadvantaged, Model Cities and Community Action for those who want to rebuild their neighborhoods?
We are proud of what we have accomplished in New York City with available Federal funds:
Unprecedented levels of new housing production;
Dynamic Community Action and Model Cities self-help programs that have revitalized forgotten areas;
The Nation's largest and fastest growing day-care program for children of working mothers who want to stay off welfare; and
A summer employment, education and recreation program that provides an outlet for tens of thousands of otherwise idle teenagers.
That's what we have done with these funds, and we are prepared to demonstrate in my City – as in countless other cities across the Nation – that our management and delivery systems are as good as those of any Federal program – from Defense to Agriculture to Space.
Any objective standard of performance under Federal programs will find that urban programs stand up well in comparison to the other contracts and direct operations of the Federal Government that will continue to receive funds, while local budgets are cut back. And unlike these expenditures, urban programs directly help people in cities and towns across the Nation.
In sum, the impact of these cuts is intolerable. This is not the way to fight inflation or devaluation, the rising cost of living or the declining quality of life. No one can claim to be concerned about fighting crime when funds are cut for jobs and schools in our cities.
In fact, there are in our gold-plated, bloated military budget alone more than enough dollars to fund our most vital domestic programs without the slightest danger to our national security.
The future of these programs should not be a question of partisanship or party loyalty. We Mayors who have joined together in this fight are Republican, Democratic, and nonpartisan politicians who have learned the hard way that urban solutions begin where partisanship stops. In New York City, we have already formed an Ad Hoc Coalition of 60 business, labor and civic groups to fight the housing freeze – and they are appealing to our entire Congressional Delegation and the Governor and State leadership to support this bi-partisan effort.
Understand us: we strongly assert the need for rational limits on national spending. But we also assert the mutual responsibility of the President and the Congress for setting those limits. Now, Congress must act to reclaim its responsibility.
We urge the Congress, therefore, to develop the machinery to identify the sum of national needs and compare them with the sum of available resources – and thereby set our Nation's priorities.
We urge you to use that machinery to determine what is urgent and what can wait, what is crucial and what is frivolous.
We urge you to enforce those determinations, to change the shape of proposed federal spending, for we are confident you will find the highest priorities are here in the neighborhoods of our cities and suburbs.
STATEMENT OF MAYOR STANLEY CMICH,
CANTON, OHIO
Senate Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations of the Committee on Government Operations, Jan. 21, 1971.
Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee. I am Stanley Cmich, Mayor of Canton, Ohio. One of the most important issues considered by the Conference of Mayors' Human Resources Committee, of which I am co-chairman, is the manpower program.
It is on this subject that both my colleague Mayor Sheehan and I wish to address today.
The Administration's FY 74 Budget proposes restructuring federal support for job creation and manpower training services. The impact of this restructuring is characterized by the proposed transfer of authority to state and local governments over manpower programs.
In simplest terms, the Administration's Budget proposes to eliminate more than 50 per cent of the funds now available for job creation and manpower training. For example ... it proposes to phase down over a period of time the Public Employment Program and it proposes to reduce federal funds for training services.
We are submitting for the record a detailed statement on the proposed Budget for manpower as interpreted based on present known plans. But, for the moment, I would like to express our concern regarding summer youth programs.
Any specific reference to summer programs such as Neighborhood Youth Corps is absent from the language. Many cities have relied heavily on this and have had good success, Canton included. In our city, 20 Neighborhood Youth Corps participants are now in permanent city positions.
The Budget calls on cities to decide between taking from other programs which might be reduced in funding – in the final analysis – or possibly use PEP funds if some are made available for summer employment as was the case in some instances last summer.
May I say a bit more on the matter of summer jobs. Last summer's appropriation provided 740,000 nine-week jobs for young people, mostly disadvantaged youth; recreational and cultural programs which served over two million young people. Transportation was available to another million young people to take advantage of both jobs and recreational activities.
Neighborhood Youth Corps has been the single largest youth employment program available in the summer. The need is even greater now. We are submitting a survey documenting the need for slightly more than a million jobs this summer. This survey represents effective needs and is on the conservative side.
Despite the record Neighborhood Youth Corps effort, many young people will still not find work, many are not old enough to work ... thus a variety of additional services must be provided.
In partnership with the cities, the federal government has provided these services through Recreation Support and Summer Youth Transportation. They have been successful and the increased need for continuing this same type of approach to our needs has been documented.
I would be remiss if I did not extend a word of appreciation to Senator Javits for his annual leadership in supporting the program.
TESTIMONY OF HON. KENNETH A. GIBSON,
MAYOR OF NEWARK, N.J.
Gentlemen: While it is always a pleasure to meet with you, I regret that our purpose here today binds us to matters which if not resolved will have a most regressive effect on the lives of Americans.
I will submit a more comprehensive narrative with supporting facts and figures for the record, along with my reply to the questionnaire forwarded by your chairman, Senator Muskie, within two weeks. I will be available for whatever questions you may ask after I complete my statement.
We are here in response to your expressed concern about the effects of the new Federal budget. I will confine my remarks to what I know to be the most worrisome effect, the effect on human life.
Since the announcement of the HUD moratorium and public disclosure of the administration budget requests, my analysis indicates the following where information is readily available in terms of dollar loss, and the impact in terms of persons employed or citizens serviced in five major areas for the City of Newark, N.J. Keeping in mind the uncertainty of future funding levels, as compared to current levels, pending passage and implementation of special revenue sharing or whatever is ultimately agreed to by the Executive and the Congress:
O.E.O.: Loss in FY '74 of $2,547,080 affecting 409 employees and several thousand citizens.
Manpower: Loss in FY '74 of $12,353 723, loss of more than 9,000 slots.
Health: Loss in FY '73 & '74 of $6,127,390.
Education: Loss in FY '74 title I only $7,000,000.
H.U.D.: Moratorium (18 months effective Dec. 1972): Construction, $160,700,000. Rehab, $46,120,000; Jobs, materials, and service, $145,474,000; For a total of $352,294,000.
Model cities loss in FY '74, $2,600,000.
Planned variations loss in FY '74, $7,000,000; totaling $361,894,000.
Total loss, Federal cuts plus HUD moratorium, $389,922,193.
Clearly, our resources will be reduced. Our current rate of 14% unemployment, nearly three times the national average will increase. Our present service rendering capacity will be disrupted. And our total economic base, in an already hard pressed urban center, will be seriously jeopardized.
At this moment in time I cannot deal with the broader constitutional questions; I cannot deal with the matter of executive prerogatives; nor can I deal with lengthy debate. Because the effect is so devastating, and because it comes when the need is the greatest, I have no choice, and I hasten to say we have no choice, other than to deal with those persons who are unemployed (14% in Newark) ; those persons who live in substandard housing (35 to 40% in Newark) ; and with all the residents of Newark who in one form or another contribute to property taxes which by now are nationally known to be confiscatory. Because of these prevailing conditions of a history of poverty which glaringly exist in Newark today, February 21, 1973; and because each of us knows full well that the physical and psychological effects of hard core poverty have been in evidence for generations and that we are nationally at a very early stage in dealing with it, we have no choice but to render rational thought and care to any and all decisions aimed at dealing with these realities.
While some are of the conviction that the amounts of money spent are secondary in importance to the sophistication of the mechanisms used to scrutinize the spending of that money, we cannot pretend that the effects of poverty, the poor themselves, and the needs of people are abstractions which bend and mold with every newly conceived administrative or political approach. The reshuffling of the entire domestic government and our resources is too delicate a task to occur as it might under the present scheme. A scheme which is, without a doubt, sweeping in dimension, but not in the same fashion as the New Deal – the Great Society – the War on Poverty and the like.
Because the funding levels will be reduced, because adequate notice and consultation did not take place, and because interim provisions containing hold harmless guarantees are not included, the notion of giving localities greater discretion is a sham, as are the predictions of rational effective results.
The fact that 1,315 families in Newark will be without a paycheck with the expiration of EEA; another 11,000 young people will be unemployed with the discontinuation of Neighborhood Youth Corps funds; millions of housing construction and subsidy dollars are frozen with the HUD moratorium; and just this week three legal service projects were shut down can be cited as a few of the immediate measurable effects. Many other immeasurable effects in a city like Newark, where much of our economy is service and consumer oriented, must be cited: Marginal businesses will be forced to close – more homes will deteriorate and be abandoned, the supermarkets and clothing stores will sell fewer products, more jobs will be lost – more public assistance will be required – crime will more likely increase – and the entire fabric of social well being will begin to crumble.
Many people who for a variety of reasons are removed from these concerns on a day to day basis may view our testimony here today as part of an exercise we either enjoy or are conditioned to perform every year at budget time. We've gone through the starting up and the winding down before but never before have we been confronted with so wide ranging and open ended a predicament. If there is a certain inevitability to all of this let us do it with people – not procedures – in mind. If we put aside the desire to score political points and form a cohesive alliance where there is candor, flexibility and human concern in evidence, we can come up with improved conditions and approaches – none of us – including the victims of poverty in America – invented it – our actions should in no way make us a party to perpetuating it.
OEO
Total current funding, $6,200,000.
Total loss in dollars fiscal year 1974, $2,547,080 (Number of Projects lost. 9 (all in Community Action) Remaining Projects to be Housed after transfer to other Federal Agencies. At present there is no indication as to percentage of dollar loss.)
Total loss in employees, 409 persons.
MANPOWER
Total current funding, "$24,510,051.
Total loss in dollars fiscal year 1974, $12,353,723 (Indicates loss of all EEA, NYC and CEP money plus 15% cut in all remaining DOL money under present plan for Executive order Special Manpower Revenue Sharing.)
Current manpower slots served, 17,916.
Estimated reduction slots, 9,000.
HEALTH
Current funding for 15 projects, $9,035,441.
Fiscal year 1973 net loss, 7 lost projects (includes $1.2 million in Hill Burton Hospital Construction) $2,580,568.
Fiscal year 1974 net loss, 44 lost projects, $3,546,822.
Total loss, 11 projects, $6,127,390.
Loss in service affecting 75,000 persons.
HOUSING
(A) Moratorium proposed under 236 but not in pipeline: Construction units, 5,390; totaling $160,
700,000.
Rehab units, 2,306; totaling $46,120,000. Total units, 7,696; for a total of $206,820,000.
Estimated loss in jobs materials and service dollars, $145,474,000.
Total for housing, $352,294,000.
(B) model cities:
Current Funding (third year), $5,600,000. Fiscal year 1974 loss at 55 percent spending authorization, $2,600,000.
(C) planned variations: Current funding, $7,000,000.
Fiscal year 1974 loss, $7.000,000. Education: title I (only), $7.000.000. Other losses in Federal Education money to be detailed in Follow-tip Summary.
At present there are 229 Federal Funded Programs in the City of Newark. The total Federal Share of these programs is approximately $210 million actual loss for FY '74 based on above estimate of $38 million-plus does not include non-Federal share (local matching) or $352 million due to HUD Moratorium.
STATEMENT OF MAYOR RICHARD GORDON HATCHER
Mr. Chairman, and other members of the subcommittee, I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak here this morning, I wish this appearance were entirely unnecessary. But in view of the proposed action of the Federal Government with respect to our Nation's cities, it is crucial that the Congress and the country realize what is happening, and I appreciate the timely invitation of this committee to bring about that realization.
I had the privilege to testify before you in late June of last year at a tithe when your subcommittee was inquiring into the administration of local property taxes across the country. It is reassuring to know that the senate subcommittee on intergovernmental relations, under the leadership of its very capable chairman, retains its deep interest in the plight of our local communities.
My purpose here today is three-fold: To tell you of the total financial impact to my city of Gary, Indiana as a result of impoundments, the so-called housing moratorium, and the proposed budgetary cutbacks; to share some highlights of that impact in programmatic and human terms; and to point up additional, equally important ramifications of that proposed Federal action.
Gary, Indiana has been fortunate in the relative amount of Federal financial assistance it has received in the past five years, a period embracing two National Administrations. Since I first assumed office as mayor in 1968, that assistance has risen steadily to the point that, on a per capita basis, Gary, Indiana may have fared as well in 1972 as any other American city.
Given the fact that there have never been adequate resources to meet the needs of our cities, Gary has been pleased and is appreciative of the consideration extended us. At the same time, it should be noted that our needs and problems have been great; and we have aggressively sought Federal assistance; and for the most part, we have used it wisely. Gary has been able to pioneer a number of innovative and successful programs and has achieved national prominence in several important areas.
On the basis of existing programs and new plans, Gary had anticipated receiving approximately $30,629,900 in Federal monies in 1973, including about $3 million which would have gone directly to our public school system.
As best as we can estimate items, the overall impact of the three-pronged Federal budgetary action will reduce that $30.6 million figure by more than $21,175,000 – to less than $9.45 million. That is about 30% of what we had expected to receive in 1973.
Even if an estimated $3.5 million in special revenue sharing materializes for Gary, we will have about 42% of what we had previously expected – and less than 40% of what we received in 1972.
Beyond those dollar terms, allow me to point up some of the activities which will be affected.
Gary may be forced to eliminate or severely curtail the operations of its family health center, funded through our model cities program, which currently provides sorely needed health care for 561 low-income families for whom such care is inaccessible or otherwise beyond their means.
The same sword of Damocles hangs over the educational development of 86 three-year olds in our "child's world of discovery" program; 266 four-year olds in our early learning center; 137 seventh and eighth-graders who benefit from the special attention provided them in our advancement school; and 134 high school dropouts who are now progressing through our Martin Luther King Academy. And our Latin American family education program, a highly successful venture benefiting our Spanish-speaking population, is seriously jeopardized. In the past year alone, it has taught "survival English" to 208 adults and 388 children of Latin heritage.
We are faced with the prospect of slicing almost in half our Emerson code enforcement program which is geared to the improvement and stabilization of an ethnically-mixed neighborhood composed of about 7,500 poor-to-moderate income level persons, including a high percentage of elderly persons. Many of the latter are widows and widowers who desire the proximity to our downtown area they currently possess, but who need desperately the long-term, low-interest loan monies they anticipated in order to make their housing standard again. Home inspections have been made, residents have been integrally involved in the planning process, appointments have been made to launch the financial arrangements necessary for improvements and rehabilitation. Now much of the program hangs in the balance and the future for the residents of Emerson has perceptibly dimmed.
The immediate future is equally bleak for 5,000 poor youths, aged 14 to 18, who were to have worked in our neighborhood youth corps program this summer. We simply do not have employment alternatives for them in Gary. While they only received $400 for 10 summer weeks of work and job training, those youths frequently utilized those funds to enable their families to get their children ready for school in the fall. Anyone sensitive to the human condition must agonize with me over the fate of such young people who on occasion carry a final payment notice from the utility company when they receive their paycheck.
We are faced with the termination of our public employment program which has provided jobs and real opportunities for nearly 500 unemployed persons in Gary – and moved 215 of them into non-subsidised positions. What of the future of the 281 current program participants, nearly one-third of whom are Vietnam veterans and 80 to 90% of whom will need some form of continued assistance until they develop marketable job skills?
We will be forced to close down our loaves and fishes program funded through our community action agency which, in the past nine months alone, provided adequate meals to 3,153 low- income senior citizens. The same fate is in store for the agency's youth development program which provided more than 60,000 lunches last summer for young people involved in our recreation and job training projects.
Also, we must abandon plans for about 600 units of new housing – just as that many families and individuals must forego their hopes to live in standard, decent dwellings.
Those, then, are some of the human losses which we will experience in Gary, Indiana as a result of cutbacks in Federal monies through proposed budgetary reductions, impoundment and spending moratoriums.
They are severe and in many ways obviously tragic – but no more so, perhaps, than the symbolic and psychological ramifications of proposed Federal action.
Gary, Indiana, in most ways, epitomizes a medium-sized American city – sorely neglected in the past – which currently has majority Black population and a combined Black and Latin population which has been estimated as high as 65%. The national trend toward majority central city populations comprised of Blacks and other minorities has been well-documented and is clear for all to see. In my judgment, our metropolitan areas and the nation as a whole cannot long endure without cities such as Gary remaining vital. But they cannot survive, let alone aspire for vitality, without strong federal assistance.
Beyond that, Gary has taken on national significance in recent years as a black center. It was one of the first two major American cities to elect black mayors; it has become a focal point of sorts for black arts and culture; it was the site of the historic national black political convention; it is the continuing subject of research by scholars in black studies; it now has a black majority on its city council, a black municipal judge and a black delegation to the Indiana general assembly; it has the only black-owned cable television corporation in the nation; and it has developed opportunities for blacks at all levels within the housing industry – from design to financing to construction. We are justly proud of our city and our accomplishments in recent years in other areas and on the basis of other considerations, too, but it is a fact that Gary, Indiana has become a focal point for the hopes and dreams and activities and achievements of black people in this nation.
Our city is also, on several counts, at the crossroads of our revitalization effort. We had approached the point, based on federal commitments, of catching up on our previous shortage in the supply of standard housing. Many of our manpower and job training efforts had shown tangible results. Our midtown area, which abounds our downtown business district, is seeing the first new construction there in several decades. And despite having to fight an influx of hard drugs with few resources, we have recently observed the ninth consecutive month of decreased criminal activity in our city.
So we have a city which in certain ways embodies black aspirations throughout this nation having scored certain breakthroughs and being on the threshold of more important ones. And at this very juncture comes the federal government with impoundments, a housing moratorium and proposed spending cutbacks which are severe on all counts.
That Gary, Indiana should be especially hurt by the federal action is not surprising – a cursory review of the federal budgetary actions indicates clearly that urban dwellers and therefore black Americans are expected to bear a disproportionate burden.
I understand as well as anyone that the climate and conditions in this nation are such that it will be difficult to generate the widespread opposition which this federal action merits. The cities are increasingly viewed as repositories for the poor, the black, the Latin, the elderly – those who are relatively powerless against the interests of stronger and more affluent elements of our society.
But I realize also, and I hope that the national administration and the Congress do, that as a moral and practical matter, our society cannot raise the expectations of the downtrodden in this Nation and then dash those expectations. For no amount of rhetoric changes the fact that in so doing this society would be daring an understandably desperate people. It would be inviting them to abandon what little hope they have in our system of laws. It would be taking a reckless gamble with the stability of this Nation. It would be inflaming and compounding the indignities which the have-nots are systematically subjected to.
We cannot, in my judgment, afford any of that in the interests of this society.
We stand here in February, 1973 having recently terminated a long and costly war which has robbed us of some of our outstanding young men, stripped us of much of the respect we had in the eyes of our fellow citizens of the world, and sapped us of our resources. That war never should have existed, and it continued much longer than necessary, but I rejoice with others that it is, at long last, terminated. My fellow mayors and I had hoped that this Nation would begin the long-deferred task of rebuilding our urban areas so that the promise of equality of opportunity could become a reality. My fellow mayors and I had hoped to see this Nation's resources funneled into our cities where they belong. My fellow mayors and I have been told on numerous occasions that the Federal commitment to the cities would not be reduced.
And yet, as you can see clearly and as I have tried to translate in terms of impact upon my city, the urban communities of America are being severely hurt. It seems we have ended an international conflict only to renew a national one with greater intensity than before.
We look to this subcommittee of the United States Semite and to the Congress as a whole to check this action to prevent greater urban disaster before it becomes a reality.
The Congress most certainly can and, in my judgment, should act with all the force at its command to direct a course of action in the greater interest of this Nation and all its citizens.
STATEMENT OF MAYOR JOSEPH L. ALIOTO
Earlier this month, in his written "State of the Union" message, the President asked Congress to accept his new budget policies as a "pragmatic rededication to social compassion and national excellence."
The pragmatic reality of this budget is that it shows little dedication to America's cities and even less compassion for their people.
Instead of national excellence, it will bring us national shame because it will mark a moment in history when the United States decided to turn its back on the less fortunate among us.
We will have made a decision that our cities are not worth saving. Yet history – recent and ancient – should have taught us that abandonment of a nation's cities previews collapse of the nation itself.
In my own San Francisco, where we have made real progress in dealing with the truly human needs of our city, this proposed budget will deliver a demoralizing, destructive blow.
It offers us only $40 million for social programs now funded at $88 million and for which our recognizable and practical need is $118 million.
These are the very programs that have helped so much in closing the gap among the races, that have started our ghettos rebuilding into neighborhoods, that have started our poor on the long journey to realizing the full benefits of citizenship in this great country.
It is absolutely imperative that the funding for these projects not be suspended. We have established a momentum in our drive to restore our neighborhoods and to provide decent housing for our poor and elderly. We cannot allow this momentum to be stalled and turn our backs on this moral commitment to those who ask only a chance at sharing in the abundance of our country.
Yet, at the same time this Administration is refusing to rebuild America's cities, it is pledging every financial assistance to restoring the cities of North Vietnam. In fact, it may very well have already made secret commitments to that effect without consulting Congress. North Vietnam deserves no super-priority over American cities.
Before we start rebuilding Hanoi and Haiphong, we must complete the rebuilding of New York, Chicago, Houston, San Francisco, and all our brother cities involved in no less a struggle for survival.
Any other course of conduct by this government represents a moral bankruptcy which will be rejected by the American people.
If the priorities reflected in this budget go unchallenged, this nation will surely face a revival of the discouragement and despair so evident in the 1960's.
Where is the compassion in a budget that strikes most severely at the poor, the elderly, the already unemployed, our school children?
Where is the dedication in a budget that strips us of the funds needed to rebuild our aging neighborhoods, that will force us to fire 2,000 people from their jobs, that will kill programs to help our educationally handicapped children, that will stop us mid-way in training our unemployed?
Where is the excellence in a decision to turn our backs on our own people in favor of spending billions on a country 9,000 miles away?
The President's proposed budget cuts come with the explanation that many urban programs are wasteful, that the reductions are necessary to control inflation, that it is all part of a vital new move to return more local control to the cities.
Every Mayor in this hearing room supports responsible actions to control inflation.
Every Mayor in this room acknowledges some waste and inefficiency in a number of these programs, but certainly no more than is evident in the Defense budget and many other governmental programs.
We pledge our fullest efforts to trim every ounce of fat from the urban programs. We ask the Administration to do the same with the rest of its budget.
Every Mayor in this room supports a ceiling on the total national budget, but with some sensible structuring of priorities under that ceiling.
Frankly, a ceiling on the national budget could be meaningless if the cities are forced to raise property taxes to save the programs killed by Washington.
And deliberately creating unemployment in our cities is a strange choice of weapons in the war on inflation.
From its budget, we can only conclude that this Administration seems intent on forcing the American public to choose between the "work ethic" and the "welfare ethic."
We all believe very strongly in the "work ethic" and much of this nation's greatness derives from its willingness over the span of history to embrace that belief.
But the soul and spirit of our Nation are founded also on our belief in the "Christian ethic", which asks only that from our abundance we provide for the poor among us.
If we lose that spirit in this country, we have nothing.
Finally, as we review the Administration's budget, we cannot divorce it from the unconstitutional arrogation of power evidenced by the Presidential impoundment of funds and killing of programs over the clear will and intent of Congress.
Over the objections of our Legislative branch, the Administration says it is phasing out programs to tighten up the Federal budget.
What it is really doing is phasing in programs – right into the cities' budgets and on to the backs of the property tax payers who can afford them least of all.
STATEMENT OF LEE ALEXANDER, MAYOR
SYRACUSE, N.Y.
Mr. Chairman, I am Lee Alexander, Mayor of Syracuse. New York. I am honored today to join my colleagues on the Legislative Action Committee of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in discussing with you the probable impact on localities of the proposed federal budget. In addition to my membership on the LAC, I am also a member of the Advisory Boards of the Conference of Mayors and the National League of Cities, and I serve as chairman of the Community Development NLC.
The Conference of Mayors and the NLC were early supporters of reform current categorical aid system. We recognized the need to reorganize the federal bureaucracy and we have urged that responsibility for federal programs be vested at the local level.
Syracuse is a city of nearly 200,000 people. It is a strong city economically. Throughout the last decade, our unemployment rate has remained below the New York State average. Syracuse city government has never reported a deficit, and we have begun several programs, with federal assistance, to improve our City.
However, with my colleagues, I am concerned about the impact that some of the Administration's proposals will have in the neighborhoods of my city and on the general economy of a middle- sized city like Syracuse.
I am concerned most by the way in which the federal budget will affect the young people, the senior citizens and the veterans who live in my city.
The termination on July 1, 1973 of the Emergency Employment program will reduce the number of jobs available to service veterans at a time when our remaining Vietnam Servicemen are returning home. More than 700 men and women are employed through the Emergency Employment Act in our metropolitan area. Three hundred of them are employed by the City and nearly fifty per cent of these are veterans. The City of Syracuse has provided employment for 270 veterans through this program. We have put these people to work providing basic, essential services in our police and fire department, in our schools, in consumer protection, in parks and recreation.
Twenty-five per cent of the persons we employ through this program were receiving welfare assistance before they were hired. The job market in our private sector will not provide jobs for most of them. It is more likely that they will again turn to welfare.
The proposed budget will eliminate 1,500 summer jobs for students in Syracuse that are financed through the Emergency Employment, Model City and Neighborhood Youth Corps programs. The loss of these jobs will also reduce several neighborhood-oriented recreation programs operated by the City. In addition, a number of youth-oriented programs are in jeopardy. For example, a tutorial program for potential school drop-outs now operated by a Black fraternal organization through the YMCA has been responsible for improving the learning abilities of hundreds of youngsters in City junior high schools will face elimination.
I submit, Mr. Chairman, that jobs for veterans, summer jobs for students, recreation programs and youth-oriented educational programs are essential tools in our community's effort to reduce crime and drug use among young people.
One thousand, seven hundred and forty-three units of subsidized housing and an additional 318 units of public housing are in jeopardy as a result of the Administration's proposals to cut back support for low and middle income housing construction. Six hundred and sixty-seven of these units are planned for the elderly. As of February 1, 1973, the Syracuse Housing Authority had a waiting list of more than 1200 persons and families seeking adequate housing. If federal support for these projects is withdrawn, we will not meet the housing needs of our senior citizens.
Seven hundred and fifty of these housing units are rehabilitated housing. I am particularly disappointed in the Administration's decision to eliminate all funds for rehabilitation after July 1, 1973. Our housing rehabilitation programs are essential to our city's total efforts at neighborhood preservation and neighborhood development. We have recently completed a neighborhood rehabilitation program in one area of our city and had wished to develop similar programs.
In the past three years Syracuse has committed several million dollars of local property and sales taxes to improve our neighborhoods – toward new school construction, new firehouse construction, the development of crime control teams, and the improvement of our parks system. Housing rehabilitation is an essential part of this effort.
We recognize that the nation may no longer he able to afford all of the separate categorical programs that have been established in the last thirty years. But we cannot accept decisions which reduce the opportunities available for our senior citizens, for our young people and for those who have served our country.
Within a spending ceiling of $268 billion in Fiscal Year 1974 and without increasing federal taxes, we feel the nation can and must try to meet the employment and housing needs of its people.