CHAPTER 3 FRAGMENTATION OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR ADMINISTERING The Secretary of Labor is responsible for the implementation of the Executive Order. Other Federal agencies have primary responsibilities for determining compliance with the Order and its implementing regulations. The political rationale for fragmenting the responsibility for compliance and enforcement throughout certain Executive Branch Departments has its roots in the fragile political and financial history of preceding Executive order EEO compliance programs. Given the temper of the country and the Congress in 1941 any possible legislative enactment authorizing or funding equal employment opportunity was remote. Therefore, President Roosevelt's response to a threatened Negro march on Washington for a fair share of defense industry jobs was met with Executive Order 8802, financed from presidential contingency funds. From the very beginning this order, as well as its successor, Executive Order 9346, faced strong opposition from Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia in the form of to the Russell Amendment enacted by Congress in 1944 which prohibited funds for agencies created by Executive orders in existence for a period of more than 1 year. The Russell Amendment engendered a full 6-year hiatus of Executive order activity on fair employment until December 1951 when President Truman issued Executive Order 10308 creating the Committee on Government Contract Compliance. Executive Order 10308 and its successors remained on tenuous economic and political footing in that they were funded outside the regular budgetary process and were vulnerable to possible congressional appropriation riders terminating their existence. The necessary political groundwork for the President's Committee on Employment Opportunity (1961-1965), headed by then Vice President Johnson, reportedly included an understanding that its budget, financed through interagency funds, would not exceed $450,000. In sum, the limited funds politically available through interagency donations precluded any possibility of vesting total responsibility in a single agency. Under the terms of Executive Order 10925, the responsibilities of the President's Committee were limited to policy making, program oversight, and compliance and enforcement operations were assigned to those executive agencies and departments which award and administer contracts. However, largely because of the political implications of a visible budget assigned to the contracting agencies, it was not anticipated that the agencies would seek funding on a line item basis to staff their Executive Order With respect to staffing, the order responsibilities. provided that "They [the contracting agencies] are directed to appoint or designate, from among the agency's personnel, compliance officers. It shall be the duty of such officers to seek compliance with the objectives of this order by conference, concilia tion, mediation, or persuasion."l (Emphasis added.) Executive Order 11246 merely transferred to the Secretary of Labor the responsibility and authority originally assigned the President's Committee. Thus the fragmented structure was retained. Senator Willis Robertson of Virginia, in a move similar to that of Senator Russell in 1944, led Senate opposition to having the activity funded by contributions from the contracting agencies rather than through congressional appropriations (see Jobs and Civil Rights, p. 89). 1Executive Order 10925, Section 208 (a). This provision is carried over in Executive Order 11246 Although the Department was successful in obtaining congressional funds for OFCCP, the way was reportedly paved by an understanding that the budget of the office would not exceed that of its predecessor. Since 1967 the political and financial base of the Federal Contract Compliance Program has strengthened to the extent that the total program is financed through congressional appropriations on a line item basis and the size of the budget is no longer a controversial issue. Over the past 10 years, for example, the staff and budgetary resources of the total program have risen from 228 full-time positions and less than $5 million to over 1,900 full-time positions and approximately $40 million. Thus, as a means of diffusing staff and budgetary resources to avoid political opposition to the program, the continuation of the 2 present splintered structure is no longer necessary. The original programmatic rationale for fragmenting policy and oversight responsibilities from compliance and enforcement operations was based upon an assumption that since the equal opportunity 2The background paper prepared by R. J. Associ ates which apparently forms the basis for the congressional Black Caucus' Plan for Executive Reorganization of Federal Employment Rights Agencies erroneously asserts that "most of the contract compliance specialists in the Federal agencies who administer Executive Order |