<DOC>
[107th Congress House Hearings]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:77858.wais]
REGIONAL OFFICES: ARE THEY VITAL IN ACCOMPLISHING THE FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT'S MISSION?
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY,
FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT AND
INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 9, 2001
__________
Serial No. 107-49
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
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77-858 PDF WASHINGTON : 2002
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
STEPHEN HORN, California PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
JOHN L. MICA, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
BOB BARR, Georgia ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
DAN MILLER, Florida DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
DOUG OSE, California JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
RON LEWIS, Kentucky JIM TURNER, Texas
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
DAVE WELDON, Florida WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah ------ ------
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida ------ ------
C.L. ``BUTCH'' OTTER, Idaho ------
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
------ ------ (Independent)
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
James C. Wilson, Chief Counsel
Robert A. Briggs, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and
Intergovernmental Relations
STEPHEN HORN, California, Chairman
RON LEWIS, Kentucky JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
DAN MILLER, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
DOUG OSE, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
J. Russell George, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Dianne Guensberg, Professional Staff Member
Scott Fagan, Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on April 9, 2001.................................... 1
Statement of:
Chistolini, Paul, Acting Commissioner, Public Buildings
Service, U.S. General Services Administration.............. 18
Henton, Doug, president, Collaborative Economics............. 12
Ink, Dwight, president emeritus, Institute of Public
Administration, former Assistant Director for Executive
Management, Office of Management and Budget................ 26
Stoker, Mike, senior partner, Law Offices of Mike Stoker..... 5
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Chistolini, Paul, Acting Commissioner, Public Buildings
Service, U.S. General Services Administration, prepared
statement of............................................... 19
Henton, Doug, president, Collaborative Economics, prepared
statement of............................................... 16
Horn, Hon. Stephen, a Representative in Congress from the
State of California, letter dated April 9, 2001............ 3
Ink, Dwight, president emeritus, Institute of Public
Administration, former Assistant Director for Executive
Management, Office of Management and Budget:
Chart on public health training.......................... 30
Prepared statement of.................................... 35
Stoker, Mike, senior partner, Law Offices of Mike Stoker,
prepared statement of...................................... 8
REGIONAL OFFICES: ARE THEY VITAL IN ACCOMPLISHING THE FEDERAL
GOVERNMENT'S MISSION?
----------
MONDAY, APRIL 9, 2001
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial
Management and Intergovernmental Relations,
Committee on Government Reform,
San Francisco, CA.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in the
Ceremonial Courtroom, 19th floor, 450 Golden Gate Avenue, San
Francisco, CA, Hon. Stephen Horn (chairman of the subcommittee)
presiding.
Present: Representatives Horn, Ose and Burton.
Staff present: J. Russell George, staff director and
counsel; Bonnie Heald, director of communications; Dianne
Guensberg, professional staff member; and Scott Fagan, clerk.
Mr Horn. This hearing of the subcommittee will come to
order. This is the first in a series of three field hearings to
examine the intergovernmental efforts among State, local and
Federal Governments. Today, we will investigate the
effectiveness of the Federal Government's regional offices in
providing public services and their interaction with State and
local government agencies. On Friday, April 13, 2001, in San
Diego, we will look at drug interdiction efforts by Federal,
State and local governments. Our final field hearing in this
series will be held on Monday, April 16, 2001, in Long Beach to
review the challenges in completing the Alameda corridor
project, a joint venture between State, local, and Federal
Governments. It is the most major intermodal transportation
project in the United States. It is under budget and on
schedule. That is a rarity.
The existing Federal regional office structure was
established in 1969 during the Johnson administration. This
structure included 10 regions covering the 50 States and U.S.
territories. The 10 regions are divided into New England; the
Northeast and Caribbean; the Midatlantic; Southeast; Great
Lakes; Heartland; Greater Southwest; Rocky Mountain; Northwest
Arctic; and Pacific Rim. San Francisco, the site of today's
hearing, is the headquarters of the Pacific Rim Region.
Today the Internet and computer technologies are
transforming the nature of the interaction between the Federal
Government and the Nation's citizens. This movement toward e-
government could revolutionize Federal operations and the way
government delivers its services to the public. We will explore
the structure of the regional offices, established more than
three decades ago, to determine if it is still the most
efficient way for the Federal Government to work with State and
local governments to meet the needs of its citizens.
The subcommittee will examine whether today's environment
of faster and easier communications calls for the use of a more
decentralized office structure. Specifically, the subcommittee
will examine whether it is time to re-engineer the Federal
regional structure, how relationships with Federal, State, and
local governments might be improved to better provide services
to the public, whether Federal agencies have increased or
decreased the size and number of regional offices, and whether
there are viable and cost-effective alternatives to the
existing structure.
To discuss these issues, we have a panel of experts
representing a wide array of viewpoints. We welcome the
Honorable Dwight Ink, president emeritus of the Institute of
Public Administration. Also, a former Assistant Director for
Executive Management in the Office of Management and Budget,
which, as all of you know, is part of the Executive Office of
the President. Mr. Ink was responsible for establishing the
original Federal regional structure, and will discuss how the
structure came about.
We will also hear from Mike Stoker, attorney and former
chairman of the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and
the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board. Mr. Stoker
will provide his perspectives from his experiences dealing with
the Federal Government in his roles with both the State and
local government.
We also welcome Doug Henton, the president of Collaborative
Economics. He will discuss his work on an initiative to improve
the way the Federal Government works with regional governments.
We also have Paul Chistolini, acting Commissioner, Public
Buildings Service, General Services Administration, to discuss
his agency's role in supporting Federal regional activities. We
look forward to the testimony of each of these gentlemen.
I will put in the record now at this point a very helpful
letter from Congresswoman Anna G. Eshoo, who represents the
Palo Alto/Silicon Valley area. She describes in her letter the
helpfulness of various regional officials, who helped look at
personnel training matters and all the rest in relation to East
Palo Alto, where there was a tremendous amount of crime and
everything else. And she says, with great appreciation for the
regional staffs, that they all turned together to see where
their agency could be the most helpful in solving the problem.
And it is well on the way to solving the problem.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Horn. So now, since most of you know how this system
works, as an investigative committee, we do swear in all
witnesses. So if you will stand and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Horn. The clerk will note the witnesses have agreed to
the oath, and we will start. Let us see, we have got a few
outside trying to find a parking place and other things. But
let us start then with Mike Stoker, senior partner with law
offices in Santa Maria. We are delighted to have you here. Mr.
Stoker has had Federal experience, State experience, and county
experience.
STATEMENT OF MIKE STOKER, SENIOR PARTNER, LAW OFFICES OF MIKE
STOKER
Mr. Stoker. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me first say
I want to thank you for inviting me to participate in this
hearing. I also want to commend you for examining what is an
important issue for those in the public and private sectors who
have regular dealings with Federal agencies.
My comments are based from my experiences both in the
private sector, as an attorney who has had extensive dealings
with local, State, and Federal regulatory agencies, and also
from my public sector experience, both as a member of the Santa
Barbara County Board of Supervisors, and as chairman of the
California Agricultural Labor Relations Board.
Let me begin my testimony with a question. Why is it that a
Federal regional office would not, as a first preference, be
located in the capital of the State in which the regional
office is located? I ask this question, as there are numerous
examples, at least in California, in which the regional offices
are not located in our State capital, Sacramento, but are
located in many cases throughout the State, including here in
San Francisco. If we are focusing solely on the issue of siting
a regional office where it makes sense to carry out its
responsibilities and obligations, Sacramento, in most cases, is
where several regional offices, in my opinion, should have been
located. From my experience, I cannot think of many situations
where a Federal agency should not be located in the capital of
the State in which the regional office is located, if that
agency has either regulatory oversight or is an agency involved
with providing federally mandated social services.
I can remember numerous situations when I served on the
Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors in which I had to
travel to Sacramento, and then to San Francisco, to deal with
issues in which I had to interact with both the State and the
Federal counterparts. If you have a problem involving any issue
in which the Federal Environmental Protection Agency has
jurisdiction, you will travel to Region nine here in San
Francisco, and then typically continue on to Sacramento to meet
with the State counterparts with CalEPA, who will often have
concurrent jurisdiction. I may add that every day individuals
and businesses in this State that have EPA compliance issues
will make that same exact trip.
With this in mind, why is this geographical barrier between
offices necessary? Not only would locating these offices in one
city be more user-friendly, it would also make the jobs easier
for the respective staffs who often have to meet with each
other to work out jurisdiction and compliance matters.
Now, it is clearly not my intention here to single out EPA
as the one example of this phenomenon. There are numerous
examples of this geographical separation taking place. The
bottom line is there is not a situation in which the regulatory
issues or social services are concerned, that the State's
headquarters for the counterpart is not located in the State
capital, Sacramento. And I can assure you that hundreds of
trips are made each day by members of the private sector and
representatives of local government who have dealings
pertaining to welfare; Medi-Cal; endangered species and
wetlands; clean air; water; labor; and the list goes on and on.
For many of those folks Sacramento is only one leg of a two-
stop trip. To better accommodate them and better coordinate
between State and Federal agencies involved, it makes sense to
locate these offices in the same city. While I cannot speak to
situations in other States, I would assume that 99 percent of
the time that State offices will usually be headquartered in
the State capital. If efficiency and effectiveness are the
desired goal, then the regional offices' presumed preferred
location should be the capital of the State involved, unless a
compelling reason to the contrary can be demonstrated.
For instance, trade and commerce issues may warrant
locating Federal offices in San Francisco or Los Angeles or
your hometown, Mr. Chairman, Long Beach, based on Pacific Rim
factors and the fact that the cities I just named serve as
major trade centers. However, keep in mind that California's
headquarters for the Department of Commerce and Trade is
located in Sacramento, as is the California World Trade
Commission headquarters. Likewise, Immigration & Naturalization
Service matters may need to be based in Los Angeles or San
Diego because of the nexus those cities have to immigration
issues. In regards to the National Labor Relations Board, when
I was chairman of the California Agricultural Labor Relations
Board [ALRB], which is coincidentally located in Sacramento, I
always assumed that the reason the NLRB's regional office is
located across the bay in Oakland was due to the strong labor
movement the Bay Area is known for. If that is not the reason,
I cannot think of a rationale for not being located in
Sacramento. If that is the reason, perhaps that is a reason
enough that is compelling enough to justify the location in
Oakland.
Before I close, I would like to offer two caveats to my
testimony. First, which I think is clear from my personal
experience, my perspective is solely based on intrastate
experiences, me being in California, dealing with California,
and having Federal regional offices located in California. I
have no idea how my counterpart that may live in Arizona would
feel who has to come to a regional office located somewhere in
California, which leads me to my second point. At least as far
as the lack of siting regional offices in Sacramento could be
concerned, many of these offices were sited or located back in
the 1960's, some in the 1970's, some going back to the 1950's.
Sacramento, I think, as you know, Mr. Chair, up until 25 years
ago, did not have an international airport. That very well
could have been the reason to take into account those people
coming from other States to deal with regional offices that
would have to be located in the West Coast, that the
transportation issue made it inconvenient to travel to
Sacramento. That reason has not existed for 25 years, with
Sacramento having an international airport. All my dealings
with California, from an intrastate perspective, are based on
knowing that relationship has existed in Sacramento, and
knowing that transportation hub has existed with the
international airport now being located in Sacramento.
Hopefully what I have shared with you will prove beneficial
as you consider Federal regional offices and their locations,
and whether they could better serve the public and fulfill
their responsibilities if they were located in different
locations. While such an assessment may not appear on the top
10 list of things that need to be addressed in our Nation's
Capital, on behalf of all of us in the private and public
sector who have regular dealings with these State and Federal
agencies, let me thank you and commend you again for the task
you have accepted. I will be more than happy to answer any
questions you may have.
Mr. Horn. Thank you very much. That is a very helpful
perspective.
Our next presenter is Doug Henton, the president of
Collaborative Economics. And you might explain to us a little
bit about Collaborative Economics.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Stoker follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
STATEMENT OF DOUG HENTON, PRESIDENT, COLLABORATIVE ECONOMICS
Mr. Henton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I very much appreciate
the opportunity to testify today on the use of Federal regional
offices. Over 20 years ago, when I worked in the Federal
Government, I actually worked in two Federal regional offices
here in San Francisco and Atlanta as part of what was then the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, now Health and
Human Services. In addition, I worked in the Washington, DC,
office for the Secretary. And it struck me at the time that
Federal regional offices do play a unique role in the Federal
system, so I am pleased to be here to offer my thoughts on a
changing role, given the things that are happening in today's
world.
My firm, Collaborative Economics, is based in Palo Alto,
and we provide a range of services to regional business and
civic organizations. An example being Joint Venture: Silicon
Valley, which is a group that was formed over 10 years ago of
business, government, and community leaders who come together
to work on common problems. The first president of Joint
Venture was former Senator Becky Morgan, and the most recent
president of Joint Venture is Rubin Morales, who recently was
named the head of intergovernmental relations for the White
House.
What these regional groups do is try to bring together
leadership in a region so that you can work more effectively on
the problems of those regions, very much similar to the Gateway
Cities partnership in the Congressman's district. We have
worked with a number of regional organizations in California,
and now Collaborative Economics serves as a coordinator for a
national organization called the Alliance for Regional
Stewardship. And we represent about 25 regions around the
country, again mostly metropolitan regions that are trying to
develop stronger practices in their region. This alliance is a
learning network where the regional leaders come together,
share information, and try to develop effective approaches.
And what I want to share with you is one innovation that is
being developed as part of these conversations among
metropolitan regions. Within that alliance, we have a Committee
on the Regions that is working to promote a new partnership
with the Federal Government. One of the priorities is to
streamline and really improve the way that the Federal planning
requirements themselves work at the regional level so you can
increase flexibility, so that regional groups can plan in a
more integrative way. What we are arguing for is a more bottom-
up approach where regions develop plans to fit their needs, and
then work with Federal agencies to bring the Federal agencies
in to help implement those plans. In this approach, the Federal
agency acts as a partner with the regional groups.
So let me give you one example right here from the Bay
Area, to try to flesh this out and give you a flavor. In most
metropolitan regions there are numerous metropolitan planning
organizations, councils of governments, regional air quality
districts, regional development districts. This is quite
common. We have that here in the Bay Area. All of these and
many more make up the landscape of regions today. Alongside
these public agencies, there are a bunch of civic organizations
that are formed, like Joint Venture: Silicon Valley.
Now, this problem actually results from a history of what I
would call top-down policy overlays. Over the last 30 years,
every time a Federal agency wants to implement a Federal
program, it mandates the different regional structure. Now, the
most recent example of this is the transportation programs in
the T-21 which has a metropolitan planning organization
structure which allows regions to plan, which is excellent. The
problem is that does not always mesh with other regional groups
in the metropolitan area. Here, for instance, in the Bay Area,
we have many separate organizations, which I will speak to in a
second.
Now, viewed from the top-down, a program perspective, this
may not only be inevitable, but desirable, because it appears
to allow for accountability for a Federal program. However,
looked at from the region, the metropolitan region perspective,
these Federal policy overlays create a crazy-quilt pattern
which we might call ``siloed planning.'' So let me give you the
example here in the Bay Area. The Bay Area--in this case
Oakland, San Francisco, and San Jose--is actually trying to
deal with this problem of fragmentation. The role of the
Federal regional office has been absolutely critical.
In the nine-county Bay Area there is a Council of
Governments; the Association of Bay Area Governments [ABAG]; a
Metropolitan Planning Agency, the Metropolitan Transportation
Commission; a Bay Area Air Quality District; a Bay Area Water
Quality District; the Bay Area Conservation and Development
District; and a business-led organization called the Bay Area
Council. Now, an attempt was made in 1989 and 1990 to
consolidate all of these organizations into a single agency.
That was legislation that was carried by former Senator Becky
Morgan in the State legislature, and that legislation failed.
Because, when you talk about regional government, you are
talking about another overlay, and local governments are very
resistant to create a new form of regional government, and it
was not adopted.
Then the leaders of the Bay Area got innovative. They tried
a bottom-up collaborative approach, partnering with Federal
agencies in a new way. First, the leaders of the Bay Area
Council, which is a business-led organization, local
governments, and the non-profit sector came together under the
auspice of a new organization called the Bay Area Partnership.
They invited the regional director of the Federal Health and
Human Services agency, who played a critical role in this, to
work with them. And in this particular case, they identified
areas that were the most impoverished neighborhoods, 46 in all.
A new coalition was formed, called the Bay Area Alliance for
Sustainable Development, a joint effort of the Bay Area
Council, the business organization; ABAG, the government
organization; Urban Habitat, an environmental group; and the
Sierra Club, to create an initiative called Community Capital
Investment Initiative, which is providing funding to low income
neighborhoods working with mainstream financial institutions
such as the Bank of America, Washington Mutual, and Wells
Fargo.
They are participating in a four pilot region process
nationwide which has gone under the term the ``reverse RFP,''
meaning a demonstration where you would actually have the
regions define their need, and then invite Federal agencies to
join with them in the solutions. It is under a leadership group
called the Partnership for Regional Livability. The Bay Area is
now working with Federal agencies on this initiative, including
the regional office of Housing and Urban Development; the U.S.
Department of Commerce; EDA; EPA; the Federal Reserve Bank,
which is an independent agency, but they are involved; GSA;
HHS; and Labor, on this initiative.
And here is how it works. Rather than having the Federal
Government come through with mandates, this is actually a
reverse approach which, as I said, is an upside-down approach,
where the Federal agencies, particularly the regional offices,
are asked to participate in these projects defined by the
region. In this case, working together, metropolitan regional
leaders and Federal partners have identified how to support
mixed use, mixed income housing, commercial, and industrial
developments in targeted neighborhoods in this region. It
requires a mixed approach because it involves HUD, it involves
EDA, it involves the Federal Reserve, it involves the Treasury.
In this case they have all come together on a team to work
together to solve the problem here within a region.
There is a second ``reverse RFP'' underway as well around
the use of geographic tools for planning. In that case the U.S.
Geological Survey, based in Menlo Park, is playing a critical
role here regionally as well. In both cases, the Federal
regional agencies are viewed as part of a team, not simply
funders or regulators.
What is different about this picture? Regional cooperation
at the grassroots level around specific needs defined by a
region has resulted in agreements, and in every case there is a
signed agreement, with Federal agencies participating. Even
five local regulatory agencies have joined in through the
project as well--and what I mean by that are the Bay Area Water
District and the Air Quality District and other local groups--
to identify and implement regional priorities. The focus is on
shared outcomes built into that partnering agreement. A bottom-
up approach replaces the more traditional top-down approach.
While there is no attempt to consolidate the regional agencies,
the regional public and private groups are working again in
partnership with these regional agencies.
We need more experiments, and I do not think there is one
model here. But what I would hope, you might want to try more
experiments like the one being tried here--the other regions
are also involved: Atlanta, Chicago, and Denver, so this is
something that is happening in four places right now with
Federal participation--to test a new way of looking at a
partnership.
Federal agencies, and particularly Federal regional
offices, play a critical role in this model. In addition to
their traditional grantmaking and service delivery roles,
Federal agencies can be partners with their regions in
developing these bottom-up approaches. The regional agencies
can participate more effectively and on a regular basis if they
are here. It is very difficult for the Washington offices of
these agencies to participate because of both distance and
time. They not only gain a knowledge of the region by
participating in these types of exercises, but they are able to
tailor the Federal response to regional needs. It is unlikely
that a more decentralized approach could be administered simply
from the headquarters office only.
So finally, in this age of Internet, information can flow
quickly from many sources. And there is almost a so-called
death of distance, and the Internet does redefine distance. But
it is been our experience in Silicon Valley and elsewhere that
place still matters; even more, in fact, in the new economy. It
is those face-to-face relationships that build the trust and
the knowledge that are important to develop these types of
partnering relationships. Federal regional offices, we believe,
should be full partners with regions in developing these new
types of innovative approaches, particularly that result in
region-specific strategies.
So I guess I would conclude by saying I believe that the
Federal regional offices play a very important role in the
Federal system, but their role might change in a more bottom-
up, regional-driven process. Thank you very much, and I would
be happy to answer any question, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Horn. Thank you. That is a very worthwhile perspective,
and we can pursue that a little further with questions.
Our next presenter is Paul Chistolini, who is the acting
Commissioner, Public Buildings Service, General Services
Administration. He has formerly been a regional director, as
well as other different things that he has done over his civil
servant lifetime. We are delighted to have you here,
Commissioner, and please proceed.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Henton follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
STATEMENT OF PAUL CHISTOLINI, ACTING COMMISSIONER, PUBLIC
BUILDINGS SERVICE, U.S. GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Chistolini. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and good
afternoon. I am pleased to appear before you today and provide
information on the space holdings, both leased and owned, that
GSA provides to the Federal agencies in the San Francisco and
Oakland areas.
We have six federally owned buildings that provide
approximately 3 million square feet, or approximately 68
percent of the total space used by Federal agencies in San
Francisco and Oakland. The remaining 32 percent, or 1.6 million
square feet, is comprised of 53 leases throughout the area. We
provide the space to virtually all agencies of the executive
branch, as well as space for the Federal judiciary and Members
of Congress.
The thrust of GSA's space management program has been, and
continues to be, a sharp focus on maximizing the use of
federally owned space. Examples of this are major renovations
currently underway here in San Francisco at the Appraisers
Store Building, and also the planned construction of a new
Federal building here in San Francisco. These two actions will
decrease the amount of space leased by the Federal Government
in the San Francisco and Oakland area by approximately one-
third.
Now, the market cost of lease space in San Francisco and
Oakland has been influenced by two key elements. First, almost
no new space has been added to the commercial space inventory
in recent years. And second, the demand for space by the
financial, technology, and business development sectors has
been at an all-time high. This combination resulted in driving
the amount of available space to an all-time low, while at the
same time virtually resulting in bidding wars for Class A
commercial space. The cost of available Class A commercial
space has doubled in recent years.
Since the beginning of 2001, just 3 months ago, rates for
Class A commercial space in San Francisco have dropped from
their all-time highs of $90 to $110 a foot, to the $65 to $75 a
square foot range. These high rates resulted in the recent
relocation of three Federal agencies from leased space in San
Francisco to leased space in Oakland where the rates for
comparable space are 25 to 30 percent lower.
These high rates for leased space have made the cost of
retrofitting older Federal buildings to meet current seismic
standards a very attractive investment. Increased retrofitting
of our older buildings will further reduce our dependency on
leased space that we use to meet the needs of the Federal
Government.
That concludes my prepared statement, Mr. Chairman, and
thank you for this opportunity. I would be glad to answer any
questions you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Chistolini follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Horn. Well, thank you.
We have got another witness or so that are driving here,
and hopefully we will have that before the end of the day. Let
me ask a few questions now.
Mr. Stoker, do you believe there are opportunities to use
new technologies, such as teleconferencing, that would help
relieve some of the logistical problems you discussed in your
statement? What do you think about that?
Mr. Stoker. Well, Mr. Chairman, certainly the technology is
there, and to some extent more and more it is being utilized. I
think anything we would do, you know, getting back to my
underlying premise, at least from an intrastate perspective, I
do not see how siting a Federal regional office is going to be
anything but a positive impact, at least to anybody in the
State of California, if hypothetically it was in Sacramento,
where the State counterpart is. I would start from the premise
unless that negatively affects people from other States that
come in here, that is the first and foremost. Because when you
are dealing with a regulatory issue or when I had social
service issues as a county supervisor, and we did a lot of
teleconferencing often in terms of, not with the Federal
counterpart, but with the State counterpart from Santa Barbara
and the county seat.
But when you have problems and you are trying to work out
those problems, it is better having the teleconferencing versus
not having it at all, but seeing people face-to-face in that
room that have concurrent jurisdiction or have roles that are
similar with the task that you are trying to solve,
teleconferencing is never going to replace the strategic
benefit of having all the players, the stakeholders, in that
room together. But it is definitely available. I would say if
you cannot put everybody in that same room, then the next-best
alternative is to be very aggressive with teleconferencing.
I will give you an example at the local level--what we did
in Santa Barbara County now, which is being done more and more.
As you know, Santa Barbara is a pretty large county. The Board
of Supervisors meets twice a month in the southern part of the
county, and then they meet twice a month in the northern part.
When they meet in the northern part, people can testify from
the county seat in Santa Barbara by teleconference, where there
is a video there, and they can testify to the board and not
have to go up to northern Santa Barbara County, and then vice-
versa.
So the technology is there, it should be used; but it is
never going to replace--especially when you have problems that
you need to have stakeholders together, working them out
together in a collaborative way--it is never going to replace
the advantage of everybody being together in the same room.
Mr. Horn. Well, I agree with you on some of that, that
presumably you do not get the informal vibrations, if you will,
in how to negotiate with each other and this kind of thing. You
could certainly use it for information-gathering and that kind
of thing.
Mr. Stoker. Absolutely.
Mr. Horn. No problem there.
Mr. Stoker. Absolutely not.
Mr. Horn. The problem is do you solve the problem. And so I
just wonder what these two gentlemen's experience would be on
this, and the degree to which, say, GSA, I know, is doing a
lot, as are other Federal agencies, where people who will keep
working at home and then fax it in or e-mail it in, as the case
may be. And that does not really necessarily provide for
interactions. On the other hand, some supervisors do worry
about that, and what happens. I would be interested in what Mr.
Henton has to say and what Mr. Chistolini has to say.
Mr. Henton. Well, I think that face-to-face is always the
best way to negotiate a complex problem, and I would agree
getting all the right people in the room, there is just no
solution better than that. But, I will also agree that clearly
with the Internet and with the tools that we now have, we can
do a much better job of sharing information immediately, so
that there is no sort of delay in trying to get information out
about new programs or new initiatives or new things that people
need to go through. I really do think they complement each
other in terms of the use of the technologies, but I do not see
them as a substitute.
We look a lot at this issue in our work in Silicon Valley,
and I have come to the conclusion that the Internet is a
complement to face-to-face, not a substitute. But I think there
is a lot--the Federal Government is the largest repository of
information in the world, and it has more information than it
has even disseminated that it knows. It is a content provider.
So if we could have the Federal Government playing a much
better role in Internet and sharing of information effectively,
I am thinking even--I mean, I am going a little bit in a
different direction here--but geographic information that is
coded at a level that people can use at the county level,
information dissemination that is easily accessible is
something the Federal Government really can do a lot more. And
it can be done over the Internet. We have the tools. It is just
a question of commitment.
Mr. Horn. What do you think, Mr. Chistolini?
Mr. Chistolini. What I have noticed in recent years, as the
other gentlemen have pointed out, is Federal agencies are
depending a lot more on telecommunications, the Internet, for
the dissemination. We have programs like firstgov.gov where the
average citizen can come in and find out information about
their government, get forms, that sort of thing. The IRS uses a
lot of this. The Internet is certainly affecting the citizen's
ability to get information in a timely and accurate way.
We see a lot of our tenant agencies going more toward that
and trying to find ways to make it easier, sort of doing e-
business, and it requires a big investment. But a lot of that
is being done in conjunction with local governments.
Mr. Horn. Does GSA have a sort of motivational way to get
the other Federal agencies to either learn about the equipment
or to get wiring to do the equipment? Just to what degree is
GSA sort of the overall person for giving them ideas of new
technology which maybe their teenage kids might give, also?
What can you do to improve things?
Mr. Chistolini. Well, we do have an Office of Government-
wide Policy that regularly brings people together from
different Federal agencies to basically share good practices on
the use of space, the use of equipment, and meeting the needs
of the citizens for information and for access to information
across the country. So a lot of that has been done.
There has been a number of joint projects that have been
done with agencies such as IRS. I believe the President's
budget announced today will show that there is some funding in
there for some additional projects that will both ensure
security of the information, as well as the dissemination of
that information.
Mr. Horn. Does GSA work with a lot of the different Federal
agencies in the regional offices so they can coordinate the
delivery of these services to the public, and has anybody ever
assigned and looked at the situation as to are we mostly
talking about the taxpayer, or are we talking about other
officials at different levels, or what? Or are we missing
something somewhere?
Mr. Chistolini. Well, most of our emphasis has been on
providing a good infrastructure inside of a building so that
agencies can meet their individual needs. Most agencies are
determining for themselves how they will deal with the public.
GSA tends to look at how we can put the right infrastructure in
a building so that an agency can meet its needs in whatever way
possible.
Mr. Horn. A lot of buildings are being broadbanded now when
people move in, and certainly in the private sector. Have we
done much of that with the public sector?
Mr. Chistolini. We have done quite a bit of that. And we
are also making our buildings more accessible to the
telecommunications industry so you could have multiple
providers in a building which would meet individual tenants'
needs.
Mr. Horn. There is a partnership for intergovernmental
innovation, and I wondered the degree to which the GSA
initiative works with all those levels of government, could we
implement an electronic type of government? Has anybody got a
laboratory where they do that at all now? I know you try to
show them what the latest instrumentation is, but is there a
human component there where you have got to really help them
work their way through?
Mr. Chistolini. Well, we actually have one in the GSA
central office in Washington--in fact, it is just above my
floor--where we partnered with Carnegie Mellon Institute out of
Pittsburgh to lay out the space, do assessments of people's
abilities to work better before they moved, and actually
surveyed them about how much efficiency they gained after. And
that is based on the space, the layout, the furniture, the
ergonomics, their access to information, the climate control,
their ability to control that climate in their work space. And
we have published quite a bit of results on that and
information on that. We share that with the private sector.
Mr. Horn. Carnegie Mellon is the institution in the country
that is perhaps the major university in terms of looking at
computer security. Have you also involved them with computer
security so--we have got privacy files by the millions in the
Federal Government, and what do we do to really make sure
peoples' privacy is kept as private as we can?
Mr. Chistolini. That is a little bit out of my area, but I
do know that within GSA we have an Office of Information
Security which has been working with Carnegie Mellon on those
issues, as they have been working with the rest of the Federal
Government to provide better cyber-security, if you will.
Actually, one thing on the innovative sharing of
information, we have worked quite a bit with the State of
Pennsylvania, which has done some innovative--I will call them
green offices, where we have shared best practices about what
works for people being able to work both in the office, and
also to be able to work say 1 day out of every 2 weeks at their
home or some other location.
Mr. Horn. That is very helpful.
I see that Mr. Ink has come, and we are delighted you are
here. Mr. Ink has testified before Congress for 50 years. I do
not think anybody else has that record. Only John Quincy Adams
came maybe close, an ex-President.
Mr. Ink. I was a little young when he was President.
Mr. Horn. You and Strom Thurmond.
Mr. Ink. Yes.
Mr. Horn. But we are glad to see you, and we would like for
you to give us your perspective, because you are the one that
started a lot of this in terms of regional field organizations.
So go ahead and take your time.
STATEMENT OF DWIGHT INK, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, INSTITUTE OF
PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, FORMER ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR EXECUTIVE
MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
Mr. Ink. When Chairman Horn beckons, we all respond. I hope
the people in California realize how effective he is. It is
great to be here.
This area that the committee is talking about today, is one
that at one time was center stage in terms of Federal focus, as
well as a State and local focus. But it is pretty much off the
radar screen now in terms of interagency coordination or even
coordination within individual major cabinet departments. I
understand, Mr. Chairman, that there is interest in this
committee on the interaction, both within the Federal
Government and with respect to other levels of government. If I
am correct, then that is what I would like to focus on in my
testimony.
A bit of history I think is useful here. During the days of
the Great Society, local assistance programs were being born,
two or three programs a month, it seemed. They were trying to
meet needs that had been long overdue in terms of recognition,
and the cities were burning. So these programs were put
together pretty hastily, and almost no attention was given to
their delivery systems. It is a little known fact that
management was deliberately squeezed out of the design of most
of the Great Society programs because of a fear that management
would drain those programs of innovation, and would stifle
innovation. Of course, what happened was the reverse of what
was intended. They developed a tremendous maze of bureaucratic
processing and red tape, each program being developed by
itself, without reference to other related programs within the
agency or among other agencies. It was very difficult for
communities and neighborhoods to coordinate the Federal
Government. Any time an innovative and bold mayor or city
manager or city council tried to put together programs drawing
upon different Federal funding sources, they found that each
one had a different form to fill out, different criteria,
different standards to meet. They had to meet with Federal
people that were scattered perhaps in three or four different
States. Smaller communities did not have the funds to deal with
the fragmented Federal Government, and oftentimes those
communities that most needed help from the Federal Government
were the ones that had the greatest difficulty in utilizing
these Great Society programs that were intended to help them.
So it was very, very frustrating, and there was no one in a
position to help the local communities draw together these
fragmented categorical grants that were needed to attack these
core problems in the cities.
With the support of the Bureau of the Budget, this problem
was first addressed on a department-wide basis when the
Department of Housing and Urban Development was established in
1965. To compensate for the fragmentation in HUD, which was
similar to what you find in every department in Washington, as
HUD was established we set up strong regional offices around
the country. And these regional offices did have full authority
to act, which is somewhat unusual.
Secretary Weaver, who was the first Secretary of HUD,
insisted that those offices be headed by career people, not
political appointees. As head of HHFA, he was sick and tired of
the problems and the corruption that grows out of the political
pressures in administering programs. This pressure is very
different from the political process which is absolutely vital
and essential in establishing policy. But he felt it was very
important to be able to administer assistance projects on a
non-partisan basis.
Each region was headed by a career person at the top of the
career ladder, a GS-17 or GS-18. And there was an Assistant
Secretary for Administration, which at that time had a lot of
strength in the department, who was assigned the responsibility
for monitoring the departmental system to make sure that these
headquarter units did not negate the freedom, the initiative,
and the authority that the regional directors had. There were
also metropolitan expediters assigned by these regions to go
out and rove around the communities in which these regional
directors were responsible, they would talk independently with
the local officials to see what problems, from their
perspective, might be emerging, so that they could be dealt
with by the region before they developed into serious issues.
Now, this is very significant, because what I am talking
about is just the precise opposite of how we approach these
problems today in most instances. Because these were
established, these were designed, the whole system was designed
not from the perspective of Washington, but from the
perspective of the local communities, neighborhoods, and to
some extent the States. In those days the States were not
regarded as very strong, so the focus then was more heavily
upon the local communities.
That field structure worked very well. But that was only
one department. So that left the broad coordinating
difficulties still in place for departments that needed to draw
upon, for example, the Labor Department, poverty programs that
were then in HEW and HUD, that would deal with a major
community or neighborhood that was perhaps devastated by fires
and riots. At the time Johnson left office, the frustration
level was extremely high. And by far, the greatest criticism
directed toward the Federal Government at the time he left
office was this problem of Federal assistance programs being
such a managerial and administrative mess. Even though Johnson
intended these to help people, often they were just getting in
the way of the help.
When Nixon came into office--and this is quite different
from the image that most of us now have of Nixon--with all this
political flack, with the grant system, reforming it was
initially his No. 1 domestic priority. Within a few weeks of
his inauguration, he issued a whole series of orders to begin
to make sense out of the Federal grant system. He ordered that
the whole country be divided into 10 regions, and that each of
those 10 regions have a regional city. By the way, San
Francisco was 1 of those 10 regional cities. And each of these
regional cities would have a regional council. I had the job of
overseeing the execution of this order.
The regional council was patterned after what we found to
be very successful in rebuilding Alaska after their earlier
earthquake. Alaska was so remote that I set up a field team in
Alaska composed of the top Federal official from each of the
major departments and agencies that were involved: the Corp of
Engineers, Defense Department, Interior, HHFA, and so on. They
functioned as a coordinating group. We did not give that field
team any authority as a group. The authority they had to
utilize was the authority that the individual members had from
their own department. The 10 regions we set up much later
across the country were patterned after that Alaskan
experience.
We also set up what we called ``council watchers'' out of
the Bureau of the Budget in Washington. They spent a great deal
of time in the field meeting with these councils to make sure
that they facilitated action, rather than becoming another
layer. That was our greatest fear, that they would in time
become another layer, and simply delay things, rather than
expedite. That is the reason that we had the OMB people out
working with the councils. These OMB people also were visiting
with local officials and State officials to see how the Federal
grant system was functioning from their perspective. We tried,
only partially successfully, to get the departments to shift a
number of high grades from Washington out to the field. We were
more successful with respect to getting the delegation of
authority on grants moved out to the field.
This new arrangement was very, very successful, to the
point that we had several joint letters from associations of
mayors, Governors, and city managers, State legislatures,
complimenting us. I would like to ask, Mr. Chairman, if for the
record I could submit a before-and-after chart that will
illustrate the difference in the processing of a grant
application between what happened before and what happened
after the grant simplification. I would like to also mention
that this chart that I give you was not just one program
process, it was the process for 21 programs in HEW. What I am
showing you was audited by the General Accounting Offices, this
is not a PR piece.
Mr. Horn. Without objection, the items that Mr. Ink has
submitted will be put at this point in the record. If there is
anything else you want to talk to on those records, we would be
very grateful.
[The information referred to follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Ink. The amount of effort, the number of people that
were involved in the processing of grant applications in the
Federal Government was often cut by between 50 and 95 percent.
That meant the time of processing was cut by that amount. That
meant that the local officials got a yes or no answer much,
much quicker. Furthermore, they got a clearer answer. Because
we found that when things were being processed in headquarters,
going through all these offices, that you ended up with some
kind of a compromise language in the response that was often
ambiguous. And headquaters wanted a lot more information than
the field, because the field was much more familiar with the
problems and more familiar with the local leadership. So that
reform was very successful for a time. But we no longer have it
what happened?
First of all, as the second Nixon term got underway there
was tremendous pressure to politicize these field leadership
positions. And the same thing happened with respect to the
assistant secretaries in Washington. Those positions were also
fragmented as they shifted from career to political positions.
This started under Nixon's second term and continued under
President Carter.
So the credibility of the system dropped. The delegation of
authority got confused as a number of the headquarters people
found ways to undercut the delegations to the field.
Consequently, the field was no longer in a position in some
agencies to give the kinds of quick, clear answers they had
given earlier. And there were a few other problems, too.
The 10 regions also began to disappear. Some of the
agencies decided that they could do better with a different
configuration, and therefore shifted away from the 10 common
regions. That got us moving back to where we were before,
having to deal with different agencies in different States for
a single project.
Attention to the field structure has declined ever since
1972. But attention accelerated during the last few years under
reinventing government. What I call benign neglect became
pretty complete. There are a few individual cases of individual
programs that have been trying hard to be more responsive to
local governments. But interagency field cooperation and the
intergovernmental cooperation is gone. It is dead.
Most of the reforms that we have seen, as I mentioned
earlier, are from the standpoint of Washington, not from the
local view. You saw that change when reinventing government
came into town and HUD was reorganized. HUD needed
reorganizing. The delegations in the field were terribly
confused. There was a lot of concern about the politicizing of
different parts of the department. So it was a department that
had been in trouble for some time and needed a lot of change.
But instead of designing the changes from the perspective
of what is needed in local governments, it was designed
primarily to help the assistant secretaries in Washington. So
they not only abolished the regional offices, but resorted to
an old-fashioned, out-of-date, stovepipe organization, which is
where HUD is today.
There has been no effort to begin to link up in any
meaningful way the different departments in their response to
local governments. Some people say we needed that linkage when
we had a lot of categorical grants, but no longer. Last week
however, the Secretary of HUD said, ``We have over 300
categorical grants in HUD,'' so it seems to me that the
categorical system must still be alive and well.
I think there is, Mr. Chairman, a growing recognition,
though not as well recognized as it should be, that we do need
to give renewed attention to the field structure of the Federal
Government, but we need to give it attention in light of how it
can best serve the States and the local communities, not how it
best serves the Federal Government in Washington. Not how the
structure best serves the bureaus in Washington, but how does
it serve the city manager and neighborhood leader or the mayor.
That is what needs to be done.
But I would also strongly caution against trying to make
changes until we know exactly what the problems are from the
perspective of local officials, from the perspective of these
local neighborhoods. What we did when we set up a coordinated
system in the beginning, was to work with both the public
interest groups--we called them PIGS--public interest groups,
and the individual mayors and city managers. We actually flow-
charted what was happening in the grant system. Because if you
ask any official in any level of government what is happening,
they cannot say because they are not in a position to see the
whole picture. They are not in a position to see the totality
of the red tape that grows up within our system. And once you
see what that is, then you know precisely where the greatest
delays are. You then have an opportunity not to just nibble at
the problem, but to reform the system.
So I would strongly urge that we do that now. We need to
start from scratch. And this can be done quickly, finding out
what the problems are, where the impediments are, how serious
they are, and at what level.
The bipartisan Intergovernmental Cooperation Act in 1968
gave me an excellent legislative base on which to move forward
with the new federalism. Today we do not have anything quite
that useful, but I would think that the Government Performance
and Results Act with innovation and imagination, can be very
helpful to the Congress and to the OMB in moving ahead with the
kind of analysis I was talking about, and toward determining
needed improvements.
As you know, the incoming Bush administration has, as one
of its objectives, that of moving the Federal Government toward
one that is, ``citizen-centered and not bureaucracy centered,''
and an intent to finally put the ``M'' in OMB. Now, of course,
we have heard that before. We have heard it over and over
before. And I have long urged, as I know the Chair has, that we
move to a separate Office of Management, because OMB has always
been dominated by the budget process. But I would also argue
that I think Mitch Daniels and Sean O'Keefe know more about
management than most leadership in OMB. They are determined to
move ahead. And until we are successful in getting an Office of
Management, I would urge
this committee to do everything you can to provide them with
support and encouragement as they move forward to try to carry
this out against pretty formidable odds.
Mr. Chairman, I have tried to cover the highlights. I am
ready to answer questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ink follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Horn. Let me try one out on you as to where those that
are not in the field, but still in the bureacracy in
Washington, is there any way to have a different type of
management, or is it simply carrying out the Secretary's will,
shall we say, or the President's will, and then they say, ``Do
it to them,'' or is there a way that decisions can be changed
based on actually what they find out is going on in a
community? In other words, what do we really need? Do we really
need any sort of regional structure?
Mr. Ink. I think we probably do, but we do not know for
sure until this analysis is made that I am talking about. It is
very difficult to have in individual field offices the kind of
skills and expertise that you can gather in a regional office.
On the other hand, it is also very difficult in Washington to
handle the operational problems that you can handle in a
regional office. Not only is it difficult, but the more
operations you pull into Washington, the more that tends to
squeeze out the policy role of headquarters, the more it
squeezes out the monitoring and oversight role that is very
important for a headquarters office. And the more operational
responsibility in Washington, not only does that limit the
amount of time and effort they can devote to oversight, but it
also detracts from their objectivity, because they are
oversighting what they have already been a party to developing.
I think we would not want to rebuild what I built back in
1969. I am sure it would look very different today. I am sure
it would be much more streamlined. I cannot imagine needing as
many people. The e-government developments would enable us to
do things that we could not do then. But I would caution
against people falling into a trap of thinking that electronic
advances can fully substitute for human judgment. And human
judgment is best and most effective when it is out in the field
where it knows the people, where it knows the conditions.
Mr. Horn. Of course, when you have got regional offices in
San Francisco, you have got tremendous costs that you would not
have in other parts of the country. And how do we deal with
that? Should we have a lot of regional offices in Barstow and
Needles, CA?
Mr. Ink. Well, when we set up the regional offices around
the country, we pulled in people that had been trying to staff
up some of the local offices, and not very successfully in many
instances. So what we did was draw some of those people into
the regional offices. We were successful in doing that without
increasing the overall staff. And I would think that could be
done today.
Mr. Horn. Well, you have heard some of the things Mr. Ink
has said. Do any of you have a response on that? Mr. Chistolini
and then Mr. Henton, Mr. Stoker.
Mr. Henton. I'd like to make a comment on I think what Mr.
Ink said is so valuable, not only because it gives us a
historical perspective, but I think it gives us a way of
looking at where we need to go. And the historical perspective
that was being discussed is very intriguing. If you go back to
that early experience that he described with HUD trying to
bring together their programs at the regional level working
with local officials, and a phrase that I actually was not
aware of, the notion of metropolitan expediters is exactly what
my testimony was about. The idea of creating a way where local
communities can come together and identify their problems, and
then bring the Federal agencies in and try to expedite some of
these decisions. Where the physical location of the regional
office is probably less important than having Federal people as
part of the team. And I thought that was very, very
interesting, and I was a little bit aware of that history. So I
think there is a lot of interesting things to be looked at
here.
The other thing is, I just want to comment, the first
Federal official that I ever worked for was Elliott Richardson
when he was Secretary of HEW. And one of his biggest concerns
was categorical programs. At that time, in 1970, 1971, there
were 1,000 categorical programs across the Federal agencies,
and about 300 of them in HEW.
He introduced an idea which was not implemented, but I
still think it is the best idea, which is called the Allied
Services Act, of trying to connect these categorical programs
so that they are more responsive to local needs. But he
realized how hard it was, and he always use to comment that he
thought the Federal Government had a hardening of the
categories. [Laughter.]
So there is a tendency here, and again I just want to
reinforce what Mr. Ink said, I think it is absolutely
essential. But when I was in school I studied with a public
administration professor named James Fessler who wrote a famous
article about area and function. He basically made the point
that there is a cycle effect here. That Federal agencies will
organize by function, realizing that is not responsive to local
need. Then they will reorganize by area. Then they realize that
they cannot deal with accountability, and then they reorganize
back. This article was written in 1958, and it predicts exactly
the phenomenon that we are seeing here, which is this sort of
swing back and forth, when in fact you need both, area and
function. I really think that is an opportunity, with
information technology, to rethink how we do things. But I just
want to reinforce what Mr. Ink said. The notion of a bottom-up
strategy, figuring out what the needs are, and organizing to
the needs of local communities is something that I think could
be done. There are communities all over this country that would
love to participate in that. So I just want to reinforce that.
Mr. Horn. Let me look at another angle here. Many of the
corporations that survived through the recession from 1988 on
up to now, many of them found that when they cut out a lot of
middle management people, the corporation focussed better on
helping the customers. Of course, we are talking about how do
you help the taxpayers that pay the bills of the government.
And I just wonder, in an age where you have got communication
that just can overwhelm people, but certainly has something
where they can communicate to a lot of people that have not
been communicated with, it seems to me that we ought to take a
look at do we need more, do we need less in Washington, or in
the fields where the real problems are. So what do you feel?
Mr. Henton. Well, Mr. Chairman, if I could just comment on
that. I think that is a very important lesson for us, and the
private sector lesson is a very good one. In the early 1990's
when we had a slowdown, what it led to was a way of thinking
about businesses, which led to what would now be commonly
called downsizing. I believe that the results of that, now
documented quite seriously in the business literature, was that
many of those downsizing efforts were a mistake. What you
really want to do is streamline your activities around
strategic intent, and you want to make sure that you build that
across teams where you make the customer the focus. And the
most successful agencies might be very streamlined, but they
are aimed at the customer. So the absolute downsizing itself
actually resulted in a fascinating phrase which emerged in the
late 1990's which was called organizational anorexia, where
there were not enough people in the agency to actually perform
the services.
So I do think that just simply downsizing in itself is not
the answer. The answer is customer focus. And if you can get
the Federal Government to use information technologies,
organizational strategies, and anything that we can to put the
customer in the driver's seat, I think you will have happier
taxpayers.
Mr. Ink. Mr. Chairman----
Mr. Horn. Mr. Stoker, go ahead.
Mr. Stoker. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. The one thing
that I think is important, as we look at this whole issue, is
the function of government. And if you look, in the last 20
years, one of the most expansive areas of the Federal
Government is--and as I mentioned in my comments, the two
focuses that I had the most dealings with were regulatory
issues, or where social services were provided.
I think where government at the Federal level has changed
substantially and significantly over the last 20 years is in
that whole area of the regulatory framework. When you look at
clean air issues, clean water issues, Super Fund, CERCLA,
Wetlands Act, Endangered Species Act, if you look at how the
Federal Government was, say, interrelating with my constituents
in Santa Barbara County 25 years ago in regards to those
issues, it was basically non-existent in many cases. Clean
water acts and clean air acts weren't even written until the
early 1970's; the Endangered Species Act and the Wetlands Act,
and how they are being enforced, especially in the west and out
here in California.
And so it is, I think, imperative to look at the function
of government you are dealing with. As you talk about more or
less people in the field, and this gets back to my concerns
that I mentioned in my opening statement, what I saw, as a
county supervisor from Santa Barbara County, what I dealt with
as chair of the Ag Labor Relations Board, and certainly as an
attorney in the private sector representing people who were the
subject matter of compliance issues, getting all the
stakeholders in the room to solve a problem, whether we are
dealing with the Wetlands Act, the Army Corps of Engineers on
the Federal side, Fish and Game on the State side, the county
had our own people that would be involved in terms of
environmental issues, getting all those people in that same
room was a very, very difficult task. Which is why, as I
mentioned in my comments, typically we would either--one of two
things would happen. Frankly, either we would go to a good
representative like you who had a lot of clout that would force
those people from the Federal side to come into our district
and sit down at the table, and go to the State counterpart to
do the same thing with the State representative, or we would be
off going to Sacramento or we would be off going to Washington.
I think the more you get on compliance, regulatory issues,
and more and more that is a bigger issue of where the Federal
Government is involved in our lives and involved with local
government, I would bet you that in terms of problems that need
to be solved, as we sit here today in terms of Santa Barbara
County, 70 percent of the Federal issues that need to be solved
would deal with regulatory and compliance issues. Which is why
it is so important to have, whether you create a system that
requires in those regions that they know--there are a lot of
turf battles going on here as well, you know. The Federal side
does not want to have to go to the State offices over in
Sacramento; the State folks do not come over here unless they
have to come over here.
And it happens usually at the very end of a system either
breaking down, or where finally a resolution has come into
play, that all of those stakeholders meet in that room and have
that final sign off. But what you have to do to go through the
mechanics to get those people there, where the ideal situation
would have been actually in the field, so they understand it
better and are dealing with the stakeholders better; I think
that is the focus of where we have to be in regards to having
that intergovernmental relationship, that hands-on is going to
make a world of difference.
Mr. Horn. Any other comments on that aspect? Mr. Ink, you
have another point to make?
Mr. Ink. Yes. Two things. One, again you do not really know
whether you want to reinvigorate certain types of streamlined
regional offices until an analysis is made. I think you
probably do, but I could be wrong when you see what the facts
are, see what the local people, local leaders say, and you see
exactly where the delays are, where the confusion exists. But
it would not make sense to do that at all unless there was a
restoration of authority so those people could act. You do not
want to set up a regional office to be just another layer in
the government.
Second, there has to be something which is totally non-
existent today, there has to be a restoration of some
management capacity in OMB to monitor the system, to make sure
that whatever it is, whatever the field office system is, it
functions and it moves, and it can expedite rather than slow
down the process. That is essential.
Mr. Horn. Yeah. Now, we have got an explosion of assistant
secretaries, assistant deputy secretaries, deputy assistant
secretaries throughout the Federal Government. Now, how do we
get a clarification of policies in some sensible way, when all
of these bureaucracies have built up since President
Eisenhower's time? And that bothers me.
Because I think of the case where the district engineer of
the Corps of Engineers in Chicago, they had to go through three
district engineers, and there are two or three, never to solve
the problem, never could get the right people in the room, all
the rest of it, and meanwhile millions of dollars are being
eaten up by people either in floods that happened to them
because they could not get the thing moving, or if it is a
corporation, if they are losing money they could put on helping
lower this bill or that bill.
And so what would you do in terms of what kind of an
internal agency operation in getting a policy focused on the
people, and then you can put it out there, and they might say,
``Well, gee, that does not make any sense.'' Well, then you
deal with that. And it worries me that we have to go through
three district engineers before something finally happened in
Chicago. That is 6 years gone.
Mr. Ink. Mr. Chairman, I have never found that to be a very
difficult problem. What you have to do is find out what the
facts are, you have to trace through the trail of what is
happening. Once you get that down in black and white, then it
is much, much easier to see that you have more layers, more
checkpoints than you need.
In domestic agencies, the one dimension that has not been
looked at except a little bit by Paul Light, is while we have
been cutting back on the career levels, we have not on the
political levels. So the number of political appointees is
alive and well.
We found, in interviewing this past year a number of the
top Presidential appointees from past administrations--
including three chiefs of staff and other very well-known
Presidential appointees--a growing recognition that there is a
mismatch. Now, this does not apply to the Corps of Engineers,
but it applies to a lot of other places. A mismatch between the
capacity of the Presidential personnel office to screen
political appointees, and the large number of political
appointees, so that once you get below I would say the sub-
cabinet level, there is virtually no time given, no time
available for the White House to give to the qualifications of
those people.
Second, the low level political appointees do not know the
President. And while they support the President in an election,
and they want to support the President, they do not really have
a very good feel for his objectives, once you get down to
specifics. And worst of all, a large number of those lower-
level political appointees don't owe their principal allegiance
to the President, or they owe it to a special interest group or
some major political figure that got them the job.
So on a specific issue in an area in which they owe their
government appointment, if there is a difference between the
President and their patron who got them the job, their first
loyalty, in most cases, is going to be to the patron, not the
President. And that means that you do not have accountability
to the public or your elected President.
So you have, in some of the places like the Corps of
Engineers, an organization that has become somewhat fossilized
over the years. I would argue that they have extremely
competent people in the Corps of Engineers, but there is too
much overhead. And second, in many of the non-defense agencies
there are too many political appointees, and it is hard to get
the President's word down clearly to the career people. It gets
diffused, and it takes time, it takes effort, and excess
political appointees cost taxpayer money.
Mr. Horn. Well, I think you are right on that. But I think
we have got to tighten up, as the last administration did, in
some agencies, and cut out some of the people that are just
initialing things and not really creating things or focusing
things.
Mr. Ink. The problem with the last administration was not
that it cut out people, but it did not know what it was cutting
out. They did not look at what the jobs were, they did not look
at any flow charts and so forth, they just cut people. And we
found that in some instances they cut out the wrong people. And
they sometimes cut out the people you needed for leadership. We
are really talking about governance, which is beyond
government, because to make things happen and to respond to
these problems in the community, we are also talking about non-
government organizations that play a crucial role in making
things happen. They need to be energized, they need to be
brought into the picture, and we are not doing that well. And
the cutting that was done in the last administration did not
take that broader perception into account.
Mr. Horn. Well, I have seen 25, 30 people added to the
Secretary's office by very young assistants, and President
Eisenhower had one or two with a cabinet member. And I have not
seen anything improved in decisionmaking when we have all of
these people running around and sort of picking up--or the ones
in the White House often picking up the phone and saying, ``Hi,
Mom, you know. Here I am, here in the White House now.'' And
there are too many people in the White House operation. There
are around 1,600 people in those various things. Now, you have
spent a lot of time with them. Maybe you disagree on that. But
I think there are too many people clogging up the whole
decisionmaking process.
Mr. Ink. Yes. I would say there are two basic dimensions to
that problem. One is the one that you just talked about, which
is a very real problem.
And there is another problem which is really more difficult
to deal with. And that is, as the Federal Government has become
more fragmented, it is less and less possible for a cabinet
member to formulate policy and to coordinate the programs
because they are spread over a number of different departments
and agencies. That means that minor problems are forced into
the White House, even if the White House does not want them.
This fragmentation is pushing more and more decisionmaking into
the White House, and it is pushing it into the White House
where decisions are being made by individuals who are bright,
but have not nearly the expertise in specific areas that you
can draw upon in the departments.
It also means a loss of sense of ownership and public
accountability, on the part of the cabinet members. The White
House staff does not have the level of accountability that a
cabinet member does, either to Congress or to the public.
Mr. Horn. Well, one of the things that you have is that as
a cabinet member gets more and more knowledgeable about the
agency over which he is presiding, that means that he does not
want to take the people the White House personnel think are
just wonderful for that particular agency, and they often find
ways to say, ``I do not want that person,'' and they want their
own people. In a sense, that pulls them away from the President
in many ways.
And then when you have got people within the bureaucracy
that have been there between administrations, you have got the
problem that they are just afraid to make a tough decision
because it might be on page 1 of the Washington Post.
Mr. Ink. I do not think it pulls it away from the President
as much as most people think. It is that process that generates
a lot of low-level political appointees who are really not
accountable to the President.
I headed an agency for President Reagan and had several
very good political appointees. I also had some political
appointees who came over on the White House staff that had
never met the President. Their loyalty was not as much to the
President as it was to the special interest groups that got
them their job. So I think it is a healthy thing for cabinet
members to protest when the White House staff is trying to pawn
off someone whose only qualification was that they were
effective advance men or they contributed a lot of money. There
has to be a balance that includes both competence and loyalty
to the President. We do not have that balance at the lower
level, in my judgment.
Mr. Horn. Well, I think there is probably a lot to what you
have said. Anybody have any other things they would like to get
out? Mr. Henton.
Mr. Henton. Well, I think that again Mr. Ink makes a couple
of very interesting suggestions, and I just want to follow-up
on them. Earlier he talked about this notion of before you
really understand what the Federal regional structure should
be, you need to really sort of look at it bottom-up in talking
to local officials and people in the field. And I think that is
absolutely correct. To think about it differently today than
maybe it was when it was designed, you know, in the original
time period in the early 1970's.
The other thing that I wanted to just pick up on, and I
will be happy to submit information on this, that I think the
challenge today--and I hope Mr. Ink agrees with me--in 1970 the
New federalism was an attempt, as I understand it, to try to
sort out the roles of government and to push some of the
responsibility back to State and local governments.
Mr. Ink. Right.
Mr. Henton. I think we are in a different mode now, and I
do believe that the notion of the New Regionalism, the NAPA,
the National Academy of Public Administration, which Mr. Ink is
a part of, did a report a few years ago which is an excellent
report on regions and how they are evolving, and the notion of
civil-oriented.
Some of the organizations that we work with are public-
private business organizations. This is a very helpful thing,
it seems to me. And if the Federal Government could think about
how to organize field offices not just in terms of how it
relates to units of government, but how it relates to whole
regions----
Mr. Ink. That is right.
Mr. Henton [continuing]. What a wonderful opportunity.
Mr. Ink. That is right. That is the difference between
government and governance.
Mr. Henton. Right. And I am sure that you have probably
seen that report. But the NAPA report was based on a major
survey of what was happening around the country. I have some
material I brought with me that--this group, the Alliance of
Regional Stewardship involves 25 regions, and I have worked
with Bob O'Neal, who is the head of NAPA on this, and I would
be happy to submit this for the record, because----
Mr. Horn. I would love for that to be in the record. And
without objection, it will be in the record.
Mr. Henton. I think it is a very hopeful sign that there is
this sort of bottom-up sort of intensity. The question is how
does the Federal Government, you know, relate to that new
phenomenon. But there is a lot that could be done there, maybe
on an experimental basis, trying out things.
Mr. Ink. I agree.
Mr. Horn. Well, I am glad we see some consensus on that.
Any further comments?
If not, we have here the list on those that we would thank
for all their work, besides our presenters. And, let us see
here, we have a lot of people helping us, so I want to--here it
is. Russell George, the staff director, chief counsel; Diane
Guensberg, professional staff member and on loan from the
General Accounting Office; Bonnie Heald, director of
communications; Earl Pierce, professional staff; Matthew Ebert,
policy advisor; Grant Newman, assistant to the committee; and
Brian Hom, the intern.
We want to thank Representative Pelosi's staff for helping
us through this building, and the very fine people from GSA,
Catherine Dodd and Raymond Mapa, the Senior Property Manager,
and his staff; Patrick Vasco, Property Manager, the Golden Gate
field office. And then Warren Sitterly, the Deputy Property
Manager, Court of Appeals. We thank Bill Warren, the court
reporter today.
We are going to recess now--well, he had better hurry. So,
OK. We have a little problem here where members are around the
State of California, but they were not in San Francisco. So
bear with me, and we will just recess for about 5 minutes, and
then we will recess. So if you have any bright ideas during
this 5 minutes, let me know.
[Recess.]
Mr. Horn. We are delighted to have with us the chairman of
the full Committee on Government Reform, Mr. Burton, the
gentleman from Indiana, and also Mr. Ose, who is a Californian.
A number of hearings will be held in his area, and he, with his
new Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs, are delighted to have
him. He is an outstanding person, and he was on this committee
last year, and he is an A-plus in terms of doing his job and
all of that.
And we appreciate Chairman Burton letting us, as
subcommittee chairmen, go ahead and get things done. So today
we have had, Mr. Chairman, a very interesting group of
witnesses. We are very interested in how effective regional
offices are, what are we going to do in an age of
telecommuting, and also communicating, and what we can do to
help get messages out, and get information to the people that
way. But we also want decisions that can help people, and not
sit on some bureau in Washington. So, in essence, we have had a
difference of opinion here in a number of ways which have been
very helpful, and it will be a good written record. So if you
would like to say anything or ask some questions, why, we would
be glad.
Mr. Burton. Well, I am glad you are having this hearing,
Steve. And all I would just like to say is that I am sorry we
are a little bit late. We ran into some traffic getting down
here. But I am here to listen. You are the chairman of the
subcommittee. I would like to find out if the location of the
various offices that are performing these functions here in the
State of California are located in areas where they are most
effective. And just anxious to hear what the various witnesses
have to say. Maybe they can answer some questions, or if they
have already covered some of this, maybe they could refresh our
memory by maybe re-covering a little bit of the ground.
Mr. Horn. Well, we have covered a lot of it. But why do we
not just give a summary for Chairman Burton. Mr. Chistolini,
the acting Commissioner for Public Buildings, might start it
off, and then Mr. Henton.
Mr. Burton. You do not have to restate the whole thing, Mr.
Chairman.
Mr. Horn. But just sum it up as you see it.
Mr. Burton. Yeah, let me hear it.
Mr. Chistolini. Well, Mr. Burton--Chairman Burton, we do
provide a lot of space in the San Francisco-Oakland area, more
than 3 million square feet of government owned space and 1.6
million square feet of leased space. One of the things I would
add, in terms of listening to the other participants here, is
that a lot of our locations are really site-specific. For
instance, a lot of Social Security offices have to be where the
people are, where they can serve the needs. Here in San
Francisco they have two: one in an area of Chinatown meets a
specific need, and only one other for all of the city on Market
Street.
Agencies are trying to use more electronics so they can be
more responsive to citizens. As agencies get better in doing
that it creates problems for us in being able to meet their
needs. We are finding more agencies are trying to get out of
cities, get outside of the areas, and get where their
constituents are.
But there are also other agencies that, based on their
organizational structures, they report back to Washington or,
as Mr. Ink said, what kind of delegations of responsibilities
they have, there are probably as many organizational structures
as there are agencies. That probably impacts the delivery of
services, also, as people go through and agencies go through
organizational cycles.
Mr. Burton. Can I ask one question?
Mr. Horn. Sure.
Mr. Burton. In your opinion, are the agencies--are there
any agencies that are located here in San Francisco that could
be more effective or more efficient if they were located
someplace else in California?
Mr. Chistolini. Well, there is--agencies are making a lot
of--again, they will certainly get a lot of direction from
their national office. But agencies are making decisions based
on cost. In my opening statement I mentioned that in the past
year at least three agencies moved out of San Francisco based
on cost. They moved to the Oakland area. National Park Service,
where they could be closer to some of their other elements; the
Customs Service; and the Federal Emergency Management
Administration all moved to Oakland. And the cost of space
which leads to the cost of government is a very important
factor for many agencies.
Mr. Ose. May I followup on that, Mr. Chairman?
Mr. Horn. Absolutely.
Mr. Ose. Mr. Chistolini, on these agencies that moved, what
was the factor, if you will, in terms of the differences
between costs? For instance, if San Francisco was 100, Oakland
was 50, 80?
Mr. Chistolini. Probably 60 to 65, if that is the--if the
baseline is 100, Oakland is 30, 35 percent less expensive in
terms of space.
Mr. Ose. In terms of the agencies themselves correlating
the, for instance, National Park Service. With all due respect,
I do not see a lot of national parks in the Bay Area,
specifically. I do see a lot of national parks, for instance,
up in the Sierra Nevadas or north in the Cascades. If the
concept got refined to the point where the agency was located
in even a smaller city than say Oakland--actually I guess
Oakland is bigger than San Francisco now, is it not,
population-wise?
Mr. Chistolini. In population.
Mr. Ose. If you keep ratcheting that down in terms of the
size of the city in which the agency is located, do you
continue to receive comparable reductions in cost?
Mr. Chistolini. Well, you would. I think what happens is
agencies then have to determine what their structure is. Simply
putting additional offices in other cities may give you some
efficiencies of closeness to the citizen or close to the
customer. It would depend on the number of layers they have.
Let us say if someone is in Redding, CA, who does that office
report to? Does it eventually work its way back to a regional
city? I guess the real trick is: Can you eliminate some of that
middle management and still deliver good service?
Mr. Ose. That is what I am trying to get at, is that some
of the comments in here indicate that with technology today we
may not need as many branch offices or regional offices. That
much of the interaction between managers and field staff can be
handled electronically, if you will. So I just have to
question--clearly there is a savings moving, in this example,
from San Francisco to Oakland. But is that the end-all or the
be-all of what we are looking for. I do not believe that the
testimony here is that it is; that we can make additional
savings if we leverage the technology that is available.
Mr. Chistolini. Based on what I have seen in terms of being
able to leverage technology, I am sure that agencies will be
able to distribute their people out further and be more
responsive, as well as being more cost effective.
Mr. Ose. Mr. Henton, would you agree with that?
Mr. Henton. Well, I think that we have been talking today
about the balance between information technology and face-to-
face. I think it is clear that government can use information
technologies to accomplish a lot in terms of information
sharing, dissemination, being more effective. But I think the
other point is that when you are trying to get people together
to solve problems that revolve around complex issues, you still
need a certain amount of contact face-to-face. The regional
offices can play an important role in maintaining that sort of
face-to-face.
Now, in terms of the cost, there are all kinds of ways to
organize the facilities. But in the end, I think one of the
points that we have been making is that there needs to be a
Federal presence at the local level so you can have more of
this interaction. You cannot do everything over the Internet.
Mr. Ose. Mr. Ink, one of your points is that, when it comes
to the field offices, that those have suffered adversely as
management and staff has flowed to regional offices. Am I
correct in understanding that?
Mr. Ink. My concern is that there is what I call benign
neglect with respect to the field structure. For the last
several decades we have paid almost no attention to how the
different field offices interact or fail to interact with each
other, or how they interact or fail to interact with State and
local governments and with non-government organizations and
with business.
I think that the few efforts we have directed toward the
field over the last few years have been from the perspective of
Washington bureaus, not from the perspective of the people they
are supposed to serve.
Mr. Horn. I might add, for Mr. Ose's benefit, that Mr.
Stoker has a different view in terms of regional offices being
closer to State capitals. So you might expand on that.
Mr. Stoker. Well, I tried to make a case, Congressman Ose,
that if you had to do it all over today, regional offices, at
least in Region nine, should be in your hometown of Sacramento
for all practical purposes.
Now, I am looking at it more from an intrastate
perspective. But clearly if you are looking at it from within
California, from my background both as a land use attorney, and
then more to the point, as a member of a county board of
supervisors, and also serving as chairman, on the State side,
of the Agricultural Labor Relations Board. I cannot tell you,
back to the county situation, how many times I got on the plane
to go to Sacramento to deal with Fish and Game, and then came
over here to deal with the Army Corps, or how many times I was
at Cal EPA in Sacramento, and at fed EPA over here in Region
nine.
I think, in one of my earlier comments, the greatest
expansion of federalism in the last 20 years has been in the
regulatory compliance issue. If you look at when these regions
were set up and the framework for setting it up, I mean, we did
not even have clean water acts and clean air acts, and we did
not have Super Fund, we did not have CERCLA, the wetlands act.
The Army Corps of Engineers' function was completely different
20 years ago than what their function is today, in terms of the
biologists and the environmental compliance, fish and wildlife.
And where I see a real breakdown in terms of the
intergovernmental relations is starting at that local level. It
is not just always the private property owner. I could give you
probably five or six situations in which the county of Santa
Barbara--I could spend all day telling you about how long it
took us to try to clear some wetlands on the Santa Ynez so that
the city of Lompoc would be protected from floods, and what we
had to do with Fish and Game again in Sacramento, and the Army
Corps of Engineers, in regards to a 404 permit. And it was
constantly--there was very little interaction together.
Now, technology should definitely be used and can be used
where it is more of an information aspect. But when you are
dealing with compliance issues and adversarial situations, of
which there is turf out there, Fish and Game folks are--you
know, I mean, you name it on the State side, you go to them in
Sacramento, and then you come to the folks over here in San
Francisco or Oakland and that is where, from my intrastate
perspective, I guess, where I would start this, if we did not
have a region, if Mr. Ink today was starting over in terms of
saying how would you set up a regional office, I am not so sure
San Francisco and the Bay Area would become the region.
Certainly for serving California needs it would not be, and I
am not so sure that any other State that is a part of that
region would be negatively impacted by say the region being in
the Sacramento area. Back to national parks, where you are
dealing with many of those issues as well.
I think whatever happens, at a minimum, wherever the region
is going to stay, there needs to be a definite direction from
the Federal side to be more field-oriented, to go to where the
problem is, especially if you are dealing in the regulatory
compliance area. I do not see that going away. I have done all
of my--I have done my bit to try to swing that pendulum, and
hopefully with this new administration and the issue of
property rights, the pendulum will swing. But that is an area
where there is so much interaction between these levels of
government that never took place 25 and 30 years ago.
Mr. Ose. Chairman Horn, you remember we were at Moffett
Field about a year ago.
Mr. Horn. Right.
Mr. Ose. And we brought in the folks from the city of San
Jose, I believe. And we asked--what they were dealing with is
this overwhelming crush of building permit applications,
primarily driven by the high-tech industry. What we asked them
was, how do you deal with expediting these permits. Because you
just do not have a month of Sundays to process these things.
And what they did was--recollection serves, and Mr. George can
correct me if I am wrong or right, whichever--is that they
ended up taking people from different agencies and putting them
in a single location where applicants could go and get
everything signed off.
Mr. Horn. One-stop business.
Mr. Ose. One stop. And then, I have found since then, Mr.
Chairman, that L.A. County does that now, some of the smaller
cities in Sacramento County have moved in that direction. I
wonder whether or not it is possible to take, if you will, that
bottom-up idea from local government into some of these Federal
agencies and get them integrated in this way.
Mr. Stoker. Congressman Ose, in Santa Barbara County in
1991--and I think we were one of the first counties to do the
one-stop shop where we put--there was a representative from the
fire department--in terms of fire signing off; the public works
department for roads, grading issues; the environmental
compliance. You had all those at that one counter, which made a
world of difference. I mean, if you take that as a model for at
local government where you had the different bureaucracies
competing at that local level that cost money, created delays,
and you tried to take that, the only difference is, is now you
are going to have to interrelate between three levels of
government and get them to coordinate. But that ultimately is
the goal.
If you accomplish that goal, you are going to save time,
you are going to save cost, and in a lot of cases you are going
to solve problems that are never solved because they are just
out in an adversarial way with competing jurisdictions that
often have concurrent jurisdiction.
Mr. Ink. We have done that, but what we did in the past is
gone today. What capacity we had was never the capacity we
needed, and has now totally disappeared.
Mr. Burton. Can I ask one?
Mr. Horn. Sure.
Mr. Burton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. At the State level,
are they trying to coordinate or consolidate agencies so you
have that one-stop shopping in certain locales? And if they do
or if they have or have not, is there a blueprint that is being
worked on by some agency or group of agencies to try to create
this one-stop operation so people like yourself do not have to
fly all over the place to get things done? And if that is the
case--this is a three-part question--if that is the case, if
there is some plan or if it is already in effect to do that,
should certain Federal agencies be relocated where these
consolidated agencies are so that you can have not only one-
stop shopping, so to speak for the State, but the Federal as
well?
In Indiana, where I am from, we have some problems like
that because of the Corps of Engineers is down in Louisville
and people have to go back and forth, and you run into some
real problems because of the time. I can imagine California is
much worse. So it seems to me if you have some kind of
consolidated program here and, you know, have it all worked out
in one area for one-stop shopping and you have got the Federal
agency over here, you still have that problem. So you
understand where I am going. Are there Federal agencies that
should be relocated, and have you already consolidated in one
spot certain agencies where they can get this stuff done in one
stop?
Mr. Stoker. Chairman Burton, essentially at the State level
the answer is no. You did have some consolidation.
Mr. Burton. Is there a coordination program in process? Are
they looking at trying to coordinate to put it in one spot?
Mr. Stoker. The only thing that did happen in the Wilson
administration is, through Cal EPA they brought several
departments, for instance, Department of Pesticides and
Regulations used to be in the Ag. Department. And because that
had an environmental overture to it, they moved that department
back into Cal EPA, and they moved other environmental
departments that were similar like that back into Cal EPA, so
that there would be one chain of command. That is about the
extent at the California level in terms of that coordination
and collaboration. If you take line item, you are going to--if
it is a pesticide issue, you have a department that is going to
be basically dealing--that deals with pesticides; if it is--you
know, your fish and game have their area of responsibilities.
And there is no one collaborating between those State
functions.
But to be real candid with you, Chairman Burton, what I saw
at least as the major problem was not the inter-coordination
between the State side within, because there is always going to
be someone that has the primary jurisdiction, and the rest of
the State is going to take the lead on that. And so as you deal
with whoever has the primary jurisdiction and you are working
out that problem, you can work it out.
The problem was when you have--especially in these areas
where there are regulatory issues involved and there is
concurrent jurisdiction, is you would have Fish and Game, and
often in many cases, saying yes, you should be able to clear
that wetlands for whatever reason and Army Corps of Engineers
saying no, we are not going to give you a 404 permit, or vice-
versa. I have had it both--you know, just the opposite where
the Army Corps is saying yes, and Fish and Game is saying no.
And when you deal with water issues, air quality issues, where
you again get into this concurrent jurisdiction, and that is
where, back to your final question, I really, truly believe--
now, I am putting on a bias of intrastate here, just from the
perspective of the State of California, if you are looking at
it from a microcosm of the State of California, I cannot think
of a situation where you are dealing with a Federal agency that
is dealing with either regulatory issues or providing federally
mandated social services, why that office would not be in the
capital, in Sacramento, where the headquarters for the State is
located.
Mr. Burton. So what you are saying is that----
Mr. Stoker. And the rents are much--I can tell you this,
are substantially reduced, as Congressman Ose can attest to.
Mr. Burton. So you are saying that the major agencies
should be located in the State capital, and not in regional
offices around the State?
Mr. Stoker. Well, their regional office should be
potentially wherever they choose the State to--wherever for
that region, like in our case, where the region was chosen as
the Bay Area. I do not know, once they chose California as
going to house one of those regional offices, why you would not
say, first and foremost, the presumption should be the region
in that State, then, should be the State capital.
Mr. Burton. I see.
Mr. Stoker. Because at least for interfacing with that
State, that is where all the center of action is going to be.
And then when you have a problem, I mean, assuming government
is never going to get responsive enough to be user friendly to
come to the field. If it comes to the field, if it comes down
to where the problem is, say in Santa Barbara County, that
would be wonderful.
But if that is not going to happen, at least when I have to
go somewhere to deal with a problem, I can put both
stakeholders in the same room at the same location. And then,
often if these two sides are hearing each other, they can see
what the problems are, and that helps facilitate the
resolution. And that is where the real breakdown is right now,
in my opinion.
Mr. Horn. I might add that I had mentioned, before you came
in, about the case where three different colonels in Chicago
had the district engineer role where they make substantial
judgments, and they can overrule some of the environmental
ones. They often do not do it. But that went through the case
in Chicago through three different administrations and nothing
changed. And that is just, as I mentioned before you came in,
that the idea of going 6 years, and meanwhile what the money
cost is going through in terms of either development or trying
to save the wetlands or whatever it is. And if you have got
another problem that, in the case of California, if you put it
against the map on the East Coast, it stretches from Boston to
Savannah, GA. And then when you look at, well, what cities are
major cities in a State, and in the case of Los Angeles County
is 10 million people; San Francisco County is about a half a
million, and a little more. And we need to get the services
where the people are.
Now, granted, you can have--we were talking about
teleconferences and all that. But it seems to me you need to
look at--well, let us take EPA. EPA, under the State, was more
progressive than the Federal Government EPA. And I happen to
sit in--and I still do--the Environmental Subcommittee of
Transportation. And I asked them under oath, about 6, 7 years
ago, that why can you people not get together with the Federal
Government, and they said well, we are glad to, and they have
signed off on this. And this is where business people in this
area, they developed the whole code to be on electronic
activity and not just paper filling up something like this
room. And they promised to do it, and Mrs. Browner, I have put
it to her, and nothing ever happened, you know. They just sat
in Washington.
Mr. Burton. Well, I am just thinking out loud. If we knew
where the weaknesses were and the breakdown was, not only here
in California but across the country, with the new
administration it seems that collectively you, as subcommittee
chairman, could put in writing where the problems are and make
suggestions, and we could go to the new cabinet officer for
that agency and say this is something we think should be done,
and perhaps we could get some changes made.
Mr. Horn. I agree. And in our report to you in the full
committee, I think we are going to lay out some of those
differences.
Mr. Burton. Well, when we get that, I think that should be
forwarded, along with a letter from all of us, directly to the
new cabinet head for that agency.
Mr. Horn. Yeah. Any other questions, gentlemen?
Mr. Burton. Not from me.
Mr. Horn. If not, we are in recess, and we will have two or
three more hearings in this State, and we will then get some
more good ideas. And I want to thank each one of you. You have
really done a terrific job, and we thank you. And if you get
some thoughts coming home in the car or whatever, just send us
a note on it and it will be part of the hearing record so we
could--and a lot of you have suggested some pieces of this or
that, that really give us a further very fine record in how we
deal with people out in the masses, wherever.
Mr. Ose. Mr. Chairman----
Mr. Horn. Yeah.
Mr. Ose [continuing]. You are going to leave the record
open for----
Mr. Horn. The record is open for 7 days.
Mr. Burton. Can I say one more thing?
Mr. Horn. Yeah.
Mr. Burton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just say I want
to thank you very much for being so patient and waiting on us.
I know that sometimes you have to sit through these long
hearings, and it gets awfully--it drones on and on. But I
really appreciate it.
I was not aware of some of the things that just came up in
the brief time that we have been here. But I can assure you
that, working with Chairman Horn and Chairman Ose, that we will
make the heads of the departments aware of this, and the new
administration, and perhaps we can get some of these things
done. We will sure try.
Mr. Horn. We stand in recess. Thank you very much.
[Whereupon, at 4:03 p.m., the subcommittee was recessed.]
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