March 31, 1976
Page 8781
INTERGOVERNMENTAL PERSONNEL ACT GRANTS: A REVIEW
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, a panel of the National Academy of Public Administration recently completed a 7-month evaluation of the Intergovernmental Personnel Act grant program. In issuing 26 specific recommendations about the future size and thrust of this program, the panel has provided Congress, the Civil Service Commission whose Bureau of Intergovernmental personnel programs administers IPA grants, and the Office of Management and Budget with much food for thought. I ask unanimous consent that the report's introduction and a summary of its recommendations be printed in the RECORD following my remarks.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(See exhibit 1.)
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I do not agree with all of the recommendations. I take particular issue with the panel's conclusion that "it would be a serious mistake to award grants to public employee organizations for training in adversarial collective bargaining." The Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations has completed action on amendments to the Intergovernmental Personnel Act. Among other things, they would permit the Civil Service Commission to award grants to employee organizations for training programs in collective bargaining if the applications for such training programs have the specific approval of appropriate chief executive officers of States or local jurisdictions. The House of Representatives has already adopted a related, though not identical, amendment, and I hope the Government Operations Committee will act on the Senate bill later this spring.
Nevertheless, I was pleased that the panel awarded generally high marks to the IPA grant program, and I was encouraged by the overall thrust of its recommendations. I call special attention to the panel's recommendation that fiscal year 1977 IPA appropriations be increased to between $20 and $25 million. The President's budget request calls for $10 million for the IPA program, a $5 million cut from this year. I am convinced that the $10 million figure is too low, both in terms of current needs as well as the program's proven success.
Another recommendation which particularly interests me concerns the important question of capacity building at the State and local level. A majority of the panel recommended that the IPA be amended to "replace its primary focus on personnel administration with the central objective of strengthening the general management capacity of State and local governments." This is an issue to which all of us interested in the future of IPA should begin to address themselves.
EXHIBIT 1
IMPROVING PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT IN STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT
INTRODUCTION
In August 1975, the National Academy of Public Administration agreed to convene a panel to examine the Intergovernmental Personnel Act grant program administered by the U.S. Civil Service Commission and to recommend any change that might be desirable in its administration, objectives, policies, and funding, and its relationship to other federal grant programs. (The portions of the act that are concerned with technical assistance to state and local governments and with the mobility or temporary assignment of personnel between federal, state, and local governments were excluded from the panel's charge.) The following report presents the panel's conclusions and recommendations.
The full panel met on five occasions for a total of 11 days; subgroups met on three other occasions. Six members undertook interviews with over 30 state and local officials, regional Commission staff, and knowledgeable observers in a dozen states. The panel discussed the IPA program with Commission Chairman Robert E. Hampton; Executive Director Raymond Jacobson; Deputy Executive Director Edward A. Dunton; staff of the Office of Management and Budget; and spokesmen for the National Association of Counties, the National League of Cities, and the International City Management Association. At a special meeting in December, three panel members and representatives of 11 federal agencies administering or monitoring grants to state and local governments discussed the problems these governments encounter in managing federal funds. At a panel meeting held in Anaheim, California, to coincide with the annual meeting of the International Personnel Management Association, the panel was briefed by designees and representatives of IPA programs in 13 states, and members were able to discuss the program informally with other state and local officials and personnel directors. Staff participated in four regional conferences of consultants and state coordinators convened by the Commission's Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston offices to discuss the findings of the Commission's summer 1975 evaluation of some384 IPA projects. Findings of this summer evaluation are referred to frequently in this report. The panel's comments on the methodology employed and suggestions for additional analyses have been conveyed to the Commission in a separate paper. Panel members and staff received a great deal of information and assistance from the headquarters and regional staff of the Bureau of Intergovernmental Personnel Programs, which is responsible for administering the IPA program. The panel wishes, in particular, to thank the Bureau's Director Joseph M. Robertson and Allan D. Heuerman and Nancy Kingsbury of the Bureau staff for their helpfulness.
As the findings of the Commission's summer evaluation of IPA projects and numerous other program evaluations, reports, and statistics were made available to the panel, no effort was made to distribute additional questionnaires, to undertake independent research into the effects or effectiveness of IPA grants, or to duplicate the emphasis of preceding studies. Thus, the present report draws upon available information, individual inquiries, and the panel's collective judgment and experience to present the panel's conclusions and recommendations about the future goals and administration of the IPA program.
The panel was assisted in its work by several consultants. Frank H. Trinkl and Gerald I. Weber of Berkeley, and John E. Keller of Walnut Creek, California, provided technical advice on the evaluation of the IPA program; Leigh E. Grosenick of Virginia Commonwealth University helped to arrange the panel's Anaheim interviews with state IPA representatives and to prepare draft material for an interim report; Enid Beaumont of New York University helped to draft portions of the final report. Harold Orlans of the Academy staff served as project director. The members of the panel, listed on the following page, take responsibility for the report's content and recommendations. The Academy is indebted to them for the time and thought they have devoted to this work.
ROY W. CRAWLEY,
Executive Director, National Academy of Public Administration.
MEMBERS OF THE PANEL FOR THE REVIEW OF THE IPA GRANT PROGRAM
Dean Henry Cohen, Center for New York City Affairs, New York School for Social Research, New York, N.Y.
Mr. William G. Colman, Consultant, Government Affairs and Federal-State-Local Relations, Potomac, Maryland.
Dr, Martha Derthick, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.
Professor William O. Farber, Department of Government, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, South Dakota.
Mr. Larry Margolis, Executive Director, Citizens Conference on State Legislatures, Englewood, Colorado.
Dr. Selma Mushkin (Chairman), Director, Public Services Laboratory, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.
Mr. Neal R. Peirce, Contributing Editor, National Journal, Washington, D.C.
Mr. Donald Cleveland, Executive Director, Iowa State Association of Counties, Des Moines, Iowa, served as a member of the panel from September 1975 through mid-February 1976, when he resigned to avoid a conflict of interest upon the receipt by the Iowa State Association of Counties of an IPA grant. Before leaving the panel, Mr. Cleveland concurred with the views presented in this report.
SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS
PROGRAM ADMINISTRATION
1. The IPA grant program is administered with an understanding of and responsiveness to the widely diverse conditions and needs ofthe states and localities that is highly unusual in federal grant programs. The Office of Management and Budget and administrators of similar grant programs should examine this aspect of the IPA experience to see what lessons may be derived from it that are applicable to their programs.
2. The Commission should adopt, and urge upon the states for their adoption, simplified pre-application procedures to lessen time and paperwork. Pre-application consultation should be encouraged, especially for jurisdictions with a record of previous rejections, to reduce the frustrations involved in repeated, fruitless applications. The Commission should urge that formal legislative and executive approvals by local governments be obtained only for those proposals with a high likelihood of funding. Simplified application and reporting procedures should be developed for: (a) small projects and (b) projects administered by jurisdictions of previously demonstrated competence.
3. The practice in some regional offices of providing technical and training assistance to state and local governments to be reimbursed out of IPA grant awards should be discontinued.
4. Every effort should be made to keep the IPA staff as lean as possible, consistent with the new leadership roles proposed in this report.
5. The statute should be amended to authorize the Commission to vary the ratio of matching from one-fourth or less federal funds to a maximum of three-fourths federal funds, depending on the nature of the projects.
6. In the view of a majority of panel members, the IPA appropriation for fiscal year 1977 should be raised to between $20 and $25 million.
7. Machinery for the allocation of IPA funds reserved for a state's localities should be developed jointly by the governor and eligible local governments or their representatives.
PROGRAM EMPHASIS AND DIRECTION
The panel concludes that the IPA program should: (a) encompass a significant demonstration component; (b) place more emphasis on the dissemination to, and utilization of project results by, other jurisdictions; and (c) be broadened by statute to embrace "general" management as well as personnel management.
Demonstration projects and the dissemination of results
8. A portion of IPA resources should be utilized for explicit demonstrations to promote the best new personnel and management practices; to help state and local governments deal with the new realities of collective bargaining, financial stress, and public accountability; and to help them develop the capacity and the flexibility to respond effectively to new and continuing problems. The ultimate goal of the demonstrations should be to help states and localities utilize better the $60 billion they now receive in federal grants and the $160 billion obtained from their own revenue sources.
9. IPA staff should exercise increased initiative, both in Washington and the field, in: (a) consulting with the administrators of large federal categorical grant programs to identify those personnel and management problems in state and local government that appear to be impeding effective program planning and administration; and (b) fashioning IPA programs and procedures in such a way as to be most helpful to state and localofficials in dealing with these problems.
10. IPA staff should assume a more active role in providing consultative assistance to states and localities in assessing their management needs and in developing projects likely to meet them; such projects could be financed either from national discretionary funds or from the state-local allocation.
11. In general, the focus of demonstrations should not be on the intricacies and detailed procedures of personnel management, but instead on the public products and consequences of personnel systems, i.e., the resultant character, quality, and cost of public services and the responsiveness of government personnel to the citizenry and to changing conditions. To encourage such projects, the Commission should make available examples of successful measures taken by various jurisdictions to improve the productivity of employees including top managers, the quality of public services, and the responsiveness of public officials.
12. IPA staff in Washington and the regions should make a concerted effort to use discretionary grants to fund demonstration projects that promise significant progress in dealing with critical managerial and personnel problems of the states and localities. Contrariwise, scarce discretionary funds should not be used for routine purposes.
13. The Commission should adopt a policy that no project will normally be funded for more than three years. IPA should emphasize innovation, demonstration, and the stimulation of personnel and management improvements, rather than the permanent support of ongoing activities.
14. The policy of emphasizing projects involving groups and consortia of governments rather than single jurisdictions is sound and should be continued and strengthened; multi-state projects involving close cooperation among state officials with similar duties — such as the Midwest Intergovernmental Personnel Council — should also be encouraged.
15. The Commission should identify significant developments of wider applicability and bring them to the attention of other jurisdictions by special communications, consultations, conferences, and, when appropriate, the use of discretionary grants.
16. Information about projects that are of special public significance should be disseminated by special publications which should be: (a) issued only when warranted, (b) prepared with special care and authority, (c) confined to a management problem of special importance, (d) directed to a defined audience, and (e) calculated to receive special attention.
17. IPA projects should include joint labor-management training in improving productivity and the quality of employee work life. The act should be amended to make leaders of organizations representing employees eligible to participate in this training, and IPA should be receptive to university, government, or joint government-union projects in these fields. Applications should be subject to review, but not necessarily to approval, by state and local chief executives. However, it would be a serious mistake to award grants to public employee organizations for training in adversarial collective bargaining.
EXTENSION TO GENERAL MANAGEMENT
18. The Commission should: (a) expand contact and consultation with general, as well as personnel, managers in defining and implementing the varied purposes and uses of IPA grants; (b) use IPA training funds to strengthen the skills and capabilities of central management and policy officials in state and local government; and (c) give increased emphasis to training and technical assistance to legislators and other elected officials and their staffs.
19. The Intergovernmental Personnel Act should be amended to replace its present primary focus on personnel administration with the central objective of strengthening the general management capacity of state and local governments.
20. A committee should be established to advise the Bureau of Intergovernmental Personnel Programs on the formulation, administration, implementation, and evaluation of the IPA program and its broadened application as recommended in this report; its members should be officials of or authorities on local, state, and federal government, employee organizations, public and personnel management, and program evaluation.
21. The Commission should prepare a periodic (perhaps a biennial) comprehensive report on the status of public manpower.
22. The Office of Management and Budget or the Commission, with the participation of other appropriate agencies, should arrange for (a) the conduct of studies and reports to identify the strengths and weaknesses of state and local government management that enhance or handicap their effective use of federal funds; and (b) the issuance of a handbook identifying the federal programs that can be used by states and localities to improve their management capacities, including information about the amount and kinds of assistance available for such purposes.
23. The Executive Office of the President, through the Office of Management and Budget and other appropriate means, should demonstrate greater interest in, and exercise increased oversight and coordination of, the various federal programs for the improvement of central management capabilities of state and local governments. There is a clear need to reduce the overlap and to delineate respective responsibilities among these programs through the initiation of appropriate budget directives, executive orders, and statutory changes.
PROGRAM EVALUATION
24. Though continued planning for future IPA evaluation is needed, comprehensive or repetitive field studies should be deferred for two years.
25. Future IPA evaluation activity should comprise separate, selected inquiries into comparable projects and activities, alternating at four to five year intervals with a comprehensive evaluation of the entire program.
26. Evaluation expenditures should be commensurate with the size of the IPA program, staff resources of the Bureau of Intergovernmental Personnel Programs and recipient jurisdictions, and the probable utility of findings. A reasonable evaluation budget, on an annual average, might be 2 percent of the first $15 million plus 1 percent of additional appropriations.