Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

URBAN CENTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C., AND THE

FEDERAL ROLE

MONDAY, JUNE 15, 1981

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

Washington, D.C.

The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10 a.m., in room 106, Ritter Annex, Temple University, 13th Street and Columbia Avenue, Philadelphia Pa., Hon. Ronald V. Dellums (chairman of the committee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Dellums, Gray, Dymally, and Edgar.

Staff present: Donn G. Davis, senior staff assistant; Bill Epstein and Johnny Apperson, staff assistants; Margaret Wright, minority staff counsel.

The CHAIRMAN. The full committee on the District of Columbia will come to order.

My name is Ronald Dellums of California. I chair the Committee on the District of Columbia. I would like to first thank my friend and distinguished colleague, Representative Bill Gray, for his very able assistance and cooperation in bringing these hearings to the city of Philadelphia.

I would also like to express my personal thanks to those of you who have agreed to come and share your time and knowledge with the committee as witnesses.

Before I turn the chair over to Congressman Gray, who will chair this session of our hearings, I would like to say a few words about these hearings to attempt to put them in proper context.

These are hearings of the full committee of the House Committee on the District of Columbia. The focus of our inquiry is the condition of urban centers, Washington, D.C., and the Federal role in assisting urban centers.

We began these hearings in the second session of the 96th Congress. They were started because myself and several of my colleagues were convinced that the problems of urban America had reached a level of urgency which could no longer be ignored.

For nearly a decade we have been witnessing the rapid deterioration of urban conditions. In fact, many of today's urban problems are now just as bad, if not worse, than they were at the time of the urban revolts and disturbances of the sixties, and I consider it illadvised to stand by idly until the same events repeat themselves. The unemployment rate for minority youth is a national scandal. And there is every reason to believe that this will get worse as the Reagan budget cuts begin to take effect. Affordable housing in our

cities is a thing of the past. The system of public education is terribly burdened and near the point of collapse in more than a few cities across the country.

There is a disturbing amount of evidence that the relationship between police departments and citizens, especially minorities, are approaching the same archaic level that they were in the middle sixties.

The decaying physical infrastructure of many of our older cities is reaching a point of no return. Add to all of this a frightening level of street crime, and you have a glimpse of what our cities look like today. I believe that we have an obligation to act before the misery and the frustration in our cities spills over and fills our streets with tragedy.

I would like to note at this point that we have not come to Philadelphia because Philadelphia has any worse problems confronting people than any other place. We have good evidence suggesting that the worst of our urban problems are national in scope, so our stop in Philadelphia is just one of several that we hope to make in different major cities, all of which are troubled by the same ills. Our principal concern is to look closely at the role of the Federal Government in efforts to solve major urban problems.

We know that many city problems are well beyond the resource capacity of cities, or States, to solve alone.

What we still need to know more about is how to maximize the effectiveness of Federal efforts to aid localities.

We have been looking at a number of problems and the Federal role in Washington, D.C. This undertaking in the city of Philadelphia marks the beginning of our effort to compare what is happening elsewhere with what we have seen in Washington, D.C.

I would like to acknowledge the presence on our panel today of my distinguished colleague and friend, the gentleman from California, Mervyn Dymally.

Again, I would like to thank Chairman Gray and those of you who have joined us in this effort as witnesses. And I turn the chair over to my colleague and friend.

Mr. GRAY [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

At this time I would like to call on Congressman Mervyn Dymally for an opening statement.

Mr. DYMALLY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Of course, I am very pleased to join with my friend and colleague, Congressman Bill Gray, in the "City of Brotherly Love," to conduct these hearings affecting the cities of America.

I, too, hope to have the committee in my district next month to deal with the same problems affecting all of us in America. And I am looking forward to having the District of Columbia Committee move across the Nation to examine some of the problems that affect the cities.

I am very, very grateful for this opportunity to join you, Congressman Gray.

Mr. GRAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and also my colleague from California, Mr. Dymally.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

It is my extreme privilege this morning to welcome you to today's hearing of the full Committee of the House Committee on the District of Columbia.

I would also like to welcome our distinguished witnesses, who bring before the committee a wealth of firsthand knowledge and exeprience concerning the problems confronting our Nation's major urban centers, and in particular, those problems confronting the city of Philadelphia.

As the distinguished gentleman from California, Chairman Dellums, mentioned in his opening statement, we will attempt this morning and this afternoon to examine the deteriorating conditions and problems of our major urban centers.

And in particular we will focus on the problems of youth unemployment, crime, housing, and education.

We will also attempt to assess what the role of the Federal Government should be in assisting our urban centers, if we are to arrest and irradicate the blight, the unemployment, the undereducation of our children, and the crime that has become all too characteristic of our large metropolitan cities like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

This hearing is the first in a series of hearings to be held throughout the country by this committee. And ultimately, in assessing the role that the Federal Government plays in dealing with urban problems nationwide, we, the members of the D.C. Committee will better be able to determine the appropriate Federal response to similar urban issues which exist in the District of Columbia.

It is our hope, though, that through this forum we will be able to gain some "hands-on" insight and local perspectives on urban problems, which will help us, as legislators, to better conceive solutions, not only as it relates to the District of Columbia, but the Nation as well.

Any examination or assessment of what the Federal Government's role should be in assisting our cities must be viewed within the context of the ever-changing social, political and economic climate of the 1980's.

Today we find that:

Almost two decades after President Johnson declared the "War on Poverty," we still find that our Nation's inner city residents are ill-housed, and the national objective to provide every American with a decent, safe, and sanitary home is almost as far from being met today as the day we declared the "War on Poverty."

Despite the Reagan administration's unofficial and callous declaration that the War on Poverty has been won, the proportion of blacks living in substandard housing units is still more than three times that of the total population.

Today, 27 years after Brown v. The Board of Education, most nonwhite children still have not gained the educational opportunities enjoyed by their white counterparts.

Locally, our education system stands on the brink of utter collapse. With a projected deficit of more than $200 million today, massive curriculum and personnel cuts anticipated, and the school board, for all practical purposes, has abrogated its responsibil

ities-our school system requires nothing less than a massive overhaul if it is to survive in its present state of decay.

Today, unemployment, especially among our black teenagers, still remains at the intolerable high level of 37.5 percent. And some 13 percent of all 17-year-olds-nationally-are functionally illiterate-unable to do basic reading, writing, or counting, unable to understand the want ads, unable to fill out the job applications to get off of the unemployment rolls. More than one out of every five recent black high school graduates is unemployed.

Today, murderous attacks on inner-city dwellers, especially blacks, continue to make the headlines in cities throughout the country.

In the war on crime in Philadelphia, there is yet another major obstacle today. In a city that is about 35 percent black, of Philadelphia's 7,500 police officers, only 17 percent are black and 1 percent are Hispanic.

Furthermore, only 8 percent of the police department's supervisory ranks are black. Clearly, the statistics profile of black supervisors in our police department has sunk to an alarming nadir. In response, the city administration has chosen to do nothing except circle its wagons, hoping its critics eventually will grow weary.

Inflation and high interest rates are expected to remain high through 1982, squeezing even harder the family budgets of the majority of our residents who are poor to moderate income. Most of us are still just trying to recover from last year's recession which had its most devastating impact on inner-city residents.

Today, we find the proliferation of a conservative mood in this country which has the possibilities of totally eliminating the economic and social gains that our disadvantaged have achieved over the past two decades.

And coupled with this, we have a President whose budget and economic policies will stymie the revitalization of our cities, compound existing urban economic and social problems, and will inevitably require local government to raise local tax rates, as well as cut services to local residents.

My office, Mr. Chairman, has estimated that in Philadelphia alone, over $278 million will be lost in direct and indirect Federal support under the present administration's proposals.

The Reagan budget will not only wipe out some 310,000 public service jobs nationally-5,700 here in Philadelphia-but it will also eliminate Federal incentives to create and maintain jobs in urban businesses and invest in deteriorating urban areas.

The administration has also proposed a 33-percent cut in funding for urban housing, termination of funding for new transit systems, and sharp cutbacks in numerous community economic development programs.

In addition, cities will have to deal with proposed cuts in several other Federal programs which have a major impact on urban residents-unemployment assistance, medicaid, education assistance, legal services for the poor, juvenile justice and law enforcement assistance.

All of these factors point toward a slowdown and retrenchment in the Federal Government's commitment to meeting the varied needs of our Nation.

It is against this background and context that I asked the distinguished chairman of the House Committee on the District of Columbia to schedule today's hearing.

Again, I would like to thank Chairman Dellums and the other members of the committee and staff for their support and cooperation in this effort.

Mr. Chairman, if there are no further opening remarks, I believe we are prepared for you to call the first witness, who is the district attorney of the city of Philadelphia, Mr. Ed Rendell.

STATEMENT OF EDWARD G. RENDELL, DISTRICT ATTORNEY, CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Mr. RENDELL. Good morning, Congressman Gray, and members of the committee.

I am pleased that this committee has taken its time to come to Philadelphia. About 10 days ago I was in Washington testifying before-at the request of-the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse.

And it seems like the problems that affect the city are being examined. But it seems that they are being examined in the context of almost a feeling of helplessness. And that is very depressing to us who fight the problems in the cities, because we talk and talk and talk, and it seems like the commitment is not there.

I don't mean the commitment of this specific committee or the commitment of the House Committee-Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse. Obviously, this committee and that committee are very seriously interested in the problems of the inner city.

But it seems to me that there is a mood in this country right now to somewhat write off the major older cities of this country. That will have tragic consequences, not only for the major cities, older cities of this country, but, frankly, for the entire country itself.

In Pennsylvania, as a State, we have a tendency-there are many people throughout the State who have a tendency to want to forget about Philadelphia, isolate Philadelphia, minimize the attention paid to Philadelphia's problems.

But that in the long run is very foolhardy because if Philadelphia falls as a city, I think the effects on the State of Pennsylvania would be enormous. And if the major older cities of this country fall, and become wastelands, the effects throughout this country will start as a ripple, but will end up as a tidal wave.

So I think it behooves all of us, not just these committees, but all of us, from the highest circles in Washington to the State governments, to the city governments themselves, to begin to look clearly, forthrightly, at the problems, and begin to take some immediate action.

By immediate action, I don't think we can wait. I don't think we can gamble that the plan of the current administration in Washington will pay off in the long run.

I would like to share with you an experience I had about 2 months ago, when myself and six other district attorneys from the largest jurisdictions in the country-the district attorney from Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago; Mr. Daley from Chicago, and many other

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »