the National Association of State Purchasing Agents has the same type of program. This has been going on, and it has been very successful. The degree to which its full potential will be realized in the establishment on a self-sustaining basis would, we think, be assisted by the language that is in S. 1485.

Mr. PRITCHARD. Mr. Chairman, we are just completing a study of inservice training programs. I have a tabulation by States at the moment, which I can give you, which shows that at the present time there are about 4,850 training programs now being conducted for local government personnel throughout the country.

By next week I can give you a breakdown of the types of people for whom training is being provided and who is providing it. I was just able to pull off the total today. Some of these I would say are of questionable quality, and others are quite good.

Senator MUSKIE. I think the record will still be open. And it would be helpful to have those figures.

On the question of coverage by merit systems, I got these figures out of last year's hearings. I don't know how valid they are.

Apparently less than half of the full-time State employees are covered by a merit system.

Of course, in the larger States like Connecticut and New York about 85 percent of the State employees are covered. But in other States the proportion ranges from 4 to 5 percent. Those are the figures we had last year.

I think that about completes our exercise this afternoon. I had hoped it would be less dull than this morning's testimony, and I think maybe it was.

I appreciate your willingness to come and subject yourselves to the frustrations of the committee chairman who flung himself on the ground and missed.

(Whereupon, at 4:20 p.m. the subcommittee adjourned, to reconvene at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Thursday, April 22, 1967.)

S. 1485

INTERGOVERNMENTAL MANPOWER ACT OF 1967

S. 699

INTERGOVERNMENTAL PERSONNEL ACT OF 1967

THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 1967

SUBCOMMITTEE ON INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS,
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS,

Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to recess, at 9:40 a.m., in room 224, Old Senate Office Building, Senator Edmund S. Muskie (chairman) presiding.

Present: Senators Muskie, Montoya, and Baker.

Staff members present: Charles M. Smith, staff director; E. Winslow Turner, general counsel; Robert Berry, minority counsel; and Victor Lang, professional staff member.

Senator MUSKIE. The committee will be in order.

I am not used to these plush and august surroundings. They are usually reserved for the more senior committees of the Senate.

We will begin this morning with our distinguished witness, Mr. Victor Jones, of the Department of Political Science of the University of California.

Professor Jones, it is a pleasure to welcome you here this morning. TESTIMONY OF VICTOR JONES, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY

Mr. JONES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, you may not be used to these plush surroundings, but the last time I had the privilege of appearing before your committee, it was over in the Rayburn Office Building, and it was not as intimate as this kind of place.

Senator MUSKIE. Then I guess I will have to identify you with our better days. [Laughter.]

Mr. JONES. Mr. Chairman, I am a professor of political science at the University of California in Berkeley. I appear before your subcommittee not as an expert in personnel administration but as a student of the government and politics of metropolitan areas. Therefore, I cannot provide critical comment or suggestions for improving many of the specific provisions of either S. 699 or S. 1485.

But the enactment by Congress of an intergovernmental manpower act is, I believe, a desirable step in the development of a genuine,

responsible and effective intergovernmental urban policy in the United States. I call it a step because, in the first place, it will supplement the previous actions of the Congress in requiring acceptable levels of planning by local, metropolitan and State governments as a condition for many Federal grants and loans and will also supplement the previous actions of Congress in encouraging the creation of responsible locally based decisionmaking agencies in metropolitan areas.

In the second place it is an essential step in the growth of a viable federalism in which State and local governments are able to participate as effective partners along with the Federal Government in formulating as well as administering the new complex of intergovernmental urban programs. This requires the exercise of a wide discretion in the locality, the metropolis, and the State to decide the substantive mix of public programs that will meet the needs and desires of their respective jurisdictions.

Even these decisions will have to be tempered by the interests of other wider publics embodied in Federal programs. However, the essence of "home rule" will be protected if local governments can (1) participate in the formulation of intergovernmental urban programs, (2) if they can adapt them to their own particular regional circumstances, and (3) if they can deliver to their inhabitants a product that will keep them from ignoring or bypassing local government.

In metropolitan America of today and tomorrow, local governments cannot claim under the doctrine of home rule, the right to refuse to plan, or the right to plan ineffectively, or the right to restrict their planning to their own limited jurisdictions. Nor can the doctrine of home rule justify personnel practices that result in slow, inadequate, or incorrect responses to urban problems.

There is an increasing interest in consolidating the multitude of Federal grant programs into a few large categories. There is also increasing interest in the use of some form of block grant either to replace or to supplement program grants. A good case can be made for both these proposals provided that the recipient governments are capable of planning, of responsible decisionmaking, and of effective administration. The greater the policy and program discretion of local and State governments, the greater is the national interest in the quality of planning, decisionmaking and administration.

Block grants are not more desirable than categorical grants just because they are nonconditional grants. In fact, it is even more desirable that such grants be made conditional upon the existence of an adequate planning process, a political decisionmaking process, a budgetary process, and a process of personnel management.

I mention block grants not because they are involved as such in either the Muskie bill or the administration's bill, but because their possible use provides the clearest illustration of the national interest in effective and responsible State and local government. But for exactly the same reasons, under the emerging system of Federal-State-local relations known as creative federalism, the national interest requires effective State and local governmental institutions.

That is why I see the enactment of intergovernmental personnel and training acts as necessary to preserve local government as a meaningful partner in governing urban America.

Senator MUSKIE. Thank you very much, Professor Jones, for contributing, I think, very effectively to the philosophical base upon which this legislation rests.

I would like, if I might, to ask you to expand on a problem that seems to be the principal problem emerging in these hearings: that is, the question of the desirability of the requirement that there be merit principles embodied in the personnel management programs of local

government.

As a matter of fact, the difference of opinion on this point is developing to the point that I think we ought to review seriously whether or not merit systems have any useful place in State and local governments. I never had any doubt on that score, but doubts have been expressed, it seems to me, by some of our local citizens; so the question ought to be explored and resolved.

In your study, do you feel some form of merit system sould be applied to State and local governments?

Mr. JONES. I not only think they can and should be, but I think an increasing number of local governments in the United States are developing merit systems, or attempting to do so. I would very much doubt, Mr. Chairman, that there is any real dissent to the question as you put it; Should there be a merit system?

Now I think there may be a great deal of dissent as to the way in which the ingredients of a merit system are put together and the way in which the standards are communicated to State and local governments by the Federal Government.

I also think, Mr. Chairman, that the term "merit system" may be somewhat misleading in that it has come now to be almost a synonym for the old "policing" type of civil service system. Certainly in California, where almost all of the cities have the city manager form of government, the managers and their councils, elected city councils, are very, very much concerned with effective and creative personnel management.

And I know in California that there is some concern that the socalled federal standards that would be applied would interpose themselves between the management of the cities by the chief executive and the personnel employees of the city themselves.

Senator MUSKIE. There is this key paragraph on page 3 of your statement in which you say:

Block grants are not more desirable than categorical grants because they are nonconditional grants. In fact, it is even more desirable that such grants be made conditional upon the existence of an adequate planning process, a political decision making process, a budgetary process, and a process of personnel management.

Now, if grants are made conditional upon the existence of those four elements, obviously the implication is that somebody has to decide whether or not the conditions have been met.

Mr. JONES. Yes.

Senator MUSKIE. This has got to be the Federal Government, I think.

Mr. JONES. Somebody has to decide whether conditions have been met, but someone has to decide what the conditions are. And I would not raise any new questions at all as to the location in the Federal Government for responsibility of seeing conditions are met.

I do believe, however, if we have generally created federalism, and I have said this time and time again, I think local and State government should participate with the Federal Government in developing standards, in formulating the policies, as well as administering them. And in that connection, it would seem that it might be desirable to constitute the advisory council which is proposed in both bills somewhat along the lines of the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. I see no reason, for instance, why you need an advisory council under the President's bill and also an advisory commission. Both are advisory committees on intergovernmental manpower policy.

Any kind of advice on these things, particularly if you give them responsibility for reviewing standards and for trying to develop workable standards, the two functions should be combined.

And along that line, I should think it might be better if instead of speaking of Federal standards, as is done, for instance, in section 103 of S. 699, you use some such phrase as "Intergovernmental personnel management standards." I am not suggesting this wording particularly; but to make it clear, these are standards of personnel performance. The city and county people have asked for personnel standards and they ought to have them.

Senator MUSKIE. But they still have to be prescribed.

Mr. JONES. They have to be prescribed.

Senator MUSKIE. I have no objection to dropping the word "Federal."

Mr. JONES. But beyond that, I am suggesting somehow representatives of cities and counties, and perhaps representatives whom they choose or whom they nominate, as I think the case is with the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, should participate in the development of intergovernmental personnel management standards.

Senator MUSKIE. The President is requested to appoint representatives at the various levels of government to serve on the advisory council under S. 699.

Mr. JONES. Yes. Well, the important question here is whether this is a device that will result in the meaningful and effective participation of local government in the development of these standards and in the review of the standards, and in the oversight of the administration of them.

I furthermore think it would be most desirable if this council had the power, the authority, to publish its findings and recommendations. If the President does not accept them, then, all right. But, nevertheless, they are out; and State and local people will know what they have contributed here is a matter of public record..

Senator MUSKIE. Then, I take it from your testimony that on the question of the merit principle (1), it is your position that this is a principle that ought to be incorporated in State and local personnel systems; (2), that although there is some evolutionary progress along these lines, it is not sufficient and that, therefore, we ought to consider as part of this legislation some means of stimulating the acceleration of that evolutionary process and that those means ought to include some kind of intergovernmental arrangement for establishing standards.