SUBSTATE DISTRICTING \' ^° f *o A =*&. \ "«/ Sf ATES O* * iJ U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION SUBSTATE DISTRICTING PROCEEDINGS OF A TECHNICAL SEMINAR ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE COUNCIL OF STATE PLANNING AGENCIES Lexington, Kentucky August 6-9, 1967 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT ADMINISTRATION OFFICE OF POLICY COORDINATION I FOREWORD The Annual Conference of the Council of State Planning Agencies was held in Lexington, Kentucky, August 6-9, 1967. As part of this conference, the Council sponsored a one-day technical seminar on the subject of Substate Districting. With the growing interest in and use of multi-county organiza- tions for a wide variety of state and Federal planning programs, it was the Council's view that serious discussion and debate was necessary to more fully understand the implications for the states and state planning. As a result, selected representatives of state and Federal governments were invited to participate in the discussion. The proceedings of this seminar are contained in this publication. The Economic Development Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce^ is publishing the proceedings because of the wide interest in the subject and its current value. The views expressed are those of the participants. These proceedings were made possible by the work of David K. Hartley, Executive Director of the Council and Spindletop Research, Inc., which transcribed the taped proceedings. John R. Joyner, Office of Policy Coordination, Economic Development Administration, was editor of these proceedings. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation http://archive.org/details/substatedistrictOOcoun TABLE OF CONTENTS FUNCTIONS OF SUBSTATE DISTRICTS -- FIRST PANEL Introduction 3 John R. Joyner Economic Development in Substate Districts 5 Peter Stern Regional General Government 8 Andrew S. Bullis Regional Planning for Health Services 13 Harold Herman Substate Regions as an Element of the Governor's Development Policy Plan 16 Robert P. Huefner Geographic Areas in Federal Statistics 19 Roye L. Lowry Discussion Summary 24 THE FEDERAL SYSTEM AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT THE ROLE OF STATE PLANNING Ross D. Davis 27 THE STATE GOVERNMENT AND URBAN AFFAIRS 33 William G. Colman STATE EXPERIENCES IN DISTRICTING -- SECOND PANEL New York 41 D. David Brandon Georgia 45 V. R. Stuebing Kentucky 48 Bob Cornett Connecticut 52 Harold I. Ames Colorado 55 James Miles Discussion Summary 58 SECTION 701 OF THE HOUSING ACT OF 1954: DISCUSSION AND COMMENTS ON PROPOSED AMENDMENTS 61 SUMMARY AND NEXT STEPS 63 Terrell Blodgett FUNCTIONS OF SUBSTATE DISTRICTS First Panel Panel Participants John R. Joyner, Moderator Peter Stern Andrew S. Bull is Harold Herman Robert P. Huefner Roye L. Lowry INTRODUCTION John R. Joyner Associate Director, Office of Policy Coordination Economic Development Administration U. S. Department of Commerce The creation -- across the country -- of new institutions which combine units of local government for planning and development purposes is causing both confusion and duplication of efforts among all levels of government. The rapid growth of these new institutions makes a discussion of the functions of substate districts both timely and critical. The subject of substate districting is surrounded by controversy. Both the Federal and state governments have taken varied -- and often conflicting -- approaches to substate planning; multiple methods and objectives of districting add to the confusion. Local officials and laymen have mixed reactions, and exhibit widely diverse degrees of interest in and support of the idea of substate districting. The growing response to this confusion centers on the ways in which the programs and their objectives can be coordinated. A number of states are responding by establishing state planning programs designed in part to encourage, utilize and coordinate multi-county planning and development activities. Others are still grappling with the idea of regionalizing -- what purposes such regionalization has, how it can be accomplished, whether it can contribute anything to effective state-local relations. The Federal Government has taken a number of steps in the direction of greater coordination. President Johnson, on September 2, 1966, issued a special memorandum calling for the coordination of development programs and planning at the Federal level, and for Federal cooperation with state and local development agencies in establishing common bases and sharing facilities and resources. The memorandum states in part that: Comprehensive planning covering wide areas is a promising and extremely important beginning to the solution of critical state, metropolitan, and regional problems. It is essential that it be done well. At the Federal level, we must coordinate our efforts to prevent conflict and duplication among Federally assisted planning efforts. The memorandum also states that "boundaries for planning and development districts assisted by the Federal Government should be the same and should be consistent with established state planning districts and regions." On January 31, 1967, the Bureau of the Budget issued Circular No. A-80 in the spirit of providing guidelines to Federal agencies in carrying out the objectives of the Presidential memorandum. As a result, an interagency committee on the coordination of planning was established; it is chaired by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Three subcommittees were formed to speci- fically examine planning requirements, research, and the mapping of multi- jurisdictional boundaries. The latter subcommittee on the mapping of boundaries is chaired by EDA. One of the initial con- tributions of this subcommittee will be an atlas which will be made available to the states, indicating the boundaries of Federally sponsored or supported planning jurisdictions encompassing one or more counties. EDA is particularly interested in this question of coordination of planning. It is clear that in many rural and smaller urban areas, such coordination is required to avoid duplication of efforts, conflicts in local goals and programs, a drain on community leader- ship capabilities, and competition among planning organizations. Thus one of EDA ' s objectives is to encourage and promote multi-county and multi-purpose district organizations established through state and local leadership. Such organizations contribute to the coordina- tion of planning by being designed to bring about total economic and social development through the combined assistance of all appropriate agencies of Federal, state and local governments, and through the private economy. The following discussion centers on the purposes, problems and functions of substate districts. The questions which the panel participants raise provide analysis which is both relevant and contributive to our understanding of the subject. ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN SUB-STATE DISTRICTS Peter Stern Director of Regional Studies Tennessee Valley Authority- Regional development organizations are sprouting everywhere. The stimulant for this proliferation is to be found largely in Federal legislation stipulating area-wide planning as a prerequisite for loans and grants for public investments. While the states are trying to hold these organizations to geographical limits that are acceptable to local governments and lend themselves to a rational regional planning and development effort, it is not easy to reconcile the objectives of functional or single-purpose planning groups with the over-all development needs of a sub-state district. Looking at the problem of area delineation from the economic development planner's point of view, I would argue that the viable district should be made up a (a) an urban node capable of yielding economies of scale for public and private investors, (b) a periphery or hinterland whose interdependence with the central city is easily recognized by the population's trading and commuting patterns. The growth center concept, which I have just described, has been commendably incorporated in recent statutes dealing with regional development, but its implementation en- counters difficulties on the ground, where local people must first be convinced that geographical interdependence redounds to everyone's benefit. It is essential, in other words, to prove that the creation of a regional development organization is not merely a device to strengthen the economic base of the urban community at the expense of the surrounding counties. We must be able to answer the question, "can an essentially voluntary organization effectively guide the sequence and distribution of public and private investments to accelerate regional economic growth?" Private entrepreneurs recognize the economic link between urban center and per- iphery in their plant-location calculus, and their actions, insofar as they can be explained to the public, provide the most potent arguments in favor of regional interdependence. It will always be difficult, of course, to set up viable regional economic development organizations in areas of scattered settlement where there are no readily identifiable "growth points." In these areas, the urban centers may be weak or declining vestiges of a bygone economic era, poorly situated with respect to regional and national markets, and lacking in vitality and leadership. The true growth centers may be located outside of the problem areas, exerting a "pull" upon the younger and more mobile segment of the geographically disadvantaged population. This phenomenon is beautifully illustrated by the functional economic areas recently drawn up for Appalachia by the Office of Business Economics, U. S. Department of Commerce. Many of the urban nodes were found to lie outside of the counties designated as part of Appalachia; as a result, many of the OBE's economic areas include a slice of Appalachia along with counties that are more closely linked to the "external" growth centers. Criteria of area delineation, no matter how logical or scientific, have a way of creating organizational problems. Regional agencies typically do not report to any one established unit of government. Without direct responsibility to the electorate, such organizations must counter the natural suspicion or distrust of citizens who are afraid that their local interests may be submerged by region-wide objectives that have been formu- lated by strangers. We are also likely to experience a popular reaction to the recent proliferation of development organizations with overlapping boundaries and objectives. Bureau of the Budget Circular A-80 will help restrain the headlong creation of further district organizations. In the end, however, it is up to the states to take the initiative in designating substate areas for economic development planning in order to eliminate geographical overlaps, duplication of program activities, and confusion at the grass roots. The work program of a district organization with an economic develop- ment mission will be highly diversified for it encompasses the public as well as the private sector of the area's economy. Because there is no typical organization, we have grouped the variety of tasks under four major headings . 1. Establish development priorities . This important assignment involves the identification and justification of those social overhead capital in- vestments that are most conducive to the utilization of an area's resources and to the stimulation of private investment. This selection process must obviously be preceded by the development of a strategy for action which represents community consensus insofar as possible. 2. Provide research-based information for investment decisions . Here the district organization must serve as the data center and clearing house for those who seek information about the area's development potential. Economic development research will typically include the preparation of feasibility studies and prospectuses that may be of assistance to private decision makers in seeking business opportunities and locations. 3. Gather and disseminate intelligence on grant and loan programs . This is an essential function for it should enable local government to take full advantage of federal and state programs of assistance to communities and regions. We view this as being much more than the cataloging of available programs. The district organization has the responsibility to aid governing bodies in selecting those grant-in-aid projects which the community can financially absorb and which represent logical building blocks towards a stronger infrastructure of public facilities and services. 4. Inform the public about economic development strategies . This step is essential to enable the district organization to carry forward its action program with popular understanding and support. The development strategy must be explained in terms of the impact which alternative investment se- quences are likely to have upon the region. Why, for example, should such costly public facilities as treatment plants and industrial access roads be concentrated in or near the growth center while investments in the development of human resources are channeled to the outlying areas? The success of the district's program depends to a considerable extent upon the way in which the rationale for regional development is accepted by the public. REGIONAL GENERAL GOVERNMENT Andrew S. Bullis Assistant Director, Office of Intergovernmental Relations U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development My topic relates to the assignment of general governmental functions to various units of government. I would like to approach the problem of the types of services which might be, or should be, performed on a regional basis. Thus I will be concerned with some of the problems relating to multicounty districts, councils of government, stronger counties, and interlocal agreements — all vehicles which may be selected to achieve areawide cooperation in the performance of governmental functions. I would define "functions" as the things which a governmental unit does. The term "general government" distinguishes those units which are governed by elected officials, which have multi-responsibilities for services, and which are authorized both to tax and to incur general bonded indebtedness. Now the converse of general government is what we all know as special purpose or district government. Such units usually have single or limited functions and no authority to tax. They must issue revenue bonds, and they are governed by appointed bodies which are usually responsible to an elected official. School districts are the most numerous and obvious type of special purpose government. However, they usually enjoy most of the attributes of general governments, including the power to tax, to issue general obligation bonds, and to elect school directors. So, they are somewhat of an exception to the general concept of special purpose government. Our units of general government at the local level usually perform a collection of services which are traditionally related to housekeeping functions -- such as fire, police, health and sanitation, parks and re- creation, public works, corrections, utilities, and sometimes welfare. These are the functions which local governmental officials traditionally cling to with the greatest tenacity; these are the functions which those officials exhibit the greatest reluctance to relinquish to any higher unit of local government, whether it be a multicounty district or a COG. On the other hand, there is a whole new category of general governmental functions relating to social and developmental programs. This category includes industrial development, manpower development, poverty programs, housing, urban renewal, rural renewal if you will, the environmental controls and codes of Forestman's planning and zoning, and related programs. The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR), in a report put out several years ago, established a set of criteria to aid in determining whether a service or function would be susceptible to per- formance on an areawide basis rather than on a strictly local basis. Some of these seven criteria conflict with one another, but they do set a frame- work for trade-offs that have to be made in determining whether a partic- ular function or service is to be left strictly local or escalated to a regional or areawide instrument or performance. The first ACIR criterion was economy of scale. If a unit of govern- ment is too tiny to perform a function well, then that function should be performed in an area with a population base and a tax base large enough to achieve economy of scale and of operation. The second economic criterion was that the area should be sufficient in size to minimize spillover. For example, the central city supports an elaborate, expensive transportation network that serves suburban commuters, and yet the central city bears all the cost. In other words, the spillover effect benefits those who do not bear the cost, so services should be provided in areas that minimize these spillovers. Moving away from the economic criteria, ACIR listed five which were social or political, if you will, and administrative. The geographic area should be large enough for effective performance; for example, the installa- tion of a sewer system ideally should take in the natural drainage basin. The unit of government performing the service should have the legal and the administrative capability to do the job. A sufficient number of functions should be performed by a given unit of government so that conflict- ing interests in determining needs and allocating resources could be re- solved in some reasonable priority order; the single purpose district usually will lead to distortions in the allocation of resources available to it, while the district with multiple functions has to make harder choices. Representatives of any given unit of government should be controllable by and accessible to those served. Of course, small town government idealizes or reaches the maximum on government controllability and accessibility, but the trade-offs for that against all these other criteria are sometimes prohibited. Finally, there should be a maximum opportunity for broad, wide- spread citizen participation. The resistance of the small local units to regional government in any guise has been nothing short of heroic and tremendously effective, although, I must agree, very often regrettable. The political strength and resiliency of these units of local government have continued to confound planners, those who would seek a more rational allocation of function to levels of government; and local governments have been supremely successful in gaining popular support for the idea or virtue of smallness for its own sake. The traditional functions that I first outlined, the housekeeping functions of government usually performed by these guallest units, are firmly rooted in and protected by the vested interests of the local officials themselves. "Metropolitan" is clearly a dirty word. Our 07*01 HUD section called Metropolitan Development labors under the crushing burden of that name. I understand we had a representative of the National League of Cities (NLC) in Boston, and they mistyped his name badge, putting on it that he was "metropolitan government." He wondered why nobody would sit next to him. 10 "Multicounty district" has the same potential for emotional resistance unless it is handled very carefully right from the beginning — not only in what we say about it, but what we actually do with it when we get on the scene. In short, if multicounty districts start moving in on the traditional housekeeping functions of local government, they're going to get slaughtered; and the whole movement, or the whole concept, of the multicounty district will suffer. Therefore, in my assignment I feel that it is important that we avoid the word "must" in deciding what multicounty districts are going to do. We should preserve a thoroughly pragmatic approach in seeking targets of opportunity with long range development of the multicounty district in mind. The National League of Cities, Urban Studies Section, in 1965 conducted an in-depth survey of 300 elected local government officials in eight SMSA's to determine what their attitudes were regarding performance of services on an areawide basis as opposed to strictly local government unit performance. We found that the strongest resistance to any areawide performance of services was in respect to fire, police, and parks — neighborhood, one-day travel time back-and-forth kind of parks, not the big regional parks „ There was weak resistance to urban renewal, public housing, refuse disposal, and sanitation in general; but several targets of opportunity were identified from this survey. Local government officials had no qualms at all about civil defense being organized on an areawide basis. They though that would be just dandy. They were pretty strong too, almost as strong as on civil defense, as far as air pollution control was concerned. And they though that public health would also be a good one for areawide service. Weak approval was given to public education, water supply, and planning on an areawide basis. In generalizing on the results of the survey, the only thing one can say is that the local government officials were very happy to have anything performed on an areawide basis that (1) they weren't doing now, or (2) they really didn't want to do anyway. Our list in NLC had a very good correlation with the ACIR ranking, except for public health and public education. The NLC survey found more acceptance for areawide performance than the ACIR ranking would have indicated, and they also found that parks were much more local than the ACIR ranking would have placed them. From the survey though, it became evident that there could be strategies for splitting functions; shared performance, areawide and local, could be worked out. For example, planning done on an areawide or multi- county district basis does not rule out the idea that there could still be local planning under local control consistent with areawide plans. Areawide police services do not necessarily mean that every patrolman and every patrol car have to work for an areawide police department. Rather, certain police service functions — such as the whole records and criminal identification problem — can be given to an areawide agency. Special police services, such as vice squad-, could be made areawide, while the 11 patrol function — traffic patrol and the writing of tickets — could be left to the local police,, Health, libraries, parks, sanitation, and refuse collection all lend themselves to this division of functions between the local unit and an areawide unit. The local unit can collect or let the contracts for collecting solid trash, and the areawide agency- can run the landfill or the incinerator. The local units can have their own sewage collection system, and the treatment plant can be areawide. The most likely targets, of course, for the multicounty district are the developmental and social functions which can be assumed on a regional basis. These are much less well established, less well entrenched, in the local units. The local governments find it very difficult to (1) attract people who are skilled in implementing such programs, and (2) raise the salary scales to the point where they can pay them what they must. In addition, project success in the developmental and social programs yields areawide payoff even if the physical facility is in one particular location. Therefore, you are more able to demonstrate areawide benefits from these types of programs than from the traditional functions, and so they lend themselves to assumption by a multicounty district., In any event, the assumption of these developmental and social functions should inevitably involve the responsible officials in each locality in the policy making process. One of the problems which is right on the horizon now is the old one-man, one-vote rule. Many of these multi jurisdictional agglomer- ations have been put together with the idea that Jasper Junction has one vote just as Central City does, and in these multicounty districts, or COG's, if you start doing something important, then one-man, one-vote is going to become an issue. Local government officials are one of my favorite kinds of people. Warren Zitzman and I used to plow the same fields in Pennsylvania. He's heard this story before so I hope he'll forgive me. I went with one of the state senators to an ox roast in Lehigh Valley, and one of the township supervisors came up to the Senator and grabbed him by the coat and pulled him aside. He'd been sitting under the beer tent a little too long, I think, and he was feeling very little pain. He said, "John, you let \is down." The Senator said, "What do you mean, I let you down?" He said, "The annexation bill." The Senator said, "On the annexation bill, I sponsored that in the Senate, and it passed. When it went over to the House, I practically lobbied it through the House. I couldn't help it that the Governor vetoed it." The supervisor said, "Yes, and that's where you made your mistake, John. You should never have let that *** get his hands on it." I sometimes sense that planners have this reaction. They wish they had never let the ***'s get their hands on the plans that they have been making up, and the same is true in the multicounty district. Ultimately, the local government policy officials are going to get their hands on it; and if they get them on right in the beginning, so much the better* 12 In selecting the institutional vehicles for the areawide performance of function, I think the multicounty district is one sound approach; and within the multicounty district, the COG device may be used. I should think the multicounty districts would also seek to encourage stronger county governments so that those functions being performed locally will be perfomred better than they ever have been before. And again, the multicounty districts should encourage interlocal agreements which may embrace less than the whole multicounty area in their scope and effect. Likewise, the multicounty district should ultimately seek a multifunctional role, concentrating at the beginning on the developmental and social functions of government. While the patterns for the kinds of accommodations among the local units within the multicounty district are still unfixed, each of these districts should develop in accord with local needs and desires and not according to any grand master plan or uniform basis all over the Nation. The success of these districts, if they succeed, will lead to an expanding role and increased public acceptance. Failure in the initial stages will cause a contraction or a static role for the multicounty district, so some selectivity in favor of targets of opportunity will be a strategic approach for the district. HUD policy, as expressed by Under Secretary Wood in his testimony to the Rural Development Subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee, is to strengthen the capacity of small communities to exist and to grow. HUD believes that the pace of rural migration to large urban centers should be arrested, and that our second wave of urban growth can benefit the by- passed communities with emerging developmental potential. The transporta- tion mobility that has opened new areas to development and extends the labor market from a local unit base to a regional base can be used not only to bring new industry to the samller and bypassed communities but also to enable those communities to extend their labor markets to a regional area. We believe the multicounty district approach can provide the governmental infrastructure needed to realize, to serve, and to sustain that potential. 13 REGIONAL PLANNING FOR HEALTH SERVICES Harold Herman Chief of Health Planning Office of the Surgeon General U.S. Public Health Service Sub-state districting is nothing new for public health. Regionali- zation has long been used as a means of both delivering public health services and keeping informed of health needs and potentials. Most State Public Health Agencies are regionally organized, with the exact nature of regional responsibilities varying according to the degree of public health activity of local governments. The State health department region typically provides direct services for "unorganized" portions of its area, limited generalized service throughout the area, and serves as an information bridge for central agency planning and operations. Hospital service areas, watersheds, community mental health catchment areas, and regional medical programs are just a few of many instances of the areal concept employed in the planning and delivery of health services. Increasingly such areas have been conceived not just with "public" health services, but within the functional area under consideration, with private and voluntary services as well B In the Hill-Burton program, for example, regional priorities for hospital construction have been affected by the availability of all types of hospital facilities within a given region, even though construction support may be given only to public and voluntary non-profit hospitals. Within recent years, increasing attention has been focused on the planning of health services. Planning has itself generated areal organi- zations. Most noteworthy are the areawide health facility planning groups, more than 70 private non-profit corporations primarily serving metropolitan areas, which for the first time are not just counting hospital beds, but are planning for regional hospital systems. While the Hill-Burton con- struction planning program is a means of allocating public funds to both public and private hospitals through examination of bed availability through- out the hospital system, areawide facility planning has gone one step further by seeking to influence the total system directly through the voluntary participation of all hospitals. It considers public funds and public action as just one of its tools of influence. The transition from regional organization for the provision of public health services, through regional utilization of public funds for the construction of public and non-profit hospitals, to regional planning for health facilities and related services marks a significant advance in health planning c The changing character of hospital planning reflects a more realistic approach to plan- ned development of human services, which in health more than in any other service activity is predominantly privately organized. 14 Recognition of the need to relate public and private action more effectively is one of the primary motivations of the partnerships for health concepts embodied in Public Law 89-749, the Comprehensive Health Planning and Public Health Services Amendments of 1966. This Federal legislation is currently helping to shape a response to growing demand for more systematic planning of public and private activities that affect the health of individuals in both the preventive and remedial senses. For those to whom the WHO definition of health -- not just the absence of illness but a complete state of social, physical and mental well- being — is an operative ideal, this planning process is potentially a springboard from which a continuing systematic process of planning for all human services can be organized and conducted. The legislation provides for Federal participation in the conduct of comprehensive health planning at both State and areawide levels. In contrast to earlier planning support which singled out categories or diseases (i.e. mental retardation) or programs or facilities (hospital con- struction, community mental health centers), comprehensive health plan- ning is to be concerned with services, facilities and manpower serving physical, environmental and mental health needs. Legislative requirements recognize the necessity for the participation in planning of governmental and non- governmental agencies, organizations and groups in health and related fields of education, welfare and rehabilitation. They further require that grants to sub-state or interstate comprehensive health plan- ning projects be made only with the approval of the State comprehensive health planning agency or agencies. The Public Health Service recognizes the necessity not only of relating areawide to State health planning, but also of relating both to other planning activities,, Its implementation of B.O.B. Circular A-80 will pro- vide numerous checkpoints to encourage maximum coordination in the organi- zation and conduct of planning programs. It is possible to anticipate some of the problems that will be en- countered in structuring and conducting areawide health planning that will affect its potential for coordination. These can best be summarized in question form. 1. Given the predominant private role in delivering personal health services, what mix of public and private representation can best assure public responsibility yet still maximize the potential for implementing planning decisions? This question applies to all planning programs, but is particularly significant in human services planning and in that most decentral- ized aspect of human services, health. It is to a lesser extent applicable to State health planning, where governmental activities tend to predominate. 15 2. What level of citizen participation will best serve the needs of health planning? In comprehensive health planning, majority consumer representation in State planning through membership on an advisory council is required and similar consumer representation is required in area- wide planning. Who is a consumer representative? 3„ Can one organizational structure combine the multiplicity of interests and staff talents that relate to the broad scope given to comprehensive health planning? Can planning those aspects of the environment which we know or suspect affect health be undertaken by the same staff that analyzes and recommends action in fields of personal health service? To what extent are environmental decisions being made outside of health frameworks already? In water pollution control, for instance? 4. Recognizing the multiplicity of actors who engage in environmental control and planning, health planning, and the providing of health services, can coordination best be attained through some sort of umbrella mech- anism? If, as some suggest, that mechanism might be a Council of Government, does a COG have sufficient recognition in the private medical care field to assure effectiveness in this aspect of health services? On the other hand, can non-profit private corporations such as those currently engaged in health facility planning address them- selves effectively to governmental programs, particularly in environmental control? 5 Given the present emphasis on medical care needs and the high priority in health planning of internal coordination within the health field, are the A-80 requirements enough to keep the planning and development relationships from taking a back seat? These are just some of the questions that the Public Health Service and other agencies of the Federal government are asking themselves in beginning to implement P.L. 89-749. Through their designated State Health Planning Agencies and Comprehensive Planning Agencies, States will play an important role in providing answers. We all have legislative responsibilities in approving and reviewing applications from areawide health planning groups . But beyond that we also have a greater responsibility to work together in counseling prospective applicants and communities in how they can best work together, and in reviewing our own programs and past areal delineations for purposes of assisting them and ourselves to coordinate. 16 SUBSTATE REGIONS AS AN ELEMENT OF THE GOVERNOR'S DEVELOPMENT POLICY PLAN Robert P. Huefner Utah State Planning Coordinator The title "Substate Regions As An Element of the Governor's Development Policy Plan" asserts that the Governor has significant policy alternatives relating to the use of substate regions. Corollaries are that substate regions may provide a means to accomplish the plan and the plan may pro- vide a means to direct or support the regions. The following comments describe Utah's experience to illustrate these three assertions and the resulting conclusion that substate regions are not to be used as standard planning practice, such as land-use inventories or population projections, but should represent deliberate strategies selected by careful analyses. The use of substate regions provides the Governor several signifi- cant policy alternatives. The first is whether or not to even use them. Rhode Island and Utah have both questioned new organizations for area- wide urban planning as a duplication of state responsibility. In Rhode Island such an area includes the whole state. In Utah it includes 85% of the State's population and the center upon which the rest of the State focuses politically, economically, and culturally. With HUD's support, Utah is assuming the basic responsibility for broad area coordination and encouraging councils of governments within the urban counties where bound- aries have strong geographic definitions, therefore being logical sub- units of the total urban area. With this exception, the State actively encourages substate regions as a means to more effectively coordinate local programs and to establish planning and administrative units of workable, effective size. This policy builds upon several choices between policy alternatives. Utah's limited efforts toward regions in the urban areas involve a choice expected to be significant in the long run. The urban area runs north and south along the Wasatch Front. Groupings of two to three counties, running east and west, have been delineated. Each includes a major urban county and the presently rural but suburbanizing counties relating to this sub- center of the total urban area. This choice emphasizes inter-cQunty program coordination. The alternative of grouping the counties by north- south tiers would emphasize the common interests of the western desrt- industrial counties, the central urban counties, and the eastern mountainous rural - suburbanizing counties. The regional organization may be concerned with the entire scope of governmental operations, but like State governments must establish pro- gram priorities if limited financial and personnel resources are to be 17 effectively directed. In Utah's rural regions the primary problems relate to low incomes. Since educational levels are relatively high, the regional programs have focused upon economic development to more productively employ those unable or reluctant to move because of the economic difficulties and social ties experienced in most areas, and the exceptionally strong cultural ties found in the State. The State also has made a strong commitment to strengthen local control of govern- mental operations. To accomplish this the State has insisted upon regional organizations responsible to local officials elected to direct general purpose units of government. The need for economic development has been subordinated to this commitment to effective local control by avoiding single purpose regional organization. Substate regions can provide a means to accomplish the State policy plan. Utah's original regional organizations were initiated by local governments which recognized the need to broaden their political base for influencing State policy and their financial base for tourist and economic promotion. One of the regions now supports a resident land use planner whom the individual counties and communities could not afford. This replaces total reliance upon consultants, all of whom are hundreds of miles distant. But most importantly there is evidence, limited but hopeful, that participation within the regional organization has given local leaders new perspectives, new resources, and new issues to grow beyond the feuds within the counties which have unproductive ly occupied the interests of local leaders for past decades. And the State can more easily go beyond political balancing of each program within each county to a balanced allocation of all resources, using highways or mental health centers depending upon which best contribute to the interests of each area. The concept of regional growth centers probably couldn't have been discussed a few years ago. It is being discussed now - although it cannot yet be said that there is agreement regarding the location of regional growth centers. The State will significantly influence the organization, role and effectiveness of regional organization, even where regional organizations are directed by local officials. Any level of government can impede, if not destroy, efforts for regional izat ion : the State and Federal governments, by allowing their program agencies to insist upon specific program-oriented organization, or to refuse to agree upon common geographic boundaries, and local governments, by refusing support because of fear that the regional organization will replace their responsibilities. Similarly any level can assume the initiative for encouraging regional organizations. Utah had special purpose organizations which were decades old, initiated by State and Federal agencies. The multipurpose regional organizations now developing were initiated by local governments with the State government assuming the leadership three years ago when progress of the original organizations began faltering Federal support of State recognized regions has been a major encouragement in this process of regional izat ion . 18 The State is in a particularly strategic position to coordinate and even direct these efforts, because State programs for highways, reclama- tion, health, education, etc. are probably the most important concerns of such substate regional organizations. The States are also the logical units to relate Federal programs to local governments and the Federal government is increasingly recognizing this role. Finally the State can frequently arbitrate local conflicts as Utah did in establishing regional boundaries. Utah's primary problem was originally lack of State concern for local regionalization. When the State took an interest, the problem shifted to conflicts with Federal programs as these programs and program requirements grew. It has now shifted to the local government as the Federal government has adjusted its programs and local governments are developing an increasing suspicion that the regional organizations threaten the responsibilities of the county governments. The State could expedite regional development by assuming primary responsibility but is restraining its various interests in regional development, hoping that local officials and initiative can continue to provide the basis for regional organization. In summary, substate regions are not another tool for the planners' bag of tricks. Regional organization and development include significant and serious policy alternatives for the Governor. The State's approach to regions should be a deliberate strategy because the substate regions will affect the achievement of public purposes and the State will signi- ficantly affect the substate regions. 19 GEOGRAPHIC AREAS IN FEDERAL STATISTICS Roye L. Lowry Office of Statistical Standards, Bureau of the Budget For over half a century the delineation of geographic areas in Federal statistics has been a matter of controversy. As long as statistical data were recorded by town, city, county, and/or State, and as long as these disaggregations of national totals were accepted, there were no difficulties. But when scholars, businessmen, and government officials began to realize that important social and economic phenomena, markets for goods and services, and problems of government were not confined within the arbitrary boundaries of governmental jurisdictions, the statisticians were in for trouble. They have been in trouble ever since, for no matter what they have done to create new kinds of areas, small and large, they have never fully satisfied the users of the data they produce. The numerous types of districts which have been created by statisticians — census tracts, central business districts, metropolitan districts, labor market areas, industrial areas, standard metropolitan statistical areas, urbanized areas, state economic areas, etc. — are all products of the twentieth century. And each one of these areas has been faulted by those users who find them unsatisfactory in one or another respect. About the only consolation the frustrated statistician can take from the waves of criticism which roll over him is that they indicate that his data is being used by serious men for serious purposes. This fact not only sustains him; it gives him heart as he bends to the task of reviewing his concepts of area delineation to see if he can come up with something better. Like any businessman who provides a good or service, he would much rather have the inconvenience of dealing with the somewhat unsatisfied customer than suffer the torments known by the man who has no customers for his product. The development of various synthetic concepts of substate or extra- state areas was, in the beginning, primarily the work of academicians. Businessmen were quick to see the advantages of some of these new constructs. Their distribution areas and sales territories have never been constrained by the strait- jacket of political boundaries. The use of new areal delineations in public policy making has been a more recent development. While the force of academic research, business applications, and public policy and program needs has not yet been spent, it seems that public policy and program requirements for information are likely to have a greater impact on areal definitions in the future than they have had in the past. The growing importance of planning at all levels of government, the ever-closer relationship of planning, programming, and budgeting, and the growing awareness of the interrelationship of Federal, State, and local 20 governmental activities make this almost inevitable. You who are engaged in State planning activities can make significant contributions to the present discussion of the delineation of areas in Federal statistics. Area Delineation: Concept and Practice As you may know, the Bureau of the Budget, with the advice of an interagency committee, is responsible for the development and maintenance of the concepts incorporated in the criteria used to define Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas (SMSA's). These standard area definitions were first issued in 1949. There are now 231 such defined areas in which three-fourths of the urban population live. The Bureau's Office of Statistical Standards, with its advisory grwrup, is initiating a review of the concepts incorporated in the present SMSA criteria. Professor Brian Berry, who serves as consultant to the Bureau on SMSA problems, has recently completed a significant contribution to the literature on area delineation. I hope that it will receive your thoughtful attention, for it presents a detailed review of the development of area delineations , a -critique of the concept of the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, and the most systematic and considered alternative (or supplement) to present delineations now available in print for public cons iderat ion . We should note, however, that Professor Berry's work is only one of the current efforts which seeks to find more satisfactory areal delineations than we now have. Leaving aside efforts of the Budget and the work of the Bureau of the Census to define areas of concentration of poverty in major metropolitan areas, I would like to note the studies and research going forward in the Office of Business Economics of the Depairtment of Commerce and in the Economic Research Service of the Department of Agriculture. In doing so, I will not dwell on the details of the work as it has thus far advanced in the two agencies, for in neither case has it reached that degree of completeness which would make it profitable to do so. Rather, I would like to note some of the general characteristics of these two efforts and to compare them with Berry's work in the hope that this might be useful in furthering your own discussion of the problem of delineating substate districts. HAVE COMMON FEATURES All three of these research efforts -- Berry's, OBE's, and ERSis have some features in common. — All start with an urban nodal center. — All use whole counties as building blocks with which to construct their areas. — All include areas which cross state boundaries. (ERS breaks its interstate districts into component state parts.) 21 BUT ARE BASED ON DIFFERENT CONCEPTS Despite these common features, Berry, OBE, and ERS reach different conclusions in their areal delineations. Probably the most important reason for these differences is to be found in the differences in the concept which serves as the organizing principle for area delineation in each case. Berry organizes his areas on the basis of a functional economic area. A functional economic area (FEA) is defined in terms of a labor market and includes all those counties sending commuters to a given central county for which the proportion of resident workers commuting to the given central county exceeds the proportion of workers commuting to alternative central counties. OBE seeks to delineate a set of economic sub regions of the United States, each of which would have an economy "in which roughly the same proportion of its labor force is engaged in the production of goods and/or services for 'export' as is true for the nation as a whole . . . with the remainder of the economy producing goods and services . . .for consumption by residents of the area." Each economic subregion would have a large measure of self-sufficiency and economic analysis could focus on the dynamics of the regional economic development and interregional economic relationships as seen through changes taking place in the sub- region's "export" industries. ERS is trying to delineate "development areas" for study purposes "from a human resource and development point of view." Unlike OBE, which seeks to give its- efforts some theoretical underpinning to sharpen economic analysis, ERS rests its case on the pragramatic grounds that "if development is to be implemented and carried out so that it is consistent with the goals of the population of the area and within the restrictions of the resources of the area, it is important that socio-economic areas be delineated for development purposes. It is in the ends-means schemes of people and of society that conservation, water, facilities and services, political activity, and economic activity gain importance." AND YIELD DIFFERENT RESULTS When it comes to the actual translation of these concepts into practice, Berry has the easiest task, for the notion of commuting to a central county is a phenomenon which can be measured directly from 1960 Census materials. Berry's problems arise in some of the less populated parts of the country, particularly in the West, where there is no central county to serve as a focal point for the functional economic area. OBE's task is somewhat more difficult. It, too, relies heavily upon commuting information from the 1960 Census. In fact, OBE has relied 22 heavily on Berry's work. However, OBE has utilized commuter flows in a somewhat different fashion than Berry does. OBE uses gross commuter flows between counties — not just the flow of commuters to central counties. Thus, a county which is assigned by Berry to a particular functional economic area by reason of the heavy commuter flow to the central county of the FEA maybe assigned by OBE to an economic subregion centered on a different central county because the gross flow of commuter traffic to the central county of the economic subregion and to other counties associated with that central county are, in sum, greater than the flow of commuter traffic to the central county of Berry's FEA. This is one of the principal reasons why OBE's economic subregions are not just groupings of Berry's functional economic areas at a higher level of aggregation. Like Berry, OBE runs into difficulty in describing areas in the less populated areas of the country. In these areas, OBE sought wholesale trade centers around which to form economic subregions based upon a variety of economic ties, travel distances, lines of communication, and natural barriers and containing a minimum of 250,000 population. It should be noted that Berry, in his final report, recommends studies along this line to deal with the areal delineation of less populated parts of the country. ERS used a different approach. It sought to define areas which had a minimal population of 50,000 centered around a city with 75-80 percent of the population within 50 to 75 miles of the city. First, cities of 25,000 were encircled at a radius of 50 miles; then, in areas yet uncovered, cities of 10,000 were used; then cities of 5,000; then, still smaller cities and towns until all areas of the country were within the bounds of a circle. Overlay maps of retail sales, wholesale business, and county populations were used over a map showing transportation facilities and topography. Final decisions for delineating areas were based on a composite overlay plus considerations of distance, area population, and size of central place. The ERS study notes a special concern about the difficulty of delineating viable areas for development districts in the absence of important nonquantif iable information, such as cultural differences, community leadership and institutional rigidities. In the absence of generally recognized "cultural indicators," the ERS study suggests that a degree of community involvement along with the talents of trained professionals would "assure. that some of the evasive variables concerning cultural patterns, leadership associations and influences, and institutional rigidities would be taken into account in development area delineations." Conclusion These three similar, yet quite different, efforts to develop new areal delineations are clear indications that your professional colleagues in the Federal government are seeking the same goals that you seek in your respective States — the organization of information for areas which are 23 technically sound for purposes of analysis and the organization of information for areas which are meaningful for program planning and implementation. The gap between the two indicates that there are still great opportunities for human intelligence and creative imagination in seeking new ways to delineate areas for the development of information. The gap also indicates that the statistician still hasn't found the package which will satisfy all his customers. Perhaps his main hope -- and the hope of all his customers -- really resides in the address register and geocoding features of the 1970 Census. These devices might be regarded as basic elements of a "do-it-yourself" kit which would enable data users to come a bit closer to organizing their own areas in response to particular needs when none of the statistician's packages is satisfactory for the purpose. The "do-it-yourself" kit will be limited to urban areas in the 1970' s, but the principles have wider application. 24 FUNCTIONS OF SUBSTATE DISTRICTS; DISCUSSION SUMMARY Mr. Covington (Office of Planning and Programming, Iowa) asked how the Department of Agriculture's involvement in planning and development relates to EDA e Mr. Doherty (Farmers Home Administration) replied that the Depart- ment of Agriculture has held preliminary discussions on this question with EDA and HUD. The issue of how the district program will fit into and coincide with the EDA program from an administrative standpoint has not been resolved, although no conflict with EDA is foreseen. The 701 amend- ments are simply an additional tool to give greater emphasis to rural multidistrict planning. As there are a number of areas which need the kind of planning assistance envisioned, but which do not qualify for EDA or Appalachian assistance, the 701 legislation will facilitate such assistance. Mr. Howes (Department of Housing and Urban Development) commented that there is no reason why the new HUD-Agriculture districts should have a different relationship to EDA districts than do the existing metropolitan districts. State leadership in the Rio Grande Valley program spurred EDA and HUD to pool their resources; the two agencies are attempting to work jointly to support the same district. With two sources of funding for district programs, the states will have to urge Federal cooperation, so that Federal agencies will establish joint programs rather than conflicting ones. Mr. Lakshmanan (Consad Research Corporation) noted that the 701 amend- ments indicate that designated districts must be outside SMSA's. He asked how multicounty economic areas can be delineated, on the basis of a growth center concepts when SMSA's are excluded. Mr. Lewis (Department of Housing and Urban Development) replied that the restriction is intended to limit this particular program and pool of money to nonmetropolitan areas; it does not exclude SMSA planning through the existing 701 program. He added that the enabling legislation for rural planning was proposed in amendment form to 701, rather than as a separate program, in order to avoid a multiplicity of program approaches to the same problem. The purpose of the amendments — to allow the financing of nonmetropolitan regional groupings — can be effected more easily in this manner. The program will be administered by HUD, but the Secretary of HUD will consult with the Secretary of Agriculture before grants are made; the latter' s staff is familiar with the problems of these areas and can help both HUD and the communities in setting up the regional organi- zations. This is an area in which the states will have to exhibit leader- ship in the beginning, so that problems related to non-coordination can be avoided. 25 Mr. Doherty pointed out that the concern is for the vast area of the country where there are still basically rural counties, with potential or already developing growth centers, which should be joined together in a new type of program with greater financial assistance. He suggested that there would be little conflict, as SMSA's and their "watershed," or surrounding rural areas, are taken care of under the existing 701 program, and by COG's and metropolitan district types of planning programs. Mr. Moore (Office of Planning Coordination, New York) asked how the States fit into the rural planning program. Mr. Howes replied that the States are built into the program: the planning grant must be made to the State, and the State must provide the assistance to the district. This procedure is distinct from that for grants to COG's and metropolitan planning agencies. Mr. Huefner (Utah State Planning Office) remarked that there is a great need for a program which will support districts with small rural growth centers; it is difficult to incorporate a regional concept through existing programs. He also suggested that it is no longer valid to blame the problems of these areas on a lack of State initiative. The States are concerned, and must be allowed to move at their own pace: it is hoped that the Federal agencies will not attempt to subvert the efforts of the States by working outside State planning agencies. Mr. Doherty n oted that one of the objectives of comprehensive planning on a multicounty basis is to relate specific functional plans and planning to the overall objectives and purposes of the comprehensive areawide plan. The functional type of activities financed, for example, by the Sewer and Water Planning Grant would take care of sewer and water planning activities. The comprehensive program would have a broader base; it would deal with the coordination and relationship of human resource planning to physical and development planning. Dr. Herman (Public Health Service) commented that functional versus comprehensive planning is an interagency problem as well. The categorical areas set up by PHS are similar to the functional planning areas in HUD; the comprehensive agencies which are designed to provide an overall frame- work of priority setting are similar in both agencies. This parallel raises the question of whether one agency's comprehensiveness can be incorporated into that of another agency. 27 THE FEDERAL SYSTEM AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT THE ROLE OF STATE PLANNING Ross D. Davis Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development Introduction I am delighted to have the opportunity of meeting today with the Council of State Planning Agencies. It was also most informative for me to meet last June with your Executive Board and learn more of your programs and ideas. I find it very significant that this group is meeting here today. To me it represents the rapid growth in state planning in recent years. I am told that some twenty-four new state programs have been started within the past two years. This growth signifies a major evolution in state planning. It recognizes that state planning is trying to become "comprehensive" plan- ning, rather than remaining "physical" planning oriented. It recognizes the importance of "programming" the affairs of state government as a vital bridge between long-range plans and the actual implementation. The fact that you have met this week with state budget officers emphasizes the importance of relating programs and budgets to the planning process. I find the growing trend toward locating, or at least making more accessible, the planning process to the Governor's offices most significant, The recognition of planning as a major staff and resource tool to the state chief executive is long overdue. It is also significant that state planning is becoming a useful tool in intergovernmental relations. Last June, at least eleven states sent their planners to the Workshop for Federal-State Relations Coordinators sponsored by the National Governors' Conference. State planning is now beginning to identify the interrelationship of plans and programs at all levels of government. This growth in the number and importance of state planning programs must, in part, be related to the numerous Federal programs passed by Congress in recent years. The 89th Congress in particular passed many programs in health, education, economic development, manpower training, on problems of the cities and resource development -- many of which require some type of plan at the state level. The ability of the state planning process to relate all of these individual plans and programs to comprehensive planning and overall state goals represents one of the greatest challenges to date for this emerging field. 28 EDA and Planning We in EDA certainly recognize the importance of planning. In reality our mission requires a planning, coordinating, and implementing approach if we are to be effective. This mission is to enhance the national economy by assisting areas of substantial and persistent unemployment and underemployment to achieve lasting economic improvement through the establishment of stable, diversified and strengthened local economies. One of our primary goals in carrying out this mission is to improve the planning, coordinating, and implementing capabilities at all levels — Federal, State, regional and local. To accomplish this mission, Congress gave us, in addition to loans and public works grants, basic planning tools. Our area, district and multi-state regional planning programs express the belief of Congress in the planning approach to overall develop- ment,, You have been discussing this morning, in part, one of these basic planning programs — economic development districts. As of July 1, we have officially designated twenty-four districts. These have completed and approved Overall Economic Development Programs and are fully eligible to receive grants. In addition to these twenty-four, we are working with the states to enable about seventy more to be established. In order to assist states in delineating economic development districts we have provided grants to twenty-two states. Some states were able to make appropriate recommendations without financial assistance. Others may seek grants in the near future to help review, evaluate and coordinate OEDP ' s . The importance of economic development and other substate districts to the state planning process cannot be over emphasized. Each must recognize and take into consideration the plans and programs of the other. If properly related, the programming and implementing processes at each level should be mutually beneficial. By the exchange, and understanding, of information, plans, programs and priorities at each level, conflicts can be minimized and implementation can be complementary. We in EDA, like states and local areas, have limited resources at our disposal to carry out our missions. Planning and programming must provide us, as it must provide your states, with a basis for resource allocations. We certainly recognize that we cannot solve all the problems of all the eligible areas at once. We lack the resources even to effect signif- icant advances in each of the many areas which are technically eligible for EDA assistance. The total need far exceeds available resources. Current budgetary limitations permit us to assist less than half of the eligible areas in any one year. 29 EDA must, therefore, have a clear strategy and sense of priorities. Such a strategy should address itself to the most severe area problems first. The need for assistance must be clear and impelling. Those places where the hardship is worst merit the first consideration. How- ever, the ability of such places to utilize EDA assistance effectively also must be considered and the scope and amount of EDA activity will be determined in the light of the potential for efficient and effective use of resources. Our strategy at the same time must address itself to the overall national and regional trends in economic development. We must understand their implications and potentials. To be effective, state , regional, and local development strategies must also have this perspective. Otherwise, they will be planning in a vacuum. In order that we can more effectively carry out our mission, we consolidated all of the economic development organizational units, including the Office of Regional Economic Development, into EDA. This reorganization was approved in December of last year. The Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development is now the operating head of the Economic Development Administration. I am assisted by four Deputy Assistant Secretaries, each assigned particular functional responsibilities. The Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Development, Mr. Thomas W. Harvey, assists me generally in all matters affecting EDA, and specifically directs and coordinates the Area Offices. He performs the duties of the Assistant Secretary in my absence. The Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Coordination, Mr. Jonathan Lindley, is my principal advisor on matters of policy coordination,, He maintains liaison with other agencies, represents EDA on inter-agency committees, and recommends policies and procedures to assure a more effective relationship between Federal, regional, State and local programs and plans. The Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Development Planning, Dr. Robert Rauner, through offices reporting to him, carries out the planning functions of EDA, including planning for regions, districts, redevelopment areas, and other areas of substantial need. The Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Development Operations, Mr. Lambert O'Malley, through the office reporting to him, provides coordinated direction of all EDA activities related to financial and technical assistance projects designed to improve local economies. He supervises the execution of this aspect of the EDA program. We have delegated to our seven Area Offices the authority to work with state and local leaders in the preparation of applications, to receive, 30 review and process these applications for financial assistance and submit them to Washington with their analysis and recommendations. We are involving the field staff more in the analysis of local economic conditions and the planning for EDA action in these areas. Through our reorganization we hope not only to more effectively carry out our mission, but to also be of greater service to other Federal agencies, and to State and local governments as they deal with problems of economic development. EDA and the States EDA certainly recognized that only with assistance from the state and Federal governments can the local, district and regional planning pro- grams be placed in the context of the broad national and regional growth implications. Through the state planning and programming efforts in your states, a coordinated approach at allocating local, state and Federal resources can be launched to achieve the maximum benefits throughout the country. State government must, however, be capable of utilizing state planning in the understanding of its problems and oppor- tunities and in effectively allocating its own resources efficiently to meet its goals and objectives. EDA believes in state planning as the logical tool to help states develop their own capabilities. We want to encourage state planning and assist it wherever possible,. We encourage you to develop your own capabilities to provide infor- mation and assistance to local, district, and regional groups in their planning. They need information on the programs, plans, and priorities of state government if they expect to effectively plan their own areas. By providing this information and assistance you will ineffect be guiding and influencing their programs. We also want to urge you to continue and expand your efforts at sub-state districting. We want to work with you to relate our programs to your efforts to maximum possible extent. Sub-state districting should provide not only a useful tool in state planning, but it must also pro- vide the means of relating state plans and programs to the local areas. Your effective role in assisting and guiding the state and its localities is related directly to your own capabilities in planning and your understanding of long-range implications and potentials. We urge the states to develop state-wide, comprehensive economic development planning programs to serve as a guide to your governors and legislatures as they allocate resources. Such state planning will also serve as a tool in coordinating plans at other levels. We in EDA, during the next few months , will be examining ways in which we can be of assistance to state economic development planning — 31 either through information or technical or financial assistance. In the near future, we expect to sponsor seminars or workshops in each of our regions on state planning and economic development. We want these seminars to be small, giving maximum opportunity for free discussion and exchange of ideas. We hope to examine certain questions during these seminars: What is the role of the states in economic development? What is state economic development planning? What tools are available to the states to influence economic development? How can states relate their own economic development planning to those at other levels? How can EDA relate to and assist state economic development planning? In the coming months you will hear more about these seminars. Through them, we expect that the body of knowledge on the meaning of state economic development planning will be greatly enhanced for both the states and the Federal government. In closing my remarks to you representatives of state planning, I am reminded that President Johnson in his March message to Congress on "The Quality of American Government" said: Our federal system is strong. It is the best instru- ment we have — or any nation has ever had -- for joint action. If we observe strains in the workings of that system, they are natural consequences of the great stirring of governmental action at all levels to cope with acute problems. When governments do nothing, when they are oblivious to the needs of the times, there is an illusion of order. It is an illusion both costly and disastrous. But to survive and serve the ends of a free society, our federal system must be strengthened — and not alone at the national level. I believe that at this meeting of state planners today, we are seeing the emergence of new tools to strengthen and reaffirm our federal system. 33 THE STATE GOVERNMENT AND URBAN AFFAIRS William G. Colman Executive Director Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations "The stresses and strains being placed upon the federal system by the fiscal and political conflicts and disparities within the Nation's metropolitan areas were treated in a compendium of earlier Commission recommendations released late in 1966 by the House Committee on Govern- ment Operations: Metropolitan America: Challenge to Federalism ." The Commission concludes: "The States are on the verge of losing control over the metropolitan problem; if they lose this control they lose the major responsibility for domestic government in the United States and in turn surrender a vital role in the American federal system. So, at the close of 1966, the tremendous task of financing, servicing, and governing Metropolitan America clearly poses the greatest challenge to federalism since the Civil War." ( Eighth Annual Report , Advisory Com- mission on Intergovernmental Relations, January 31, 1967.) "The time has come for a basic choice concerning the future role of American state government. State governments may be reconstituted to function effectively within the framework of a changing pattern of federalism. Or they may be permitted to follow the course many of them have taken in recent years — toward continuing decline in relative influ- ence over major policy issues, and toward gradual transformation into administrative units commanded and directed from the seat of national government in Washington, D. C. " ( Modernizing State Government , Com- mittee for Economic Development, 1967.) ■k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k A. Nature of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations 1. Responsibilities 2. Membership Bo Erosion of State and Local Strength in the American Federal System 1. Reasons for relative decline in State vs. Federal powers a. Increasingly complex society makes more problems national in scope 34 b. Shackling of State governments through restrictive constitu- tional provisions, 1865 - 1880 c. Neglect and disinterest on part of States in urban problems d. Relatively greater productivity of Federal revenue system e. Natural pressures for program expansion by Federal bureaucracy 2. Shackling of local governments by State constitutions and statutes 3. Inattention by State governments — legally and financially — to pressing local needs 4. Direct Federal-local programs and their eroding effect upon State government 5. Spawning of special districts through Federal programs, bypassing units of general local government (cities, towns and counties) 6. Proliferation in numbers and variety of new Federal programs C. Some Possible Remedies 1. Constitutional and structural strengthening of State government a. Unshackling the legislature b. Provision of short ballot, strengthening of Executive, and provision of gubernatorial reorganization power 2. The need to unshackle local government a. Elimination or liberalization of State constitutional and statutory restrictions on local government debt b. Elimination or liberalization of State constitutional and statutory restrictions upon property taxing powers of local government c. Elimination of constitutional and statutory requirements as to identification of particular county and city officials to be elected. (Some States find it desirable to provide "optional forms" of municipal and county government; in such cases a standard pattern is laid down with local citizens free to provide otherwise by charter. ) d. Cessation of State mandating of salaries of local government officials, except for members of city and county governing 35 bodies. (Even here many States prefer to give the govern- ing bodies the authority to set their own salaries with the proviso that the increased salaries take effect for future, not present terms of office.) e. Finally and most importantly, incorporation of a "residual powers" clause in the State constitution, leaving local governments free to engage in any activity or exercise any power not reserved or preempted by the State constitution or the legislature. Massachusetts and Alaska have adopted this clause, and several other States are considering it. 3. Provision of "arsenal of weapons" by the State for modernizing local government a. Authorizing the formation of metropolitan or local govern- ment charter commissions, at the initiative of either local governing bodies or a vote of the local citizens initiated by petition. These commissions would have authority to study and recommend changes in local government structure. The resulting proposals would be voted up or down by the citizens of the area concerned. b. Authorization for establishment of metropolitan or regional planning commissions c. Authorization for forming regional councils of public officials d. Authorization for establishing multi-county regional planning and development districts e. Authorization for establishment of multipurpose functional authorities in metropolitan areas, such authorities having power to impose user charges and issue bonds f. Authorization to municipalities to exercise zoning, planning and subdivision control over unincorporated fringes, in the absence of such controls by county government g. Authorization to counties to perform urban function in unincorporated areas and to establish differential property tax rates within the county varying with levels of service provided h. Authorization of voluntary transfer of functions between municipalities and counties by administrative action by respective governing boards - i. Authorization to local units of government to contract with one another in the performance of governmental services 36 j. Liberalization of municipal annexation powers permitting annexation by ordinance subject to statutory standards, public hearings and judicial review k. Authorization to larger units of local government to levy sales and income taxes on a "piggy back" arrangement with the State revenue department 1. Authorization to local units of government to invest idle funds in time deposits, Federal and State bonds and building and loan associations m. Provision of city and county "home rule" insofar as the organization and structure of local government is concerned. (As noted above, some States prefer to grant this flexibi- lity on the basis of "optional forms" of local government.) 4. State action to "civilize the jungle" of local government a. Establishment of State machinery to review and control new municipal incorporations b. Establishment of machinery at State or local level to control rigorously the establishment of new special districts and to facilitate the dissolution of existing special dis- tricts and their absorption by units of general local govern- ment c. Restriction of the zoning power to large municipalities and to county government d. Cleaning up the property tax through i. State supervision and control of assessment standards ii. Conduct of assessment ratio studies and publication of results iii. Establishment of qualification standards for assessors iv. Reimbursing localities for property tax exemptions mandated by the State 5. Increased State leadership and financial and technical State Ass is tance a. Establishment of State unit concerned with local government; Missouri and Minnesota have just joined a number of other States in their recent enactment of a Department of Community Affairs bill 37 b. Provision of State technical services to local government c. Provision of State financial incentives to local govern- ment cooperation and consolidation d. Provision of massive financial assistance for pressing problems in urban areas e. Adoption of fiscal measures for equalizing educational opportunities for economically and socially deprived children in large centers f. Incorporation of areawide vocational educational programs in metropolitan areas g. Last and most importantly, "buying into" present Federal programs of direct assistance to local government, thereby transforming the existing Federal-local relationship into a Federal-State relationship. Failure by the States to do this in effect transfers fiscal, and a considerable degree of political responsibility for large city problems to the Federal Government and contributes in the long run to their eventual dismemberment from the State. 6. Federal legislation to: a. Combine aid categories b. Strengthen State revenue systems by providing Federal credit for State income tax payments c. Give preference to general local governments in contrast to special districts d. Modify "single State agency" requirements 7. Steps already taken at Federal level a. Consultation with State and local governments in framing program regulations or changes therein b. Honoring of intra-State districting for economic develop- ment planning c. Congressional requirement for grant applications to receive review and comment of local governments and of regional planning bodies 38 d. Congressional authorization of Federal aid for establish- ment and operation of State offices of urban or local affairs D. Increasing Interest in Modernizing State and Local Government 1. Report of the Committee for Economic Development 2. Local government modernization program of the United States Chamber of Commerce 3. Increasing interest of the AFL-CIO and the National Association of Manufacturers 4. State Legislative Program of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations ■kiz-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k-k Changes in local government are always difficult and usually contro- versial. The following excerpt is illustrative of the ferocity with which changes in the status quo are greeted by some local officials. A recent article had this to say about the CED report on "Modernizing Local Govern- ment., " ...This entire report is a sweeping denial that the American people have any capacity for self government. It recommends a gigantic step in our centralization of government that all Communist authorities agree will facilitate the Communist takeover of the U.S.A. , the last strong, able opposition to the Communist world conquest.... These industrialists who so blithely sponsor such a sweeping blow at the foundations of our American democracy ought to realize what they do. We must all recall and possibly recall with emphasis the statement of Stalin who said "when the time comes for us to hang the American capitalists they will sell us the rope." This report makes us have a higher regard for the prophesies of Stalin* .. .Pennsylvania Township News, January, 1967 STATE EXPERIENCES IN DISTRICTING Second Panel Panel Participants D. David Brandon, Moderator V. R. Stuebing Bob Cornett Harold I. Ames James Miles 41 STATE EXPERIENCES IN DISTRICTING; NEW YORK D. David Brandon Deputy Director Office of Planning Coordination, New York There is obviously a legitimate role for a larger than local and smaller than state framework for comprehensive planning purposes. The problem is that the states are now faced with actually implementing some system which provides an areawide framework — whether it be based on "substate areas," "regions," or "districts." The State of New York tackled this problem several years ago because it was felt that the state had to have this kind of framework, midway be- tween state and local planning. And in the past few years New York has developed a regional framework. Each of these regions -- we are calling them regions for lack of any reason to use a different term -- have a role as a point for developing a regional plan, a comprehensive plan, which in New York we think of as social, economic and physical — very broad based. The regions are also a point for interchange and communication between government levels. We feel that this is a place where we can meet and ex- plore state and local problems and issues. We can exchange information and hopefully arrive at a common direction, a common framework, that can be supported at Federal, state, and local levels as we build in that parti- cular section of our state. In effect then, our regions are providing a linkage. New York State has a great deal of diversity, although people from outside the state may have only one view of it. We have a world popula- tion center, but we have only 3.2 percent of the land developed. New York's weather ranges from zero degrees to temperate. Its population den- sity ranges from zero per square mile up to 135,000 per square mile. Our political views have the same kind of wide range from triple dyed conser- vative to pink dyed liberal, and our transportation varies from very minor farm-to-market roads to major mass transit systems. Our economic tempo varies from stationary to supersonic. So, even though we are one of the urban northeastern states, there is a terrific range of activity within the state. Our counties serve as both statistical and planning units for state and local purposes. We feel that the diversified needs of our residents require a broad local base for their fulfillment. We find that county government in the case of New York has the flexibility and the strength to become this kind of broad local jurisdiction. These features, of course, vary from state to state depending upon legislation, constitution, and a variety of conditions that may exist. But there are many local needs that obviously go beyond very small local unit boundaries, and the counties in many cases can fulfill this kind of service demand. 42 In New York State, we are de-emphasizing metropolitan planning. We feel that regional and metropolitan planning are similar in type and detail, and that we don't care to duplicate effort, but rather to create a single framework which provides a middle level planning effort. We are, therefore, covering the entire state with regional planning areas. We don't have a series of metropolitan areas with holes in between because they happen to be counties that don't meet an SMSA classification, or some other criteria. The slightly larger regional unit in the case of New York State also elimi- nates continuous boundary changes that come about because there is a census reclassification. We find that it is better in New York to deal with a five-county regional program focused on the Syracuse center than it is to fool with a three-county unit right now, and then have to change to a four- county unit in a few years because of a continuous shifting of organizational structure. We prefer to start with the total area. Planning by regional units and planning in a broad context has a long history in New York. This would date back to the Clarence Stein, Henry Wright reports to Al Smith over 40 years ago. There was a lot of work done through the 30' s. More recently, the Office of Regional Development, which was one of the offices absorbed into our new agency, published Change , Challenge and Response which set the framework for today's regions. I might say that Change, Challenge and Response has been out of print for several years. It is a collector's item. If any of you have copies that you don't like or want, the Office of Planning Coordination would love to expand its library supply. We have tried to use a series of basic guidelines in developing our regions. Firstly, counties are visualized as building blocks. Because we do not split them, they can be used for county and local planning coordi- nation, or they can be used as statistical blocks for data handling. Se- condly, we have been concerned with recognizing the economic and social focal points in the state, for we feel that this is essential in today's dynamic urban society. The people focus is the critical factor, and our regional boundaries reflect economic and social in addition to geographic interrelationships. In addition, we believe that growth potential is re- lated to population clustering. Thus nine of the twelve regions in New York have an SMSA as a focal point. There have been cases in which the geographical location of a county has led to the development of ties with more than one area, where it is drawn in more than one direction. An example of this is Wyoming County which is in the Buffalo-Rochester area. After considerable discussion with us, and considerable thought, they decided they would prefer to be with the Buffalo area rather than with the Rochester area. From an analy- tical standpoint it was sort of a toss-up, and there was no reason why this wish could not be recognized. The same was the case with Cortland County which chose to relate to the Syracuse area rather than the Binghamton area. They too were a midpoint county with a drawing relationship in both direc- tions and had some splintering of relationships. In the case of New York City, We have a unique situation that involves more than one state. We have a special interstate framework with New Jersey, 43 Connecticut, and New York attempting to give some kind of regional focus. In New York State we have divided our portion of that area into three units — one is the Long Island counties, one the city proper, and one the counties of the lower Hudson — so that we have units with a meaningful interrelation- ship. When we considered the option of following the administrative boundaries of various state agencies, we found that it would be impossible to directly relate these boundaries to our regional concept. In our state there are probably over 50 different units that exist for administrative purposes; county boundaries are splintered in many ways and directions for this reason. The basic difference between the forest division administrative units and the health department administrative units provides a good illustration of the reason for this splintering effect. While the health department's focus is on people, the forest division focuses on trees. To demand that they have exactly the same administrative boundaries doesn't make sense. This doesn't mean that there shouldn't be common boundaries for planning and development and program purposes; but when you actually administer programs of the state, it is very valid to have these adjusted to the particular needs of the agency. In some cases the agency can get along very well with only two or three breakdowns of the state for administrative purposes. In other cases, it needs many more than the 12 planning regions that we work with. This depends on the nature of the agency's program. In many cases the departments them- selves don't have the same administrative region for each of their programs. In practice, we find that this has not created a major problem, because for planning and analysis purposes we all use the counties as building blocks, and this data base and planning base lets us combine and analyze programs and agency activities without much conflict. We also feel that the Federal programs in every case need not follow boundaries. In fact there are examples which would indicate that they should not follow boundaries. We had some discussion this morning of some Appalachian programs and EDA programs which are examples of programs built on negative criteria. In effect, they are looking at particular conditions in our society and our country which are negative conditions, i.e., a low level of income, a low level of economic impact and activity. In most cases these areas have a relationship to a more dynamic economic center and for planning purposes should really be related that way. At least this is true in states such as New York where we don't have quite as much vast open space as some of the western states. We, therefore, would not feel dreadfully upset if the Appalachia boundaries or the EDA boundaries were to vary slight- ly from our own planning districts. They don't at the moment, but as an ex- ample, if a county has just become qualified for addition to an economic development district, should we suddenly throw out all the framework that has been set up for a continuous long-range comprehensive planning program, add the county in one place and subtract it in another to keep up with this ever changing evaluation of conditions? I don't think so. I think the districts or regions that are set up should have validity for a very broad long-range comprehensive planning purpose and that specific programs, whether they be state or Federal, should take this into account, evaluate it and use these boundaries if possible but not be absolutely wedded to a single boundary system. 44 Our framework for planning and development of the 12 regions in New York is one in which we are trying to provide maximum flexibility for local initiative, for county units. We have a variety of state laws which can be used so that the regions can employ several different organizational patterns. The local legislation which established regional boundaries is open-ended so that additional counties can be added at any point. At this time we have planning and development organizations in existence in nine of the twelve regions, or rather in existence for at least part of the multi-county areas involved. The planning and development process is an ongoing one; the regions — which are made up of from two to eight counties, which are populated with from 200,000 to 8 million inhabitants, and which cover land areas ranging from 300 to 7,000 square miles — are working with us in a common effort to progress along the route we have laid out. 45 STATE EXPERIENCES IN DISTRICTING: GEORGIA V. R. Stuebing Deputy Director Georgia State Planning Bureau Georgia's experience in substate districting goes back at least as far as 1947. In 1947, we created in the Atlanta metropolitan area one of the first metropolitan planning commissions in the country. However, it wasn't until the late 1950 's and early 1960 's that our statewide system of multiplanning agencies was established. In the late 50 's there was a growing awareness, or concern -- on the part of our leaders in state and local government, in our private sector, and in our educational institutions -- that our urban as well as our rural counties or areas could benefit greatly by pooling their efforts on a multicounty basis for the purpose of attacking mutual problems of planning and development. In 1959, a group of 11 counties in the northwestern section of our state joined together in a voluntary association to promote planning and development activity in their Coosa Valley region. This multicounty approach to planning and development proved successful and served as an example of what might be done throughout the state. Primarily as a result of the experience in this 11-county region, our general planning and enabling legislation was amended in 1960 to facilitate the establishment of official multicounty planning agencies, or as we term them, planning and development commissions. With this new legislative tool available, our state planning agency, along with other interested parties, went to work to try to promote and sell throughout the state this idea of the advantages to be gained by a multicounty approach to planning and development activity. The basic pitch was that local government could benefit from the creation of an organizational framework for cooperative action. Such a framework would allow local governments to pool resources, to obtain technical assistance for the individual communities and counties within the multicounty area, and to deal with those problems and those opportunities that were wider than the jurisdiction of any single local government. We, as most other states, went through the process of preparing studies to determine what kind of logical groupings of counties we might have. We tried to delineate these "logical groupings" based on factors of mutual interest and other unifying features. However, in the final analysis the decision as to which local governments would join together to form one of these multicounty organizations was a decision of the local governments that were involved or concerned. After those decisions were made, the local governments adopted the necessary ordinances and resolutions to officially establish a multicounty 46 commission. The pattern which was followed in most instances was that both the county seat government (a municipality) and the county government of each participating county named one member to this area commission. Thus, typically in our state there are two representatives of the local governments for each county on the area commission. In 1961, our state established the policy of providing financial assis- tance to these area commissions on a matching and contract basis, provided that the area commission met certain area and state established criteria as to its organization and its activity. The area commission program has expanded during the past seven years and so has the states' s program of assistance to these area groups. Today we have 17 area planning and develop- ment agencies which encompass 148 of our 159 counties, and the state assis- tance to these 17 multicounty commissions will exceed $800,000 during this present fiscal year. Two of the principal underlying strengths of the area commissions and, conversely, perhaps two of the underlying weaknesses, depending on your view, are these: First, in our state the creation of these area commissions has been based upon local decisions requiring affirmative official actions made in concert by the city and county governments of the area as opposed to something being superimposed on the area by a higher level of government. With this arrangement, there is a very strong feeling of local involvement, concern, and responsibility for the success of the area program. The second significant point is that the programs of these area officials are comprehensive or multifunctional in their approach. That is, they are con- cerned with any and all matters that are meaningful or of significance to the development of the multicounty area. So while the state has a very strong interest and involvement in the area commission program, in the final analysis, it is the local governments which call the shots. Another significant point is that Georgia's system of substate district- ing resulted from the recognition of the potential of an approach which or- ginated at the state and local level rather than being a response or reaction to Federal legislation. However, as new Federal programs were enacted calling for administration on a multi jurisdictional basis, our already existing area commissions were utilized. For example, the 0E0 designated the area commis- sions as regional community action agencies. The Federal -State Appalachian Regional Commission recognizes the area commissions in the Appalachian por- tion of our state as local development districts. The Farmers Home Adminis- tration is utilizing the area commissions to prepare areawide water and sewer plans. EDA has designated 11 of these 17 area commissions as economic de- velopment districts. I don't mean to imply that we haven't had problems with the federal programs, just as all of you have had, but perhaps we were in a little better position to deal with them since we already had our multicounty commissions pretty well established. I'm not going to attempt a detailed discussion of the activities and accomplishments of the area commissions or their existing or potential re- lationship to state level planning activities. However, in general terms, the area programs include area wide planning, research, resource development, 47 local planning assistance, public information services, coordination, and other special services within the multicounty region,, We've utilized the area commissions in our state comprehensive outdoor recreation planning, and we intend to utilize them in our other state level planning activities. For the work of the area commissions to be meaningful, we realize that the state should have a well-defined concept of statewide development goals within which framework the regional planning agencies can undertake and effectuate their programs. Likewise, the state government should have a unified policy for the development of the state and its individual regions. I wouldn't pretend that we have all this, but we are trying to work in that direction. Our state planning program will seek to identify regional development policies for the state. In order to help identify such policies, we are undertaking a pilot project with one of these area commissions now; the project is designed to formulate a comprehensive regional planning program for the commission and will identify the proper relationship to the state government of both the program and the commission. This pilot program will attempt to identify long-range goals, objectives, and plans for the region, the local authority and capacity to carry out these plans, the relationship to comprehensive and functional state plans, and state government's role and responsibility in effectuating the regional plans. This multicounty programming would identify areawide program needs and priorities and these areawide development programs would provide systematic regional information on priorities. We feel that the area planning and development commission will play an important role in the development of functional state planning programs. In summary, we are convinced of the merit of the area commission pro- gram. That's why the state has encouraged the area commissions and helped finance them, attempts to advise them and coordinate their activities, and strives to make their role even more meaningful in the state planning pro- cess. However, we also recognize that our area commission program is an experimental effort and that it's still in a period of evolution. But we also feel that it has a great potential to offer our state and our local governments . 48 STATE EXPERIENCES IN DISTRICTING: KENTUCKY Bob Cornett Director Kentucky Area Development Office At a conference of planners to discuss planning, I cannot deal with sub-state districting without dealing with the planning aspects of sub-state districting. And since "planning" as a term has been so misused as to become almost meaningless, I feel obliged first to set forth my particular predisposition concerning "planning." My predisposition is simple? planning for public functions must be integrated into the political process. My reasons likewise are simple: a planning system which is not integrated into the political process either becomes ineffective or politically illegitimate. Of these two results, in- effectiveness is easily the more tolerable. An ineffective planning process is a mere waste of money and source of frustration for some planners; that this is a tolerable condition is evidenced by the millions of dollars and tons of paper now being used on "plans" the most productive use for which will be to keep library catalog departments busy. Political illegitimacy is a different matter. Our system of govern- ment is rooted in the premise that decisions made in the name of the people must be related, in an appropriately-sanctioned manner, to constituency opinion. Since the political process is the process by which constituency opinion is determined and given force, a planning function which fails to subordinate itself to this political process is squarely in conflict with a basic element of our form of government. Such a planning function has no legitimacy. I doubt that many would disagree with the need to relate planning to the political process. I have learned from sad experience, however, that government technicians like myself and the other people here — I call us bureaucrats — can very easily overlook this elementary need. Our experience in Kentucky with sub-state districting is all the evidence I need to demonstrate this point. The impetus for sub-state districting in Kentucky came from Governor Breathitt, who was responding to the frustrations expressed by local leaders in their efforts to make sense out of the myriad of Federal and state pro- grams with which they have to contend. They wanted at least a degree of geographical consistency so that they could waste less time going to meetings concerning these many programs «, When the Governor assigned my office the task of achieving some consistency, however, we perceived the problem from the vantage point of state bureaucrats; we looked for a districting scheme that would meet the needs of state and Federal agencies. This approach 49 involved an examination of how the various agencies were districted and the rationale for their districting patterns. Overlay maps were prepared to help identify common features and differences and, as one observer noted, the result looked like a giant can of worms. Since no pattern emerged, or realistically could have been expected to emerge from such a process, we found ourselves examining the relative merits of the districting patterns of the various agencies. They key question was "Who has the best map?" Until then, we could not have imagined how amazingly logical and scientific the agencies had been in drawing their lines. They had spent years in research on every conceivable relevant factor from highway traffic counts to newspaper circulation to unlicensed dogs to the incidence of worms in infants. Several agencies had been so scientific as to use computers, and this created some dialogue concerning the number of factors given to the computer. The champion, if memory serves me, fed 128 factors to the computer. This dialogue promised to force us to use more factors and a bigger computer than anyone else had used, and incidentally to keep ourselves occupied for a few years. During these many enlightening discussions, we were aware in a vague sort of way that our programs were intended to serve the people who lived in the state, but this was too vaguely perceived to a significant factor. At some point, probably out of desperation, we took a step foreign to our whole upbringing and actually talked with some of the people "out there". We were dumbfounded to discover that they knew some things. Worse, however, we were forced to the admission that we had been missing the whole point of our task. If we had continued to a conclusion with the basic approach under which we were operating, we might have been able to design a districting plan technically superior to any other, and the Governor might have been able to force adherence to the plan by state agencies and, indirectly, by some Federal agencies. We would have had some 10 to 20 districts, each with field personnel from state and Federal agencies and each with numerous citizens boards. At least six types of citizens boards, all with at least some "planning" duties, are already in existence or can be specifically antic- pated: the Office of Economic Opportunity has its "community action boards"; the Economic Development Administration has its "economic development districts"; the Appalachian Regional Commission has "local development districts"; the Department of Housing and Urban Development has its planning boards and probably will have proposed "community development" boards to operate in non-urban areas; the mental health agencies have regional mental health boards; and the general health agencies have boards for general health. These citizens boards raise the issue of political legitimacy,, Very clearly, the Federal and state agencies are getting more and more heavily involved with problems historically viewed as local in character. The 50 community development nature of these programs and the use of local citizens in these efforts is sufficient proof of this point; agencies would not need citizens boards to do a purely state or Federal job. Under the approach we were taking, we would have had numerous citizens boards, spawned and nurtured by Federal and state agencies, and operating local programs in districts designed for the convenience of state and Federal agencies. Such boards could at best achieve political account- ability through the circuitous route of a voter to a Congressman, to a point high in the Federal bureaucracy, through layers of hierarchy to the field man dealing with the local board on local problems » This is so cumbersome as to be totally inadequate as a method of achieving political legitimacy. Our approach, in short, would have permitted "planning" systems to operate outside the political process. Once we realized our basic error, our course of action was clear. We looked for districting arrangements which would facilitate effective local control over the many local programs to be operated on a district basis. This involved determining areas which represented a "sense of community" in the eyes of local leaders. Our process for determining this was not scientific; it consisted essentially of asking leaders what counties could work well together. Surprisingly, a clear consensus existed except in one or two borderline cases. Not surprisingly, this consensus was not greatly at odds with what would have come out of our computer. Kentucky has 120 counties and these are the basic general-purpose units of organization. Local leaders can work effectively with adjoining counties and in some instances can stretch further, but they cannot work effectively in the 10 to 20 districts needed by most state and Federal agencies. We were able to accommodate to these different size requirements, however, by grouping two or more small districts into a larger one which would be adaptable to the needs of the state and Federal agencies. This process produced 31 areas which were the locally-defined "communities" and 15 larger districts to be used by state and Federal agencies. Drawing a map in this manner does not in itself integrate planning with political processes, of course. It does, however, make possible the evolution of viable organizations which are truly local, rooted in local constituency processes and therefore politically legitimate. An area which already views itself as a community makes much easier the identification of public consensus and of appropriate public policy. Drawing a map the way we started, from the top down instead of the ground up, would have made virtually impossible the establishment of any kind of local organization except one accountable to the Federal or state bureaucracy. Our approach not only helps to obtain local accountability for local public programs, but largely it answers the problem of selling state and Federal agencies on adapting to the map. Agency officials are being asked to accommodate to local interests and preferences, not merely to the judgment of a fellow bureaucrat. As a consequence most agencies are in 51 fact accommodating to the spirit of the map and are organizing their planning activities around it. A few have eviei>. found it advantageous to organize their operational functions to coincide with the boundaries, although this was not a primary objective. The approach we finally used thus very probably is proving to be the key factor in getting acceptance for the map. The fact that our initial approach to the problem was unworkable and inappropriate was only partly due to our ignorance; it was mostly a product of the nature of bureaucracy. Even intelligent bureaucrats are by definition insulated from public opinion and public pressures. This insulation, which of course serves a necessary purpose, inevitably dis- torts vision; it forces the bureucracy to look from an agency out instead of from a citizen "up". This distortion of vision, although a problem in itself, is compounded when combined with the rules of survival under which bureaucracies operate. These laws require that a bureaucracy use whatever tools it can find to help it do the job for which it is accountable; it cannot waste resources on functions for which it is not directly accountable. Federal and state agencies are accountable for particular results, such as for example the economic improvement of an area. They will use, among other things, local leadership resources to help them get their job done. They can neither see, nor afford to care much, that these leadership resources, if fragmented among Federal and state agencies pre- occupied with their own objectives, can be destroyed as vehicles for the establishment of effective political legitmacy. Each agency thus inevitably prefers to have a local board which is, if not the private property of the agency, at least highly sympathetic toward the agency. We in my office would like to take pride in finally rising above these weaknesses inherent in bureaucrats. We did, after all, ultimately develop a respect for constituency processes and set out to protect them, so we ought lo be entitled to some credit. When we are honest about it, however, our true respect for constituency processes developed at about the time we found ourselves in trouble in carrying out a mapping assignment. We needed local support in order to achieve the objectives for which we were accountable. We thus behaved in precisely the way we think other bureaucrats behave and we therefore cannot claim superior wisdoffi. Perhaps our lack of superior wisdon helps emphasize my basic point. We bureaucrats may talk about subordinating planning to the political process but we really mean it only if we are forced to; our clear preference is to use political processes for our own ends. 52 STATE EXPERIENCES IN DISTRICTING: CONNECTICUT Harold I. Ames Administrator Connecticut Interregional Planning Program It is through this assignment that I have awakened to the realization that it has been 10 years since state government in Connecticut undertook an active role in substate districting. The opportunities to contemplate and review the past have been few and far between in recent years consider- ing the needs for new programs and new approaches to the future development of a fast growing state. Certainly no one present here today can expect to find from the ex- perience of another state a complete blueprint for substate districting at home. However, we can hope that there may be some benefits to be de- rived from exposure to experiences in other places. In this presentation let me first provide you some basic perspective of Connecticut so that you may better judge the applicability of whatever lessons may be drawn. Connecticut is a small state physically covering an area of 5000 square miles. The population today is approximately 3 million, meaning an average density of one person per acre. This makes Connecticut the fourth highest state in population density. Throughout this century the growth rate has been consistently above the national rate. Connecticut is basically an urban state with only one percent of the total population classed as rural farm. Another important factor related to substate districting is the distri- bution of people on the land. Connecticut has no single dominant city or metropolitan area. The largest city, Hartford, has a population of 160,000. Population of the metropolitan area is just over 600,000. The next two largest cities are over 150,000 in population and the next two are between 100 and 150,000. Seven municipalities fall in the range of 50-100,000 and 54 between 10 and 50,000. All of this is an indication of a high degree of suburban development around relatively small central cities. Finally as a major item in this Connecticut perspective is the govern- mental structure, quite different than in many parts of tte country and very significant in the districting program of Connecticut. There are 169 incorporated towns covering the total land area of the state. They range from 5 to 65 square miles in area. There is no unin- corporated land area in the state and since 1959 counties have not existed as governmental units » With that perspective let me now review the highlights of the regional planning program of Connecticut. In the 1957 session of the General Assembly 53 funds were appropriated to the Connecticut Development Commission to carry- out certain responsibilities, assigned to them in 1955, but unfunded at that time. There were the responsibilities of - 1. Defining logical economic and comprehensive planning regions; 2. Promoting the establishment of regional planning agencies under state enabling legislation; and 3. Providing technical and financial assistance to the agencies formed. The state defined the boundaries of the regional planning agencies; their formation required action by the local legislative bodies of the towns within each region. Jurisdiction of the regional planning agencies extended over the entire region as defined by the state. The responsibi- lities of the regional agencies were to establish working relationships among the towns of the region and to perform a comprehensive regional planning program for long range development. They also served as an ad- visory and review body on a multitude of short range inter-municipal pro- blems. In the process of defining these regions the Development Commission sought to identify regional communities of interest. Given the development pattern of the state this generally meant demarcation of the spheres of in- fluence of urban centers. These demarcations were drawn upon the basis of the relatively small building blocks - the 169 town government units. To determine the direction and degree of town orientations to the urban centers of the state a series of statewide analyses were undertaken. This included study of the circulation patterns of daily newspapers, the commuting patterns of workers, the parcel delivery schedules of central city depart- ment stores, patterns of intertown telephone calling, service areas of general hospitals and review of various other area definitions. In order to take into account future prospects, consideration was also given to drainage patterns and topographic features, plans for new highways and the growth trends in population and employment location. In the end there resulted a profile for each municipality indicating the directions and degrees of orientation to the various urban centers and providing a basis upon which tentative regional definitions could be made. Final de- finitions resulted only after a series of local meetings exploring public sentiment and opinion. As required by the statutes, the State Development Commission has carried on an active program of promotion of regional planning agencies through this ten year period. In addition it has administered a program of state grant assistance to established regional planning agencies. Finally the status today. Of the fifteen regions defined to cover the state, ten now have created regional planning agencies. Nine of these have active staffed planning programs and the tenth is now seeking a staff. These ten regions contain 92 percent of the state's population and cover 65 54 percent of the total land area. One of these regions was purported by the American Society of Planning Officials to have the first officially adopted regional plan in the country while a second was named by the American Institute of Planners as the outstanding metropolitan planning agency of 1966. Three of the remaining five regions are near the point of organization. The legislative bodies, which in many cases are town meetings, have approved participation in regional planning agencies in 129 out of the 169 municipalities of the state. Gradually the role of these defined regions has expanded as their boundaries have been adopted by numerous agencies involved in regional iza- tion of their programs. These have included United fund operations, mental health planning, regional community college planning, health services, li- brary services planning, and numerous others. Looking over the past ten years we feel we have made some forward pro- gress but we recognize also a long road ahead. 55 STATE EXPERIENCES IN DISTRICTING: COLORADO James Miles Director Colorado State Planning Office Colorado has had quite a long history in this business of regionalism and I'm going to detail quite a bit of it, perhaps as a backdrop to the disenchantment we are now going through with the whole idea. In the first place, Colorado started out at the turn of the century with what they called a Board of Immigration which had the job of trying to lure new settlers into the area. In trying to do this, they decided they would divide the state into 14 regions, and these would be used to develop publicity frames. I might add that they did an excellent job. In fact, we found some of the old reports the other day, and they beat any of the things we are doing now. We are a little bit discouraged about that part of the program. The Board of Immigration was replaced in the 30 's by a state planning agency. The state planning agency had the good judgment to pick up the 14 regions, and they used these as the basis of statistical reporting in what was known as the Colorado Yearbook . This was published each year in almanac form and proved so useful that it finally was published every other year, then every third year, and finally it went out of existence completely about three years ago. In 1963, the newly elected governor was infected with agency combination disease and decided that planning should be a part of the state economic development agency. He established us in the Division of Commerce and Development. We had the good judgment to avoid all 14 regions and reidentify the state in six new regions having nothing to do with the original 14. The six regions proved to be so well drawn that we dropped the first one, because we couldn't find enough people there to organize. Then we combined it with two others. We ended up with essentially the four river drainage basins and the Denver metropolitan plug in the center. Again we used good judgment about the Denver metropolitan plug, because our central region didn't coincide with the Denver metropolitan region either. 56 The old state planning division's first real attempt at making a regional planning analysis -- at doing an actual state planning project on a multi- county level -- was in an area known as the Gunnison-Uncompahgre Region. It is a five county region, and it is essentially a drainage basin within itself. It was not a very successful program for a lot of reasons, but it did at lease create the philosophy that we should do things on a multi-county basis. We used this concept of the drainage basin in 1963 when we finally came around to trying to break up the entire state into the five regions with which we presently work. Though I am being somewhat critical of our structure at this point, I must say that this entire exercise in regionalism did create the interest and did permit us to reconstitute the state planning office this year. When we divided the state into the five regions, we were attempting to organize each of the regions as a counterpart to the state's economic advisory council. We went into each of the regions and attempted to organize some official body that we could make contact with. We then launched into various kinds of study areas -- the principal one being in the Arkansas River Drainage Basin, which is in the far east corner. It is an agricultural area which is primarily oriented toward problems of irrigation and water supply, and in which we have had the most effective program to date. The success of that program -- we have to be frank -- is dependent upon the fact that the Bureau of Reclamation has a large river development program for this region. As a result, a great deal of interest was generated in this particular area. However, in trying to implement that program and because the failures we had had in the Gunnison-Uncompahgre study area, we decided that there were a great many things which had to be done on a state- wide basis. We couldn't break these down on a regional basis. At this point, we picked out three things which we felt were applicable to a regional analysis. These were principally land use, economic base, and water resources. All other things -- the normal planning folklore --we decided to tackle from a state- wide standpoint, which we did in a limited way. At any rate we did carry through on the Arkansas Valley reports, or attempts at them, which we are just now completing. Then we hit our next big problem. Trying to service these regions with a limited state planning agency and really being comprehensive about it, or trying to do something in terms of a planning framework, we found to be a very time-consuming business. 57 I think we should try to close up by saying three or four things about regions and why we are more or less dropping the regional concept in the strict planning sense. We found that trying to service a number of commissions which are not within the natural institutional framework of government was completely unworkable. We found no basis for keeping the interest, for maintaining the membership, or for really implementing anything at that particular level. The second thing we found was that regionalism, or what we were calling state planning, really wasn't accomplishing very much in solving the problems of coordinating state agencies in functional planning areas, nor was it doing very much in terms of our relationship with Federal agencies, particularly the Farmers Home Administration, Forest Service, etc. We also came to the rather firm conclusion that there is a hierarchy of planning, and our problem was trying to get it back down to the local person. By trying to side step the traditional government framework, we really weren't doing very much to help the problem; we were really compounding the entire situation. So we feel that our big problem at this time is to step back and to take a good hard look at what level of planning we are talking about, rather than try to inject a new level between the state and all the other jurisdictions. Who is going to be responsible for it, and where does the state actually fit into the picture? Finally, we felt that we had to have a great deal of flexibility. If there is such a thing as regionalism, and if there is some value in trying to organize units of this kind, we want it to be a great deal more flexible. We will not say this is the state; these are the five areas we are going to have, or the 14 areas, or whatever the number might be. Rather we will say that for different purposes these regions, these areas, or these multi-county districts are going to be different sizes, and they're going to serve different purposes, and we're going to have to be flexible enough within the agency to adapt to the needs as they arise. In the final analysis, we feel that state planning is state-wide in concept. One of the more serious problems we have from the state standpoint is that it's rather artificially drawn also. Maybe the problem area we should be tackling is how to get with New Mexico and do something about the poverty areas on the southern border. 58 STATE EXPERIENCES IN DISTRICTING : DISCUSSION SUMMARY Mr. Brandon (moderator), in summarizing the state case studies, noted the variety in their approaches to the problems of substate dis- tricting within the common theme of the important role of local input, concern, and responsibility as part of the effort. The stress on variation between the states highlights the importance of leaving the framework of districting fluid and flexible in order to provide mean- ingful treatment in meeting each particular aspect of people's problems. Mr. Parker (Institute on State Programming), noted that New York has ranged from conceptions of regional government dealing with all area- wide planning to notions of regions which are simply functional subdivi- sions for state programs, and inquired as to the present evolution. Mr. Brandon responded that at one time it was thought that the Governor of New York would appoint regional planning councils after the regions had been defined by the state , This did not involve local gov- ernment in any responsible way. Now the state is using the same regions but urging local (county) governments to execute the necessary legisla- tive action to create a regional body to serve the latter' s purposes. This method allows for structural variation to meet individual regional needs. State planners want the counties, as the responsible units of local government, to take the action to develop multi-county regions. They are aiming for a meeting ground where, within the total state planning context, they can have an understanding of the regional varia- tions that exist within the state. The region will provide a meaningful framework of two-way communication with the state for planning, develop- ment, and regional diversity. Mr. Zitzman (Appalachian Regional Commission), suggested that Wash- ington has a tendency to sit off in an ivory tower and draw district boundaries without much consultation with local development groups. How- ever, he pointed out that HUD,inth£ 7 ^1 program, did make a point of finan- cing multi-county planning units, such as those in Georgia, when it was demonstrated that they were really reflective of county level programs. He suggested that state planners should be particularly aware of amending legislation, and should see to it that such amendments really represent the wishes of county level governments and not just state or Federal designation. In addition, the Council of State Planning Agencies should take a strong stand on whether the Washington or the state or local level will carve out multi-county districts. Mr. Brandon suggested that there is a conflict between the need for permanent structure for long range planning and evaluation of an area, 59 and varying Federal program boundary requirements. The latter often force states, counties, and local governments to create a framework which they feel is not going to do the best job but which is necessary for the use of a particular program. In addition, the regular reevaluation of eligibility criteria, such as that done by EDA, results in periodic re- definition of district composition and thus undermines efforts to create a permanent planning structure. Mr. Miller (Tennessee State Planning Commission), stated that through the years the states have been goaded into dividing themselves into districts; it is confusing the issue to say that the counties have or should take the initiative in the formation of these districts. The Tennessee legislature, partly in response to this external goading, did pass enabling legislation for districts in 1965. This legislation in- cludes a mechanism by which municipalities and counties can designate their representatives to the district's governing body once the district has been delineated, and thus provides a constant in the district program. Yet the program has not become a permanent fixture in Tennessee. One of the reasons is that the state is concerned that it might be spawning self- perpetuating, potential pressure groups which would tend to fractionate the state and be unconcerned about the interests of the state as a whole. Mr. Brandon cautioned that the need is for unified pressure groups from the various parts of the state, rather than fractioned ones which have no agreement on what their particular portion of the state needs, as now is the case. Mr. Hartman (National Service to Regional Councils, NAC and NLC), asked what the essential features of the state's planning relationship to regional councils, particularly those composed of local government officials, should be. Mr. Cornett (Kentucky Area Development Office), responded that state planning will be oriented toward the articulation of long range program goals; regional entities will provide linkage between local needs and state plans. As this is an evolutionary process, formal linkages will be developed only gradually. Mr. Stuebing (Georgia State Planning Bureau), agreed that the re- lationship of the state government to the regional councils and local governments is in the process of evolution. He suggested that the state's role is to advise and assist the multi-county planning and de- velopment commissions in identifying and solving regional problems, and in developing meaningful programs. In Georgia, the removal of legisla- tion which restricted the membership of local elected officials on the commissions to less than a majority has allowed the commissions to func- tion as councils of government, and has therefore provided linkage. 60 Mr. Brandon closed the session by noting that local public offi- cials are almost always directly linked to the regional planning and de- velopment structure in some way. Therefore, the accumulation of multiple planning boards, which are established each time a new Federal program is enacted, leads to a problem of linkage and coordination. He suggested that a real effort should be made to strengthen a single organizational structure that could provide an overview, a comprehensive coordinating device. This would not preclude the use of special groups working in various functional areas or problem areas. 61 SECTION 701 OF THE HOUSING ACT OF 1954 : Discussion and Comments on Proposed Amendments Participants: Dave Hartley, Council of State Planning Agencies Peter Lewis, U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Harold Wise, American Institute of Planners Harold V. Miller, Tennessee State Planning Commission Joe Doherty, Farmers Home Administration, U. S. Department of Agri- culture Discussion of proposed amendments to Section 701 of the Housing Act centered around the inclusion of rural areas in planning legislation and the centralization of Federal planning authority in a single agency. The involvement of the states in planning, and their role in relation to Fed- eral planning legislation, was discussed. Comments on various substantive changes and amendments to planning legislation generated some remarks on the theoretical/philosophical underpinning of regionalism and the practi- cal defining of substate areas. Expansion of Section 701 to Include Rural Areas Mr. Doherty noted that the new concept of planning assistance to rural areas which is embodied in the proposed 701 amendments provides an alterna- tive to present patterns of urban growth. In addition, the amendments would cement into statute many of the broad concepts of planning — planning for human and natural resources, services as well as facilities -- which have recently received so much attention. Mr. Lewis pointed out that Federal funding of rural development districts is not new, but that the proposed amendments will make it easier. The purpose of Federal matching grants is to assist the states in taking action; the state planning agencies continue to have the paramount role in designating substate regions and in planning developmental programs. Mr. Miller suggested that technical assistance to communities -- parti- cularly the small and relatively unsophisticated ones -- is the most effec- tive way to upgrade them. Mr. Doherty emphasized the importance of the state agencies in the comprehensive planning process envisioned by the 701 amendments. Federal grants will be made available to state planning agencies, which could use the funds to carry out all or part of local planning programs, or could 62 transfer the funds to local district planning bodies for this purpose. Both county and multicounty units — defined as "growth centers" — could be designated as planning districts. A local planning agency could in- clude already established area planning and development groups, or an agency newly founded for this purpose. In any case, the state government would designate the area to be covered by the plan and the planning body to con- duct the program. The state also has an opportunity, through the state planning bureau, to work with the districts during the actual planning stages; both in the Overall Economic Development Plan and in program funding, the state can actively work with the district organization. Mr. Lewis suggested that there is a need to develop an understanding of why there is so much emphasis on districting and multijurisdictional planning. It is necessary to become problem oriented: creating districts simply as additional data sources is avoiding the issues. It is a complicated matter to determine what is regional and what is local in significance. The easy response is to cross back and forth between these lines. But because there exist local problems which occur commonly throughout the country does not necessarily mean that they are national problems. The tremendous number of local problems has resulted in the supplemental grant idea, as an incentive to produce action; yet if the problems are to be met in the long-run, a com- prehensive and coordinated approach will be a necessity. Comprehensive Planning Mr. Hartley noted that concern within HUD and without, in the 701 con- stituency, had led to overall reviews of the effectiveness of the legis- lation in terms of comprehensive planning. This concern was heightened by the passage in 1966 of Title II of the Metropolitan Development Act, which gave new Federal emphasis to planning for rural areas. Out of these dis- cussions came several 90th Congress bills (S.799, H.R. 8068, S. 1445) which attempted to strengthen the comprehensiveness of planning legislation and the coordinative power of Federal agencies. Mr. Wise commented that a recognition of Federal program proliferation, and the concomitant need for coordination would suggest that a single agency, strongly tied to the Chief Executive, would increase Federal effectiveness in dealing with state, local, and areawide planning. He added that proposed 701 amendments recognize and incorporate the role of state planning in re- ference to areawide agencies in both urban and nonurban situations. The re- view process (of Federal grant-in-aid programs) which is required of metro- politan planning agencies in section 204 would be extended to state planning agencies. The proposed allotment formula in the appropriations authorization would allow a state or metropolitan area to submit a work program to HUD in lieu of project by project applications. 63 SUMMARY AND NEXT STEPS Terrell Blodgett Administrative Assistant for Planning Office of the Governor of Texas One of the major points made this morning concerns the vital need for state initiative in the planning process. I think that one of the key things Peter Stern from TVA said was that only strong leadership by the state in defining substate regions can bring this whole matter into proper focus and coordination. Harold Sidman, the Deputy Director of the Bureau of the Budget, says that coordination is not neutral; I think that's some- thing that we as planners and as people involved in the governor's offices need to keep in mind. The governor's role cannot be neutral; coordination and leadership cannot be neutral, and it is not coordination and leadership if it is neutral . Dr. Herman raised a number of relevant questions in discussing health planning and its relationship to other functional areas of regional develop- ment. As he pointed out, health services are more and more frequently being visualized as a component of human resource development; as program interre- lationships grow, so does the need for coordinating action on the part of the states and the Federal Government. In other words, health planning is not a job for state health departments acting alone. It is related to welfare and vocational rehabilitation, education and employment opportunity, and thus provides a perfect opportunity for the states to take action. This program needs the executive leadership and coordination that only the gover- nor can give it. Let me say in regard to the Comprehensive Health Planning Act that if no one within your state — be it the governor's office, the department of administration, the planning agency responsible directly to him, or an in- teragency council chaired by him — has been given the responsibility for the planning functions authorized in the Act, I personally think that you may well have made a mistake in farming out this most important piece of legislation. Your governors have been asking for this responsibility in comprehensive planning for 5 to 10 years at least, and Congress responded last session with the Comprehensive Health Planning Act. It is now up to the governor to respond to the legislation. Dr. Herman indicated that the Public Health Service is interested in the Bureau of the Budget Circular A-80; however, he said that they have some other priorities first. With all due respect — and I think I express your sentiments as I know I do those of my governor — we will expect the Public Health Service to honor A-80 first and then their priorities. This not only applies to PHS but to other Federal agencies as well. Dr. Herman 64 suggested that the state people should not start with PHS and make it the whipping boy on coordination. But I think you have learned here today from the four panelists whom you had on multicounty jurisdictions that New York, Utah, Georgia and a number of other states are moving out in this area. PHS will be only one of several Federal agencies which will be working with the states. Because of the nature of the health act grants (sections 314-A and B), the state agencies have the opportunity to encourage a number of alterna- tive planning organizations within the state. You can foster, if you like, regional organizations which are composed of public officials or those with a mix of public and private officials. But we think that the type of organizational structure will vary from state to state, depending on in- dividual needs. In Texas, the Governor is encouraging the formation of councils of government. Our experience thus far has been good, and we think it can be a real tool to link the state and the localities in a meaningful program of planning not only for health but for many other programs - If you do en- courage councils of government, or regional planning organizations (pri- marily in the health field) you will need to do as Bob Young in the Balti- more COG has done. That is to beat some of the health planning structure and the health power structure to the draw in encouraging your regional officials to move into the field and not leave it to the health and wel- fare councils. Dave Brandon made one comment which I thought was particularly mean- ingful. He said that we can have common boundaries for planning without having common boundaries for delivery of services. It seems to me that this is a key item. I would have one small disagreement with Dave in re- gard to EDA boundaries. We feel that they too can be pulled into the re- gional situation. EDA itself says they are interested in comprehensive planning in its broadest sense. The EDA Act certainly limits this to some extent with its requirement that an economic development center have a population of under 250,000, and that an Economic Development District con- tain two or more redevelopment areas. We think the leeway is there, never- theless, and the EDD 1 s we have established in Texas follow what already are and what will be our regional boundaries in most cases. Where they do not, we have had some extenuating circumstances that involve not only EDA but other factors. I think that the panelists from Georgia, Kentucky, and the other states gave some fine examples. New York, Georgia, and Connecticut are moving out ahead of these Federal programs. What I would hope to hold out to you who have not begun is that it is not too late to move into these areas. It is not too late at all, because the Federal agencies are floundering. That is not a good word, but obviously they are not together. They have their own interests and organizations to push. The state can coordinate it; the state can bring some order out of these area, regional and district organizations. Certainly you need a linkage, a communication, a coordination, with not only local governments, but also with problems that exist and go beyond these city limits and these county boundaries. 65 Bob Cornett, from Kentucky, said the Federal Government is regionalizing the state. For us then, it's not a question of when, it's a question of how. It seems to me first of all that we can do our own districting. We could encourage regional organization by providing financial assistance, as several states are doing. We can begin to link the state to regional planning. We can take the initiative to coordinate the Federal programs. In Texas, we have done this in the lower Rio Grande Valley by joining an EDD and a COG. We have one board, one staff, and the Farmers Home Admini- stration is geared into it. This is the sponsoring agency for FHA; it will also be the sponsoring agency for Resource Conservation and Develop- ment and, if they will accept it, for comprehensive health planning in that area. They will be given the first shot at it, and only if they turn it down will it go to another organization. And finally, we can support organizations that are politically re- sponsible and politically accountable. Your governor and mine have talk- ed about 0E0 because Community Action Agencies are not politically ac- countable. I realize that states will differ, and perhaps the mix that you like will tend toward the private sector. We like the requirement of a minimum of 51 percent of public officials. Governor Connally has a great deal of faith and trust in the integrity and dignity of city and county officials. But we push COG' s mainly because they are composed of elected public officials who have the responsibility and the accountability at the local level to carry out these programs. We have 18 councils of governments, or regional planning councils now, and they are varying any- where from 51 percent up to 100 percent of public officials. Some of the 100 percent ones are pulling back, particularly where we have an EDD com- bination. They have had to, of course, because of the EDA law that re- quires the representation of the underemployed, the unemployed, ana the minority and all of the other groups. This is fine, we think, to bring them in and realize some political realities at the same time. It seems to us that about a one-third membership of private officials and a one third membership of private citizens in a council of governments gives you the opportunity not only for that representation but also for your so-called power structure. Finally, let me say that on Federal legislation, we hope that you will make your voices heard. I think the states are looking at a real opportunity in regional organization that can be of real help to your governor and your state operations. It's going to take lots of work. I wouldn't begin to say that we have done much of it; we have much to do. Let's get with it. PFNN STATE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES HIIIIIIIIIII AQQ007Q142Q57