will have to decide how much quiet country life he wants to give up to get industry and transportation facilities into his growing neighborhood. Route 128, the "main street" of Metropolitan Boston, is a famous example of this rapid suburban growth. We need a Department of Urban Affairs not just because of this growth but because of the problems growth has created for cities, towns, and regions. Urban blight and deterioration are disfiguring our cities and creating grossly inadequate living and health conditions. According to the 1960 census nearly 17 percent of the housing units in Massachusetts are substandard. Moreover, the slums are spreading both in the cities and new suburbs. Urban blight is not the result of age primarily. Often poor planning turns new housing into slums soon after it is built. Housing and safety codes are inadequate or poorly enforced. Official and private laxity in maintaining decent standards of care is a major contributor to urban deterioration. I am particularly concerned with the blight that occurs because minority groups are segregated into limited space. These neighborhoods become overcrowded slums by necessity. But I believe segregation is never necessary or desirable. Blighted areas corrode the municipal tax base by reducing property assessments. But at the same time they increase the burden of municipal services. One eastern city received $108 more in per capita revenue from good residential areas in a year than it spent there, but in the slums it spent $88 more than it received. The financially weakened municipal government is hard pressed to provide adequate services for its people. For example, they cannot afford the mass transit facilities we need to break traffic jams. Again, there is a special need for higher education on the local level, but our cities are too poor to aid the growing network of community colleges. The revenue loss hampers their efforts in renewal as well. Communities have difficulty financing the purchase and clearance of slum areas, and relocating the families who lived there. In short, our urban areas are trapped in a circle of defeat. Slum properties drain their financial resources, while increased crime and fire hazard cost the city more and more. In an advancing age, our standards for education and recreation are high, yet our depressed cities are hard pressed to provide the opportunities every man deserves. But I believe we can break through this circle and foster urban growth now. To meet the challenge of our urban frontier, I propose that four steps be taken immediately: 1. Our communities must be made aware of all the existing Federal aid programs available to them. These programs must be clearly presented. The experience of past renewal programs has shown that partial solutions, like slum clearance, result in no progress. I hope that our communities can be encouraged to attack all their problems-residential, industrial, transportation, et cetera-together. 2. The incentive to develop comprehensive, individual plans for each metropolitan area must be encouraged. All factors, like the labor market, the type of industry, and the available land, must be considered. 3. Intensive, creative studies need to be made in search of better programs. We need a more complete picture of the social and eco nomic factors, of delinquency and discrimination, and all that disfigure urban growth. 4. The new programs for urban progress must be considered and acted upon at the highest executive level of our Government. For each of these steps I believe that the creation of a Department of Urban Affairs and Housing is essential. The Federal Government has been concerned with urban problems for many years. The concept of urban redevelopment has expanded as municipal problems like mass transportation and our fast disappearing open spaces, are discovered. However, our Federal programs have just been probing the areas of attack. If we are to meet the challenge of the future, our thinking must shift dramatically. In the past, aid has been available for specific projects in communities across the Nation. We have offered them a slum clearance program and a land purchase program and aid for public facilities, a planning grant program, and a vocational guidance program to name a few. Many communities have participated in one or another separately. But they have not been able to get assistance in financing an overall development plan. I say we can no longer afford fragmented planning. We must start thinking of our metropolitan and regional areas as individual, unified wholes. The great need now is for long-range, area wide planning. A Department of Urban Affairs could encourage the development of comprehensive programs for every region, programs that would plan for the particular characteristics of each It would encourage complete solutions to our urban dilemmas. It would develop better programs whose work is not wasted by short sight. It would make our present programs more coherent to the local community, and thus more effective. In our specialized concern for defense, or slum clearance, or the relief of depressed areas we sometimes forget that our ultimate goal is a good job and a good home for each of our citizens. We will reach these goals in our cities and suburbs, or not at all. When we faced a new frontier in the West, the Department of the Interior was established to channel expansion into constructive and democratic streams. Now the frontier has shifted to our metropolitan areas, where 85 percent of America's growth occurred in the last decade. It is because the problems of the city are so important to the future of America that I strongly urge the creation of an executive department for the urban frontier. Senator MUSKIE. Thank you very much for your statement. Senator MUSKIE. I like particularly the first of your four steps in which you state that our communities must be made aware of all the existing Federal aid programs to them. I like it, not because people ought to be encouraged to seek Federal services simply because they are there, but because I think that many of our communities, particularly smaller communities in the northern part of the country, have failed to take advantage of the existing Federal programs to revitalize their economies. I mentioned a while ago that there are something over 200 of the 457 urban renewal projects in the country in communities of less than 25,000 and most of those 202 are in the South. Now the South has been very alert to the need or to the value of urban renewal programs and revitalizing their economies. Some of our communities in the North have not been as alert. In my own State it was assumed urban renewal was something that related to large cities and that there was no prospect for such a program in small towns. In Maine in recent years, we have begun to take advantage of it and I think there are almost a hundred of our communities that are involved in the 701 planning program of the urban renewal project or some other aspect of the urban renewal program. I think it has great prospects in the future. The proposed Department, as you suggest here, can do a great deal in alerting small communities to the potential for self-improvement that lies in existing Federal services. Senator SMITH. Well, to point that up, Senator Muskie, last week I held a workshop here in Washington for a group of the cities and towns in my home State of Massachusetts and it was brought up very clearly that many of these representatives from the towns, especially, were not aware of the help and assistance that they could get for the jobs that they were trying to do until they came down here to Washington and met with the representatives of the various agencies which we arranged for them and I think these people came out of there with certainly a greater knowledge of the work that they can accomplish, especially in this area which is so important today. Senator MUSKIE. Would you consider the title of "Department of Community Affairs" as having some value in this connection? Senator SMITH. I feel very strongly about that, yes. Senator MUSKIE. You may build up a case before we are through. Thank you very much, Senator Smith. AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION I will include in the record at this point a statement of the American Farm Bureau Federation on this subject by John C. Lynn, legislative director. (The statement referred to follows:) STATEMENT OF THE AMERICAN FARM BUREAU FEDERATION BY JOHN C. LYNN, LEGISLATIVE DIRECTOR, JUNE 21, 1961 The American Farm Bureau Federation, with member State farm bureaus in Puerto Rico and all but 1 of the 50 States, is vitally interested in all of the activities of the Federal Government. Farm Bureau is a free, independent, nongovernmental, voluntary organization of farm and ranch families united for the purpose of analyzing their problems and formulating action to achieve educational improvement, economic opportunity, and social advancement, thereby promoting the national welfare. The primary interest of Farm Bureau members is agriculture, with concern for all proposals which in any way affect their welfare. The proposal of the President to establish a Cabinet-rank Department of Urban Affairs and Housing before this committee is in conflict with some of the basic policies of Farm Bureau. The position of our federation on this question is based on the policy recommendations adopted several years ago and reiterated in December of last year. We have long resisted the trend toward concentration and centralization of power in the Federal Government. Our policy is based on the belief that the solution of any problem should be resolved in favor of solving such problem either by the individual or the unit of government closest to the individual. We feel that the following tests should be applied when any problem arises and could properly be applied in the consideration of the President's proposal in this instance: (1) Should the responsibility for the solution rest with the individual? (2) If not, should private organizations or cooperatives be encouraged to assume responsibilities for solving the problem? (3) If not, should the solution of the problem be the responsibility of local units of government? We see in this proposal to establish a new Cabinet post the enlargement of Government functions. We do not believe that the Federal Government should expand its activity in these areas. We oppose the Federal Government's bypassing a State government to participate in economic and social problems directly with citizens of a district, county, or smaller government unit, or with individuals within a State. We anticipate that the establishment of a Cabinet-rank Department for Urban Affairs and Housing would increase the total cost of the Federal Government at a time when the national debt is excessive and current expenditures exceed income. It could also lead to the reorganization of agencies within the existing executive agencies which would not be in the best interest of the existing programs. We refer specifically to the numerous bills pending before Congress which, if enacted, would authorize the transfer from existing agencies and departments such activities and programs as airport and highway construction, slum clearance, home finance, pollution control, metropolitan planning, civil and defense mobilization, and other functions of the Government which are not identified solely with urban areas. We believe that such a Cabinet-rank department would tend to weaken existing relationships between the States and their political subdivisions and would undoubtedly increase the dependency of local government upon Washington. This probably would result in considerably greater pressure for new programs for Federal aid. We favor increased emphasis on the assumption of responsibility by States and local units of government for the exercise of their appropriate functions and therefore oppose the establishment of the Cabinet-rank Department for Urban Affairs and Housing. Senator MUSKIE. That concludes the testimony for this morning. We will resume this afternoon at 2:30 p.m. (Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the subcommittee recessed, to reconvene at 2:30 p.m., the same day.) AFTERNOON SESSION Senator HUMPHREY. The subcommittee will be in order. The first witness this afternoon will be Mr. Edwin G. Michaelian, county executive, Westchester County, N.Y., for the National Association of County Officials. I understand that Senator Keating waited here to introduce this gentleman. I saw Senator Keating en route. He was on one bus and I was on the other. We did get to wave to each other. Mr. Reichley, legislative assistant to Senator Keating, will introduce the witness. Mr. REICHLEY. I am speaking for Senator Keating and also for Senator Javits. I would like to introduce Mr. Edwin Michaelian, the county executive of Westchester County, a very distinguished citizen of New York State who is appearing before the subcommittee today as representative of the National Association of County Officials. Senator HUMPHREY. Excellent. We are very happy to have you here. We have worked with the National Association of County Officials on other legislation and have found your suggestions very helpful and constructive. Won't you proceed? STATEMENT OF EDWIN G. MICHAELIAN, COUNTY EXECUTIVE, Mr. MICHAELIAN. If satisfactory, I will lead off and Mr. Frosh will follow. Senator HUMPHREY. May I suggest that if you wish, for purposes of conservation of time, you may place your statements in the record and then you can summarize them orally or whatever you might wish to do. That is at your discretion, sir. Mr. MICHAELIAN. If we might just do that, perhaps we might save some time. Senator HUMPHREY. Go right ahead. Mr. MICHAELIAN. As you are undoubtedly aware, the National Association of County Officials directly, or through State associations, represent county officials in 44 States and these county officials are elected as well as appointed policymaking officials in nearly every county in the country. While we recognize and strongly support the need for continuing Federal participation in the staggering problems of urbanization, we believe that first priority is for the Federal, State, and local governments to jointly develop a continuing national urban policy that identifies and implements the respective roles of each level of government and of private citizens in urban affairs. This should perhaps be the responsibility of the existing congressionally created and presidentially appointed Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations whose representatives are from all levels of government and the public. There is also need for continual study and redefinition of the particular role of the National Government and we respectfully suggest that Congress may wish to consider the creation of a Joint Congressional Committee on Urban Affairs. Finally, there is urgent need to coordinate the administration of literally hundreds of Federal urban activities that are and must continue to be scattered among every single Federal agency. This responsibility rests constitutionally with the President. We would suggest that the Executive Office of the President be greatly strengthened by the creation of a special urban assistant to the President and that he be provided with sufficient staff and free access to the Cabinet table. This could develop into a Bureau of Urban Affairs comparable to the Bureau of the Budget, a staff area of the President, in the Executive Office of the President. We examine now the present bill and some of the arguments advanced by proponents of a Department of Urban Affairs. The many statements in the proposed National Urban Affairs and Housing set forth in section 2 of this bill are indeed noble and worthwhile. Our association continues to support Federal aid for urban renewal, community facilities, airports, planning grants, water pollution control, air pollution control, urban highways, and many other projects. Although this section does not at this instance assign any additional function to the proposed department, it nevertheless gives the impetus for such future assignment. We would recommend rather than declare national policy in advance of the enactment of some fi t |