Senator MONDALE. Our next panel represents the city of Los Angeles and we will ask Mr. Rockwell Ames, Executive Director of the Office of Urban Development and such other persons as he wishes to bring with him, to come to the witness stand.

STATEMENT OF ROCKWELL AMES, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Mr. AMES. Senator Mondale, Senator Cranston.

First let me add my welcome on behalf of the city of Los Angeles. I might say before I read a prepared statement for Mayor Yorty who was unable to be here this morning, that we concur in many of the statements made by the county, and rather than to get into a broad shotgun approach, the Mayor's statement which I said I will read part of, deals directly with the reaction of the Mayor and the city to the intent of the bill, or at least two portions of it.

Then, a second portion of the statement treats with what we could do in employment and city services if Federal funds were available. So, with your permission I will go ahead with the statement which is relatively brief.

The Mayor of the city of Los Angeles generally welcomes the introduction of the concepts ecompassed by the Administration's Comprehensive Manpower Act. The history of manpower programing to date has been one of a patchwork of programs and services so complicated in operations and funding procedures that even manpower experts find it difficult to keep up with the ever-changing guidelines and procedures. The overall concept of decentralization of manpower services is welcomed as it appears that the Federal Government is finally recognizing the ability of competent local jurisdictions to play a primary role in the solution of urban problems.

There appear, however, to be two key areas that cause some concern that are in need of additional clarification. The first of these is the role of State government. Although we feel that State government should be involved in statewide manpower planning, its primary role should be advisory. Municipalities the size of Los Angeles would find it difficult and nonbeneficial to the overall goals of manpower and training to have another governmental layer inserted between the city and the Federal Manpower Agency. The State should have some involvement on a statewide basis and possibly a more direct administrative involvement in those cities and unincorporated areas of less than 2 million population.

However, it would be highly desirable for a city the size of Los Angeles to be able to deal rapidly and directly with the Federal funding source the Department of Labor. Experience shows this is vital in getting the bulk of the funds down to the operational level as quickly as possible without any unnecessary handling charges being deducted filtering agency. This direct relationship would also avoid any by a possible city-State differences that may arise.

The second area which appears to be in need of clarification are those sections dealing with the selection of the local prime sponsor. According to the proposed act, a city the size of Los Angeles-approximately 3 million-or 40 percent of the population of Los Angeles County, would have, in effect, very little legislative authority in manpower planning, administration, and priority setting. The requirement

that only units of local government encompassing 75 percent of the population of the standard metropolitan statistical areas or a combination thereof may choose their own local prime sponsor appears to be bypassing even the largest of our municipal governments. Again it places too much authority at the State level. If the local units of government cannot decide upon their own local prime sponsor, the Governor then selects one of his choosing.

We would suggest that all municipal governments representing a population in excess of 2 million persons be given the legislative option to become their own local manpower prime sponsors. This option would insure that the duly elected officials of such a large incorporated area would be permitted to adequately combat those problems which exist within their own municipalities.

Although there seems to be constant references made to the active role that the mayors will play under the proposed manpower structure, there is very little legislative authority given to the cities. We recommend that the membership of any State advisory board or agency mandatorily include the mayors of the State's principal municipalities.

The history of our local manpower programs can readily reveal the frustrations of those of us on the operational level trying to run quality programs while never being consulted about major decisions such as funding cuts, program redesigns, or abrupt changes in Federal operational guidelines. The categorical funding procedure has, in effect, eliminated the ability of the local jurisdiction to not only innovate but even apply a federally conceived "national program" to meet our own local needs.

We would welcome the elimination of this rigid categorical approach to programing and look forward to becoming involved in the crucial planning, development, and priority setting phases from which we have heretofore been excluded.

We think it is well known that the funding level for manpower has never been realistic. We, in city government, operate programs as a delegate agency under our prime sponsor, the Economic and Youth Opportunities Agency of Greater Los Angeles. Although I cannot speak for the other agencies or our sponsor, if funds were available we could probably multiply our current neighborhood youth corps, adult work experience and new careers programs by a factor of five. We have made significant progress in merging the goals of our city's civil service merit system with the goals of our programs calling for the training and employment of the disadvantaged. At the request of the mayor, we have been reevaluating all of our entry requirements. The resultant changes have now made it possible for our trainees to break the cycle of poverty and become civil service employees in city

government.

We are proud of our record in manpower and if sufficient funds were available, the city could extend and amplify its accomplishments. Essentially that is the force of the statement that I would like to read. The rest of it deals principally with what we can do if we had sufficient funds from the Federal level.

I have with me, Mr. Howard Zuck who is the assistant general manager of the Los Angeles Personnel Department, city of Los Angeles; Mr. Jerome Miller, senior project coordinator for manpower programs; Mr. Dave Leslie, senior city planner and Mr.

Joseph Levitt, chief administrative analyst in the city administrative office.

Now, Senators, if you have any questions perhaps 1 can then direct them for you.

Senator CRANSTON. I really have just one.

Have you studied the bill as it proposes what would amount not merely to State involvement, but State control in many ways in manpower programs. How do you feel about that as it relates to the problems that exist in cities and the need for a local voice of a quite decisive nature in determination of what programs would work and which ones would not?

Mr. AMES. Senator, I think I can only speak for the city of Los Angeles, although you as a Californian know how unique our situation here is and I realize many other prople do not like us to call attention to the fact that Los Angeles has unique problems. However, it has been said and estimated in many areas, that whatever problems any other municipality may have, Los Angeles has those same problems multiplied by a factor of 7 to 9. So consequently our problems are such that they cannot be normalized. In other words, for us to approach our problems according to guidelines layed down on the normal State or national levels, sometimes becomes very difficult.

For example, as Supervisor Debs brought out, one of our serious problems is the language barrier we have here to a great extreme. We have other problems in certain areas, say transportation, because of the nature of the geography of our city and our county area; the whole basin area for that matter. These are listed in the last portion, incidentally of the statement which outlines some of the principal reasons why some municipalities and certainly this city, cannot always operate on guidelines set for smaller or less complexly structured jurisdictions. I believe Supervisor Debs and Supervisor Hahn stated that the county of Los Angeles has a larger population than any one of 42 States. The city of Los Angeles is in the same way bigger than 23 States-25 States. I beg your pardon.

So you see we would feel that it would be important for a city like ours, of 2 million or more, to have the opportunity or the option, if not be our own local prime sponsor, to work out some sort of joint powers agreement between the principal governmental entities of an area. This has been discussed on an informal basis with the county of Los Angeles.

I don't think-in a more direct answer to your question-that the city of Los Angeles could work under another layer of authority from the State. I think that is what we principally object to, a continuous layerization of authorities.

Senator CRANSTON. Thank you.

Senator MONDALE. Leafing through your statement about what could be done, I notice a long table of what I gather are kinds of public service employment which could be used if funds were available.

Could someone on your panel respond to that list and what it means. Mr. AMES. Yes, Senator. This portion of the report was prepared by the city administrative officer and Mr. Levitt who is a chief administrative analyst, can reply to that.

Mr. LEVITT. Those that are listed under the section which are "Needs for which action can be initiated at once" are the type of things which would do two things. They would first provide services

that are needed and highly desired by the community, and also provide jobs for the types of people who need jobs, the unemployed or the under-employed and so forth.

Senator MONDALE. Are these jobs which require training, or only a modest amount of training?

Mr. LEVITT. Some of them, could be done with a modest amount of training, and they could use people right out of the community. For example, we feel there is a great need for senior citizen centers, and we believe he could get them started rapidly by using store fronts. It takes between 2,500 and 4,000 square feet to set up a senior citizen center. Two or three or possibly four people could operate each unit on a 7 day a week basis. It requires some furniture, and game and related equipment. We can actually set these up for about $25,000 each plus annual thereafter, rental, depending on the scale of operation. We could use up to 100 of these.

Senator MONDALE. In other words the number of employees you are talking about

Mr. LEVITT. We could use at least 100 employees to operate those senior citizens centers.

Senator MONDALE. Program number one is 1,675 employees who could be employed immediately because training isn't required and program two would provide 24,143 jobs where some kind of training is required.

Mr. LEVITT. Yes. Let me just clarify this one thing. When we say that we can start them immediately that doesn't mean we can grind them out overnight. We can start action on them if funds were available now and it would take a little while to grow up to the 1,600 or 1,700 jobs we indicated.

The second program, it would be an expansion basically of many of the existing services we have now, for example, our library department would like to build up its services to provide a greater number of hours of service; to build more branches, to provide more books.

Senator MONDALE. Would this program provide employment to the unemployed, the unskilled?

MR. LEVITT. Most would require skill. Presumably the people that we bring into our system would eventually qualify for many of these jobs through their on the job training through their off the job training. These programs would have to be coordinated. We don't think you could do this just by bringing people on to a job and eventually making a librarian out of them. We don't think that could happen. There has to be addon's in the form of supplemental training programs. Senator MONDALE. It is also the case in the second category not only would training be required, but you estimate a capital cost of over a billion dollars?

Mr. LEVITT. Yes, sir. This would require the buildings, the equipment, the real estate, everything that goes into this type of thing. It would not be purely a make-work program where you would use a minimum amount of equipment. The first program we think we could do with a minimum capital amount and that is why we could get started faster, but they would be useful programs, it would not be in the category of just putting people on the payroll.

Mr. AMES. Senator, if I may make a comment. We discussed this at quite some length this morning because I was concerned with that

aspect of it after having read the report and would like Mr. Zuck to make a comment in that regard.

Mr. Zuck. In programs of this type-it's really not proper to assume that they would totally result in employment for unemployed and underemployed people whom we presently assume are either unskilled or have very minimal skills. The city presently has many vacancies for jobs for which there is no funding problem at all, but the problem is obtaining people who have the requisite skills to fill them. So that in a program such as is shown under program No. 2, really I don't believe you could expect more than 20 percent of those jobs could be filled by people from the unskilled category.

I think that our technology has changed tremendously in the last several decades so that even on large-scale construction projects, where formerly we had large masses of common labor employed, today we no longer do and have large numbers of skilled people.

Senator MONDALE. Do you know what the unemployment rate in the city of Los Angeles is?

Mr. ZUCK. Out of personal knowledge; no, sir. What I have seen reported in the newspapers and Department of Labor releases, it runs about 3.5 percent overall.

Senator MONDALE. That's citywide?

Mr. Zuck. That's right.

Senator MONDALE. Then you have pockets of unemployment such as Watts and East Los Angeles where it might run 20 or 25 percent. Mr. AMES. This would also have to be qualified, by the State people. In some cases there are age level areas too. It runs extremely high in certain age groups and then lower in other age groups in the same areas. So an overall picture is one that you would have to obtain or a more detailed report would have to come to you from the State Department of Employment.

Senator MONDALE. We have witnesses coming up, I believe, who specialize in these areas of community action efforts and I think this would help focus on those areas in addition to what you now have.

Perhaps we can have a few observations describing those civil service changes that are designed to bring more disadvantaged into public employment. What is the nature of those changes and how many have been employed or do you expect will be employed under those regulations?

Mr. AMES. I think in this case we will have Mr. Miller who handles our manpower programs which include New York City manpower, adult work experience, and new careers, give you a breakdown of what we have done.

Mr. MILLER. Senator, we found ourselves approximately 2 or 21⁄2 years ago operating manpower programs designed to train and employ the disadvantaged and yet a very hard light of reality fell upon our own system and our own structure, and because of this, the mayor ordered a reevaluation of the city hiring policy procedures. We found that even though we were very adept in training the disadvantaged, we had a great difficulty getting them through the merit system and into permanent city employment. Most of these hurdles no longer exists because of the changes that have been made. There are five basic areas that we found were really barriers to the client population on our programs. The first of these were the almost standard