This is typical of the almost daily struggle state and local education officials undergo in trying to cope with the Federal bureaucracy. Almost constant legal counsel is needed to interpret proposed regulations and their relation to existing Federal and state statutes. The vast expansion of specificity in statutes, requirements of Federal rules and regulations, and the explosion of requests for information at the Federal level has caused an almost complete loss of sight of the end product of education, a wel-adjusted and productive citizenry. Educators have become rule appliers and form completers.

In S. 6, now PL 94-142, providing for the education of handicapped children, I fear Congress has again become much too involved in the details of administering a state and local program. The proposed regulations for this statute have not yet been published, but based on the specificity of the law, I feel that this will prove to be one of the most burdensome Federally assisted programs in existence. Realizing the need to offer educational opportunities to all our handicapped children, I supported the passage of S. 6. However, looking at the paperwork that probably will be required to obtain the $2.3 million in Federal aid to supplement our $55.5 million state aid program for the handicapped, I wonder if support of this particular measure was, in the end result, justified.

One of the most serious abuses of the Executive rulemaking authority occurred this past August. In August, 1975, a memorandum was distributed from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Office of Civil Rights, pertaining to record keeping requirements on student discipline problems. This memorandum, received by my office the last week in August, imposed changes for school year 1975-76, which had already begun in many school systems and was scheduled to begin the first of September in others. The detail and volume of information required of local school systems were quite unrealistic, and a national protest arose over the timing and content of this document. I am certain that many of you are familiar with this situation through the reaction to these unrealistic demands by state and local school officials.

In the original memorandum the Office of Civil Rights used Regulation 45CFR80-6(b) as justification for its mandate of the record keeping procedure. This regulation reads: "Each recipient shall keep such records and submit to the responsible Department official or his designee timely, complete and accurate compliance reports at such times, and in such form and containing such information, as the responsible Department official or his designee may determine to be necessary to enable him to ascertain whether the recipient has complied or is complying with this part."

In my opinion, a "responsible Department official," could, under this regulation, even require the teachers of this nation to delineate the rest room requests of students by racial and ethnic groupings and give reasons for approving or disapproving these requests. The power to reach into a classroom and cause disruption of school room activities is a power that should be reserved only to the elected officials of our government who are directly responsible to the citizens.

In reviewing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, PL 88-352, which was referenced in the original memorandum of August, 1975, as the justification for regulation 45 CFR 80.6(b), I find section 602 states in reference to rules, regulations and orders to enforce Title VI: "No such rule, regulation or order shall become effective unless and until approved by the President." Gentlemen, I submit to you that the August, 1975 memorandum directing record keeping procedures not only failed to follow established procedures for rule making through publication in the Federal Register followed by a public comment period, but could possibly have been in violation of a Congressional mandate to obtain Presidential approval before making orders that would have such a vast impact on the schools of this nation.

The August, 1975 memorandum has been revised and made applicable to only the 3,000 school districts with the most minority students and the effective date of implementation has been postponed until the 1976-77 school year. Even with these changes, the rule making process via Federal Register publication and public comment has been ignored, as has been the requirement in OMB circular A-40 to obtain OMB clearance of record keeping requirements imposed by Federal agencies. These 3.000 school districts will be burdened with an execessive record keeping activity without the benefit of commenting or being heard on the desirability and necessity of maintaining these particular records.

Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee. I believe that this is an example of one of the great concerns of the citizens of this Nation. When a Federal agency

can issue requirements that have such a broad impact with no opportunity for those affected by the requirements to be heard or to appeal, something is drastically wrong. I am most pleased that Congress is listening to the outcry of the average man against the bungling bureaucracy we have created in many areas of our government.

With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I would like to submit as Appendix C1 the August, 1975 memorandum relating to record keeping on student discipline procedures and its January, 1976, revision.

An additional indication of how Congressional specificity and executive interpretation through rules can generate a vast paperwork jungle for local educators can be found in some of the proposed evaluation systems for ESEA, Title I, Compensatory Education. As you gentlemen are aware, this is one of the largest federally funded educational programs, resulting in over $48 million in grants for Georgia for fiscal year 1976.

In the Educational Amendments of 1974, PL 93-380 Congress had expressed concern over the lack of evaluative data for such a large program as Title I and had directed the U.S. Office of Education and the National Institute of Education to develop methods to evaluate the effectiveness of this program. One of these proposed evaluation systems by a USOE contractor offered local school systems five different models of a reporting system for Title I which may be used. This on the surface seems to afford flexibility to state and local school systems while at the same time retaining the system's ability for comparable evaluation studies. Unfortunately, the surface appearance of the proposed evaluation system is very misleading. Two of the five models require complex mathematical calculations involving correlations, slopes, and intercept mathematics on the part of local school officials. Two other models require less complex, but still very technical calculations involving the computation of standard deviations and normal curve equivalents. Considering the lack of familiarity of local school administrators with technical statistical calculations and the probable error rate if required to do the calculations as indicated, the fifth model developed by this particular USOE contractor would be the local school system's only reasonable choice for conducting Title I evaluations.

This model does not require a vast amount of technical expertise in statistics, but does result in the submission of at least a separate form for each school building with a Title I reading or mathematics activity. In Georgia, we estimate that a report of over 1,000 pages would be required yearly for this Title I evaluation. On a national basis, over 56,000 pages of material would be required, and if submitted in the traditional five copies, over one quarter million pages would be sent to USOE annually for the Title I evaluation.

Gentlemen, I contend there must be a less costly, more rational method of providing Congress with the information it needs. The development of four models so complex mathematically that they are almost unusable, leaving the reliance on a fifth model that generates over 250,000 copies of pages of material annually is typical of the activities conducted in some parts of the U.S. Office of Education. Local schools must continuously contend with many of these outrageous actions.

In conclusion, I would like to bring to your attention a pilot program begun in Georgia with five of our local school systems this year. Basically, this pilot, called Local School Systems Comprehensive Planning, requires that the local school superintendent and his staff develop an educational plan of operation suite dto his local needs. This local plan describes what is to be accomplished, how it is to be accomplished, what resources will be required, and how the accomplishments will be measured and evaluated. Under this comprehensive plan the local superintendent agrees to meet the intent of all Federal and state statutes in his operation and agrees to chair a planning team of local, state and Federal personnel.

In turn, we at the state level agree to design ways to fund and implement the system's plan and to advise the local superintendnet in the implementation of the plan and on any legal or regulatory matters. The U.S. Commissioner of Education likewise has agreed to provide entitlement Federal funds based on this comprehensive plan and to remove, insofar as the statutes will permit. regulatory restrictions on the use of these entitlement funds. Both USOE staff and state staff will monitor the implementation of the plan and audit the outcomes of implementation to determine effectiveness.

1 Available in the subcommittee files.

A system similar to this where states would, through an annual plan, define their educational needs and steps necessary to fulfill these needs could possibly result in the reduction of paperwork and regulatory requirements now placed on local education agencies. The Office of Education could, much as we do in the five pilot systems, assist each state in developing its plan to fulfill statutory requirements, and then could find funding sources from the Federal level to help implement these individual state plans. Through monitoring and audit progress in implementing the states' comprehensive plan could be followed and reported to the Congress, the Executive Branch, and the public.

Since our economic situation remains clouded, we must strive to make more efficient use of every available dollar for education, and forms and information which have little or no bearing on changes in the classroom must be curtailed. The madness of mandating specific detailed requirements for each Federally assisted educational activity must stop. Congress should establish national priorities, provide funds for states to achieve these priorities, and provide a mechanism to evaluate the effectiveness of state efforts toward these goals, rather than mandate on each state how it should structure its educational enterprise, what data it must collect and report, or how local educational activities must be performed. Let states receive broad national direction from the Congress in carrying out their specific state responsibilities, and provide a monitoring mechanism for the Congres and the public to gauge the progress of states to this end.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for your interest and concern for the children of our nation, and that of this Committee and Congress. I extend to you an invitation to visit the educational programs and schools in Georgia in order that we may closely coordinate our efforts to build more productive and successful citizens, resulting in a stronger America.

Senator NUNN. Our next witness is James A. Calvin, assistant director of the Georgia Municipal Association.

Mr. Calvin, we appreciate your presence.

TESTIMONY OF JAMES A. CALVIN, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, GEORGIA MUNICIPAL ASSOCIATION

Mr. CALVIN. Thank you very much. We appreciate your coming here and listening to some talk about our problems. The problems we have with the Federal bureaucracy are certainly similar to those that business have, I assure you that Federal regulation is not limited to business at all; it does extend to local governments and affects us more than anything we have at the local level.

The Georgia Municipal Association in Savannah, this past June, adopted a resolution and indicated this resolution would be our No. 1 priority in terms of Federal activities.

Essentially this resolution called for decentralization of the Federal Government and briefly, in my summary, I want to go into that a bit. It does include some recommendations but let me say there are two major reasons for our association's adopting that resolution.

Öne is the multitude of unmanageable categories or categorical grants. The second reason is excessive regulatory control over local governments. The two really go in hand. In fact, categorical grants foster a lot of the excessive regulations. Local government in Georgia and throughout the country are extremely dependent on Federal assistance. Over the past 20 years, they have increasingly turned to the Federal Government for help in solving problems of crime, environmental quality, poverty and community development. These problems are too great to be addressed solely by local resources. Finding no adequate solution to these problems in State government in recent years, we, like all other State municipal organizations,

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strengthened our efforts in the Federal political arena and began requesting assistance from the Federal Government. As long as twothirds of the taxes collected in the country are deposited in the Federal treasury, we will have no choice but to continue this course of action.

The Federal Government has been quite responsive and quite generous to local government. According to the Federal Office of Management and Budget, there are now approximately 1,000 categorical assistance programs administered by 54 Federal agencies. I say approximately 1,000 programs because apparently the status of these programs changes so rapidly that OMB doesn't know exactly how many of these programs are being administered by the Federal Government at any given time!

If the Federal Government can't even determine how many programs it administers, how can anyone possibly expect the thousands of part-time mayors and councilmen across the country to effectively utilize these programs. Obviously, they can't. The programs are not effectively utilized and in some cases they cause more problems than they create.

The volume of programs alone, however, is not the sole cause of our despair. The greatest problem lies in the fact that the programs, once adopted by Congress, are administered by apparently autonomous bureaucratic agencies. While we have been very successful in the congressional policy progress, we have been extremely unsuccessful in dealing with administrative agencies as they implement programs, and even more unsuccessful in influencing regulations adopted by these agencies.

The essence of the problem is that Congress often enacts excellent programs but unfortunately the positive effects of these programs are minimized by excessive bureaucratic interference.

An excellent example of this process is found in the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, which combined several categorical programs and was supposed to streamline the grant process and cut out redtape.

As this bill was proposed in Congress, it would have made funds available only to large metropolitan areas. However, organizations like the Georgia Municipal Association and the National League of Cities were successful in getting this changed. The adopted conference report recogniezd that poverty and housing overcrowding exists in small as well as large cities, and provided that any general purpose local government would be eligible to receive community development funds.

As you might well imagine, we were delighted that Congress had been able to adopt a program that greatly simplified the grant process and which included potentially all cities as participants.

We were greatly anticipating it to cut out a lot of redtape and expedite the Federal grant-in-aid process. However, our joy has been short lived.

Once this law was turned over to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the picture quickly began to change. The grant process was not nearly as simple as we thought it might be. The simple statements of law relating to environmental certification proved to be a launching pad for bureaucratic intervention. The "one

page application" we were promised soon became a lengthy document. Requirements upon requirements have been imposed upon municipalities as a condition to even apply for community development funds. Many cities have informed me that they are spending as much as 25 percent of their grant to apply for and administer the funds. Thus, funds appropriated by Congress to repair houses, pave streets, extend water and sewer lines, code enforcement and to generally upgrade our communities are instead being used to a great extent for pens, pencils, and paper to meet the regulatory requirements of HUD.

Additionally, we contend that HUD's allocation process in Georgia is in direct conflict with the will and intent of Congress. Recently adopted regulations are intended to exclude the smaller and the inexperienced communities from further participation in the block grant program, even though the law specifically says "any unit of general purpose local governments" shall be eligible for funds.

The first year these bloc grant funds were allocated many smaller municipalities in Georgia were awarded funds based on their relative poverty and housing overcrowding. The new allocation criteria, however, have been devised to exclude these smaller cities.

I went to talk to the area office about this and this is what I was told and it is a quote.

Frankly, we at HUD are quite alarmed that so many smaller cities in Georgia received community development bloc grant funds. We do not want these cities to participate in our program. We feel that HUD, because of our very name, should only deal with the larger urban areas. The Rural Development Act is supposed to take care of small cities. If it hasn't been funded, that's not our problem.

Let me briefly give you another example of this bureaucratic abuse of power and disregard for congressional policy. In 19972, Congress adopted the Water Pollution Control Act which provides for assistance to State and local governments to construct water pollution control facilities. Section 206(a) of that act provides that any city which initiated water pollution projects between June 30, 1966, and uly 1, 1972, would be reimbursed for 55 percent of their costs on such projects. The law seemed clear to us.

However, the Environmental Protection Agency determined that 36 cities in Georgia were not eligible for reimbursement under section 206(a). These cities had initiated planning and design phases required by EPA, but had not begun actual construction by July, 1972, so EPA wouldn't give them any money.

This example points out two important issues involving excessive bureaucratic discretion. First, EPA's strict interpretation of "initiation of construction" seemed to be at odds with the Federal law. Second, EPA's extensive regulatory requirements actually prohibited these 36 cities from beginning construction prior to July 19972. The reason was because all of the redtape, all of the planning, and all of the requirements that EPA imposed on them, so it is sort of a selffulfilling prophecy.

This particular case was eventually brought to trial. The court ruled against EPA and ordered them to reimburse the city. Although relief was granted for one city, unfortunately most have neither the resources nor the inclination to pursue these exhaustive legal remedies. If EPA had been subject to some oversight mechanism, this example may never have happened.