Mr. WOODS. Well, there is the matter of closing the office, turning the records over to whoever is to get them-some of them go to Archives-lay off the people and so forth.

Mr. PHILLIPS. You are not exactly short of help, you know, on the basis of your figures.

Mr. THOMAS. How many lawyers did you say you had?

Mr. DUPREE. Sixty-two employees in the Legal Division of the national office. Only about 32 are lawyers.

Mr. THOMAS. How many in the field?

Mr. DUPREE. Sixty in the litigation offices.

Mr. THOMAS. Give us the total of lawyers and legal personnel.
Mr. DUPREE. About 92.

Mr. COMFORT. The exact figure, including the national office and the litigation offices, and the 68 attorneys in the area rent offices, 165. Mr. THOMAS. All lawyers? Or does that figure include legal personnel and lawyers?

Mr. COMFORT. The lawyers. In addition to that there are 180 on the clerical staff, or a total of 345.

VETERANS' PRIORITY AND PREFERENCE

Mr. THOMAS. As well as I can remember, you have jurisdiction under an old act passed back in 1942 dealing with veteran housing, priorities, and so forth. You have a little island in there covering a period of about 12 months. What is happening to that section? How many employees do you have in it, and what are its activities now?

Mr. Woods. Actually, we have been handling that work this past year with rental employees. We do not have a designated separate department for those cases. It is still active.

Mr. THOMAS. What are they doing?

Mr. WOODS. Winding up those priority cases.
Mr. THOMAS. When did that authority expire?
Mr. WOODS. It does not expire.

Mr. THOMAS. You are given jurisdiction within a narrow period. When did the jurisdiction begin and end?

Mr. Woods. Some time late in 1946 and ended early in 1947; that is, the houses built during that period came under the priority regulations, but what we have been doing is closing the cases that were violations during that period. There are no new cases.

Mr. THOMAS. Your authority ended in 1947 so far as taking on new business is concerned?

Mr. WOODS. Yes.

Mr. THOMAS. And the 4-year statute of limitations will govern your activities.

Mr. WOODS. There are new cases that arise as the result of complaints. There can only be cases that deal with houses built during that time. What the statute of limitations is on it, I do not know.

Mr. THOMAS. It is bound to start running in 1947. That is when your authority ceased to take on new business. How many employees do you have engaged in that activity for the fiscal year 1951?

Mr. WOODS. None doing just that activity. Those cases are handled by the rental people supplementary to their rent control work. Mr. THOMAS. That is all legal work, is it not?

Mr. WOODS. No. There is investigative work. As a complaint comes in we have to determine if there has been a violation of that provision. It is more investigating than legal, actually.

Mr. THOMAS. Do you know how many employees you have engaged, either part time or whole time, in that particular activity?

Mr. Woods. No, sir. During this past year there has been a matter of some $2,000,000 recovered.

Mr. THOMAS. I wonder why that authority was not continued through 1947 on down to date.

Mr. Woods. The act under which that authority was granted went out in the spring of 1947 and was superseded by the Housing and Rent Act of 1947.

Mr. THOMAS. But it did not give you any authority to act down to 1947 as far as these cases are concerned? I am just wondering what was the thinking of the committee that handled the legislation, and why they did not continue it. There is still one section giving the veterans some protection?

Mr. DUPREE. The authority to handle the cases that arose under the old priority system still exists and we still have that authority. Mr. THOMAS. Until the statute of limitations bars it, and you have a 4-year statute that will bar it.

Mr. DUPREE. It is questionable whether it will bar, Mr. Thomas, the civil action for an injunction requiring the return of over-charged funds, or a mandatory injunction requiring the correction of defects in the housing.

Mr. THOMAS. Did you urge the Veterans' Affairs Committee or the Banking and Currency Committee to continue that act? It looks to me as though there is just as much need for it now as there was in 1946 or 1947.

Mr. WOODS. We have urged it each year.

Mr. THOMAS. What was their thinking and what was their answer? Mr. Woods. The answer was building was more nearly normal now and there would not be the violations, and the violations there were should be corrected by the FHA or the Veterans' Administration. Mr. THOMAS. What help has the Federal Housing Administration or the Veterans' Administration given? They will tell you they are not in the repair business; that the rule of caveat emptor applies and no one forced the veterans to buy the houses when they saw them, and they are not going to go out and be a plumber or a roof fixer or a painter.

Mr. Woods. I agree with you. We get so many complaints, but we have to say that we are sorry; that we do not have the authority. That is on current new construction.

Mr. THOMAS. If a veteran fails to make his payment, he will have a good case. Either the Veterans' Administration or the FHA are going to have to take the veteran to the courthouse and they are going to have to bring the suit. I can imagine that almost any Federal judge would represent the veterans without an attorney, and that the Veterans' Administration and the FHA will really get a set-back if there is an obvious defect which an ordinary man, not a builder, could not detect. The court, in my judgment, would order a proper judgment and relieve that veteran of the damage he has suffered. I have expressed that idea to the Veterans' Administration several times, but

their legal staff over there apparently have more important things to think about.

Mr. Woods. I thought you had started to mention the other function which we do, which is now for the first time becoming important, and that is title I of the act, veterans' preference for 30 days on the sale or rental of new construction. That has been in the act and is in the act now. It has not meant much because the veterans were not very much worried about preferring apartment rentals at $125 or houses selling at $13,000 to $15,000, but now we are beginning to get a scattering of reasonably priced houses and a few rentals that the average veteran can afford to pay, and the veterans' preference is going to be important. That is an activity that does not end when an area is decontrolled. That is enforced all over the entire United States.

Mr. PHILLIPS. Do you mean it has not been exercised so far at all? Mr. Woods. It has been exercised and many builders are conforming with it. We have been very liberal. We have insisted, however, as the act requires, that they must post a sign telling of the fact that veterans' preference is being observed, the price and rental of the accommodations.

Mr. PHILLIPS. For 30 days?

Mr. Woods. During construction and for 30 days thereafter, but we receive very few complaints. We have received some just recently because the average veteran heretofore was not interested in the new rental property going up.

Mr. PHILLIPS. This applies to houses for sale and houses for rent, or just apartments for rent, or anything for rent?

Mr. Woods. Anything built for sale or for rent?

Mr. PHILLIPS. But only new property?

Mr. WOODS. New, yes.

TRAVEL

Mr. PHILLIPS. On page 12, beginning with travel, I see your estimate of 1950 and then your estimate of 1951. Your estimate of 1950, $595,000, ought to be pretty nearly the actual figure. Are those approximately the actual figures?

Mr. COMFORT. Yes.

Mr. PHILLIPS. We still look upon this as a liquidating agency, and a reduction of only $120,000 does not seem very much.

Mr. Woods. I would like to have you look at one of the charts that I brought over. It shows very well this travel problem.

OBLIGATIONS BY OBJECT CLASSIFICATION

Mr. THOMAS. At this point in the record we will insert page 12, the green sheet.

NOTE.-The 1951 estimate includes liquidating expenses in fiscal year 1952.

Mr. Woods. This map shows our field offices and the area offices, the branch offices. If those offices are open they will have to be serviced. It is the servicing of these rent stations that uses a lot of the travel funds.

AMOUNT OF OVERTIME PAYMENTS

Mr. PHILLIPS. Just tell me why in the year just ended you spent $90,800 above basic rates?

Mr. COMFORT. The bulk of that is overtime. About $60,000 is overtime.

Mr. PHILLIPS. The item just above that is regular pay in excess of the 52-week base.

Mr. COMFORT. That represents the cost of the number of days in the year over the 52-week base, over 260 days. All annual salaries are based upon 260 days, 26-pay periods, but the fiscal year 1950 had 261 days in it so that represents the other day.

Mr. THOMAS. What overtime are you paying?

Mr. PHILLIPS. Your explanation hardly explains the $215,000 for 1951. You do not have 53 weeks in 1951.

Mr. COMFORT. No, sir. That represents one of the means that the Housing Expediter had to use during the latter part of June, as authorized by the Federal Employees' Pay Act of 1945, to charge the pay period ending on July 7, wholly within the fiscal year 1951, although it actually includes 5 days in 1950.

Mr. PHILLIPS. How about the $90,000 that you paid this last year for overtime?

Mr. COMFORT. Approximately $30,000 of that is the differential above basic rates outside the continental United States. The reason why the overtime was higher this year was because of a lack of personnel to do the job during regular hours. Also, when we consolidated all administrative activities in the Washington office, we did not have the staff to do the job when the records were transferred and the only way we did it was by working overtime.

69887-50-pt. 1-21

Mr. THOMAS. The 23 employees that you have overseas are costing you in the neighborhood of $200,000 a year-the ones in Alaska and Puerto Rico. Could you not cut that down to about five people in each place?

Mr. Woods. Of the $90,000 only about $30,000 is for those overseas people.

Mr. THOMAS. That pay is statutory. It is 25 percent above the regular pay, plus travel and a few more items.

TRANSPORTATION OF THINGS

Mr. PHILLIPS. Coming to your transportation of things, you are going to spend $151,000 in 1951.

Mr. COMFORT. That also includes liquidation, which means the transportation of all records and the final winding up of the operation, and there will be a much larger expense for transportation of things in the fiscal year 1951, including liquidation, than there was in 1950.

COMMUNICATION SERVICES

Mr. PHILLIPS. For communication you show $256,000.

Mr. COMFORT. Communication is based on actual experience over a period of years and the number of employees.

RENT AND UTILITY SERVICES

Mr. PHILLIPS. Rent and utility services, $637,500.

Mr. COMFORT. That is based on actual rents that we are paying and space leased for us by the General Services Administration, and the actual cost of utilities such as heat, gas, light.

PRINTING AND REPRODUCTION

Mr. PHILLIPS. Printing and reproduction presumably refers to forms and various materials that you use?

Mr. COMFORT. That is right.

Mr. PHILLIPS. Certainly you intend by the end of 1951 to exhaust all your supplies. How can you justify the $110,000 for printing in 1951?

Mr. COMFORT. Because our supplies are largely exhausted right now. We just have not spent a dime during the last 6 months that we did not have to, and we have just let everything run out.

Mr. PHILLIPS. You spent $185,000 in 1949 and $143,000 in 1950. That does not look like you are not spending a dime.

Mr. COMFORT. I said other than what we had to have to keep the field offices stocked. Beginning around the first of the year 1950 we had a new program and changes in regulations, and we did have to buy a lot of forms, but our stocks are about exhausted. We have to start out now and buy a lot.