TABLE 27.--NUMBER OF FEDERAL GRANT-IN-AID PROGRAMS WITH PLANNING REQUIREMENT FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT RECIPIENTS, BY YEAR OF ESTABLISHMENT AND TYPE OF PLANNING REQUIREMENT

1/

261

0

21

13

61

61

8

13

82

Includes (a) ten programs that require project conformity
with comprehensive are awide plan and functional areawide
plan: open space land preservation (1961), mass trans-
portation - technical studies, mass transportation - capi-
tal improvement (1964), highways, solid waste disposal,
basic water and sewer facilities, rural water and waste
disposal facilities, advance acquisition of land, neigh-
borhood facilities (1965), and planned metropolitan devel-
opment (1966); (b) two programs that require project con-
formity with comprehensive areawide plan: urban beauti-
fication and open-space land in built-up areas (1965);
and (c) one that requires both State and project planning:
Appalachian Regional Commission (1965).

TABLE 27 (CONCL'D).-- NUMBER OF FEDERAL GRANT-IN-AID PROGRAMS WITH PLANNING REQUIREMENT FOR STATE AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT RECIPIENTS, BY YEAR OF ESTABLISHMENT AND TYPE OF PLANNING REQUIREMENT

Footnotes (Cont'd)

2/ Urban renewal projects also must conform with comprehensive areawide plans.

3/ Includes waste treatment works program which also requires projects to conform with comprehensive areawide plans.

4/ Economic development projects also must conform with comprehensive areawide plans.

5/ Includes Water Resources Council which also requires projects to conform with comprehensive areawide plans.

6/ Model cities projects also must conform to comprehensive areawide plans and functional areawide plans.

Source: U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Government Operations, Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations, Hearings, Creative Federalism, Part 1, 89th Cong., 2d Sess., pp. 435-445.

of major departments and agencies engaged in programs affecting State and local governments "to take steps to afford representatives of the chief executives of State and local government the opportunity to advise and consult in the development and execution of programs which directly affect the conduct of State and local affairs. The Bureau of the Budget in cooperation with departments and agencies, national associations of State and local officials, and the Advisory Commission formulated a procedure whereby proposed administrative directives and revisions would be submitted for review and comment by State and local officials' groups before final promulgation, with the Advisory Commission serving as secretariat.507

Another step toward minimizing the effect of rigid grant requirements is the effort to achieve simplification of grant applications and joint funding. In discussing the problems of the complex categorical grant system in his 1967 message on the "Quality of American Government," President Johnson declared:51/

[We] should make it possible, through general legislation,

for federal agencies to combine related grants into a single
financial package thus simplifying the financial and adminis-
trative procedures--without disturbing, however, the separate
authorizations, appropriations, and substantive requirements
for each grant-in-aid program.

The Bureau of the Budget submitted a proposed "Joint Simplification Act of 1967" to Congress in August 1967, which was introduced as H.R. 12631.

As noted earlier, an increasingly common characteristic of new Federal efforts to help State and local governments is the use of a "package" approach, that groups grant funds from various programs and departments, as illustrated by the community action program and the Model Cities Act. The different requirements and standards of the individual programs raise obstacles to such packaging. The proposed legislation seeks to remove or simplify these administrative and technical impediments to consideration, processing, approval and administration of "package" projects.

Planning Requirements

The number and variety of requirements for planning as a condition of grants-in-aid have expanded markedly in recent years. Table 27, based on a Budget Bureau tabulation in November 1966, shows the growth in the number of types of such requirements.

Of 82 grant-in-aid programs, the planning requirements for just 21 were enacted by 1960. Nineteen of the 21 called for State plans, usually in the health, education and welfare field, such as for vocational education, categorical public assistance, and hospital and medical facilities construction.

Among the 61 planning requirements enacted after 1960, 43* call for State plans, largely program plans in the field of educational services, includ-ing programs for the aged, education of disadvantaged children, State departments of education, supplementary educational centers and services, work-study for vocational students, school library resources, and vocational rehabilitation--all

*

Including Appalachian Regional Commission which requires project plan as well and is included in the "other" column of Table 27.

enacted in 1965; and library services to the physically handicapped, State institutional library services, interlibrary cooperation, comprehensive State health planning, and comprehensive public health services, enacted in 1966.

Of the remaining 18 programs with planning requirements enacted after 1960, six call for project plans: public works and development facilities (EDA), supplementary education centers and services, model cities, commercial fisheries and wildlife service, small irrigation projects, and community action programs. One--the Appalachian Regional Commission--requires both State plans and project plans. The remaining 11 do not require a State or project plan, but stipulate that the aided project be in conformity with an areawide comprehensive plan (urban beautification, and provision of open-space land in built-up areas) or with both an areawide comprehensive plan and an areawide functional plan (openspace land preservation, mass transportation--technical studies, mass transportation--capital improvements, solid waste disposal, basic water and sewer services, rural water and waste disposal facilities, advance acquisition of land, neighborhood facilities, and planned metropolitan development).*

This recent trend toward requiring conformity with a comprehensive plan parallels, of course, the growth in grants for physical development programs, particularly in urban areas. Thus, of the 18 programs enacted in the past six years which have non-State planning requirements, all but three (supplementary education centers and services, commercial fisheries and wildlife, and community action programs) involve physical development to a major degree. These 15 vary, however, with respect to whether they require conformity to a functional areawide plan or comprehensive areawide plan, or both, as well as to the type of conformity to a comprehensive areawide plan required. Table 28 shows these variations for all grant-in-aid programs with such a requirement, including the two adopted prior to 1961.

In a 1964 study,52/ the Advisory Commission analyzed in depth the variations in planning requirements attached to 43 Federal aid programs affecting urban development in effect in 1962.** The study concluded:537

Although planning requirements are almost universally im-
posed in one form or another by the programs surveyed, the
largest number of programs that do so actively promote
functional planning only, and do not relate the aided
function with other functions designed to achieve orderly
development of the entire area.

The Director of the Bureau of the Budget recently noted that one of the major administrative and intergovernmental problems arises from the fact that 547

certain planning requirements necessarily demanded

as a condition of grants may be overlapping.

* Highways and model cities, listed among programs requiring project plans, also require conformity with areawide comprehensive and functional plans. ** Unlike the programs included in Table 28, the 43 included 14 loan, revenuesharing or lease programs, as well as a number of grant programs that had no planning requirement whatsoever.