Mr. MCKINNEY. No, but I do no understand that the local officials would abdicate

Mr. SCHERER. Well, I come from a large industrial area, and I have had my mayor and my city councilmen and urban redevelopment director for the city come to me regularly here and complain bitterly that they have lost control over the direction of these programs.

They complain that they have to submit to the redtape and domination of men here in Washington, who are civil service employees not elected by the people of the community, to determine basic issues. That naturally, follows whenever you have the use of Federal moneys involved. That Federal control eventually follows and Federal domination.

Mr. BLATNIK. There is nothing in the bill that compels municipalities to patricipate in the program and, first of all, they, and they alone, initiate it.

It must be done through the form of a resolution of the city council, and the work will be carried out under the direct supervision of the city or village engineer. So I do not see why you said that about Federal control.

Mr. SCHERER. What I have said has followed every Federal program that I know of.

Mr. CRAMER. In addition to that, the assumption is that if the local community comes to Uncle Sam for money, the assumption is that it is either not able to, or unwilling to, put up its own money, and it is very often the former, that they are unwilling to sperd their own

tax money.

I cannot believe that the people are willing to spend Federal money when they are not going to spend the local money which comes out of the same total, gross national product, in the long run.

If they do not want something done on the local level by their support of their own officials of their own program, who is to assume that they would be willing for the Federal Government to do it even though they have evidence they are unwilling to support it? That is what I am talking about, in addition to what the gentleman said.

Mr. SCHERER. Well, in addition to that, we know that many communities and local public officials do not want to assume the political responsibility of raising taxes.

Mr. CRAMER. That is right.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Mayor, I would like to ask you one question. I presume that you are here because we are facing a very serious unemployment situation in the United States. We are just about holding our own, and the upturn has not been what it was expected to be, and we are asking for this legislation, and you are here supporting it from the standpoint that you do want to assist.

Your city, and other cities throughout the United States, does have projects that can come under the emergency provisions of this bill. They are depressed areas. There are other cities that cannot come into the standby project, the $2 billion, when triggered by this unemployment situation that we face, that would be willing to go along and put what local funds they possibly can into the program, because in many, many cases the engineering has been completed with local funds, and certain local governments have set up what local projects

they want to move forward on under this standby legislation that we are asking for comprising the $2 billion program. Is that not right? Mr. MCKINNEY. Yes; that is correct.

Mr. BALDWIN. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Baldwin.

Mr. BALDWIN. Mayor, I would like to ask you a specific question on a public works project on which I attended two or three meetings about a year ago.

What is the status of the proposed bridge over the Sacramento River?

Is it going to be a high-level bridge or a low-level bridge or has it been solved yet?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Has the Federal Government made a decision on that yet?

Mr. BALDWIN. I am just asking what the viewpoint of the city is. Mr. MCKINNEY. Our view is that it should be a high-level bridge and that has been our recommendation on it.

Mr. BALDWIN. Thank you.

Mr. MCKINNEY. But I do not believe that the engineers in the Federal Government have yet told us what

Mr. SCHERER. See, that is what I was talking about.

Mr. CRAMER. It does not make any difference what Sacramento

says.

Mr. JOHNSON. I might say this: I have been following this very closely myself, and we have been in on most of the meetings so far, and they are now making that study and will come in with some recommendations, the city of Sacramento, the county of Sacramento, and the State, as to whether the people are in favor of a high-level bridge, and I am sure the Corps of Engineers will go along and the Bureau of Public Roads.

Mr. SCHERER. Now, if the Bureau of Public Roads does not want to go along, it can veto it, can it not?

Mr. JOHNSON. That is right.

Mr. SCHERER. In spite of what the State of California wants and in spite of what Sacramento wants they can say, "Now, we disagree with you," and they will prevail.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Schwengel.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. Mayor, I would like to ask a question.

First, I would like to make an alteration here and point out that on page 3 you were talking about the indebtedness, that it has doubled and quadrupled since 1946.

This is necessary because you could not go in debt or you could not launch out on these public works programs during that critical time of the war, and therefore, this is necessary to take into consideration the fact that you could not because you were not wanting to serve the public interest.

So you were merely picking up a backlog and you were not necessarily creating it because of this increase in indebtedness. Is that not true?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Well, we were picking up the backlog because of the delay in being able to progress with public works, yes.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. Yes; and in your ability to do that you were serving the public interest by being able to take advantage of the laws that prevailed, that made it possible for you to do this?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Yes.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. And while you were doing this also you enhanced the entire economy of your community, and you increased the assets of your community substantially. Is that not true?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Yes; it is true.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. And so you have a greater taxable valuation now that has vastly increased in your community.

Is that not true?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Yes; our assessed values have skyrocketed.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. So this is not really too impressive testimony in favor of this bill, as I see it.

Now, I would like to ask you, sir, if it would not serve your interest and the people's interest in California to have the present program, some $6 billion of programs, which have been authorized and the money appropriated for them in many areas, if it would not be to serve your interest better to have those programs stepped up than to have this program passed?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Well, it would certainly help, of course, to have those stepped up, but I do not know whether that would take the place of the proposed legislation that we are talking about here today, which would be a

Mr. SCHWENGEL. Well, it envisions the employment of thousands more than this proposed legislation.

Mr. Meany said at most that this would employ 250,000 on a temporary basis and, in many instances, it held no permanent solutions and would not provide any permanent jobs.

In fact, in most instances it would provide no permanent jobs, and California benefits from immigration and, therefore, it seems to me that you should be greatly interested in stepping up the development of the Interstate Highway System.

It seems to me that you should come before this committee and say that we ought to adopt new policies and new rules on the Interstate System which would envision the building of those roads which are going to be used most, firstly, one leading from Chicago through our State, which envisions a traffic count of 20,000 cars a day throughout Iowa.

And yet we have in this program, within the State of Iowa-we are going to have sections of the road that are going to be created and we will have an estimated traffic of 5,000 maximum per day.

Would it not make more sense to have this highway headed across the United States completed, and that would help not only California but help all of our States economy a lot more than legislation of this type could ever help?

Mr. MCKINNEY. Well, of course, we have supported that interstate highway program 100 percent, but I do not see that that necessarily excludes consideration of the proposed legislation here.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. You would say that this is more important than the earlier development of the Interstate Highway System? Mr. MCKINNEY. That is not what I am saying.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. But I mean, there are other things more important to California and more important to the economy of the country, and for the benefit of the permanently employed, than this kind of legislation that is before us at this time.

Will you admit that?

Mr. MCKINNEY. On the longrun basis, perhaps you are right; yes. Mr. SCHWENGEL. Not "perhaps."

Mr. MCKINNEY. I am not an economic expert.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. You are holding yourself out as some kind of an expert when you come before this committee on this kind of legislation which, in my opinion, is inaccurate and is not completely thought out and not entirely in the public interest.

Mr. JOHNSON. Mr. Schwengel, I would like to make one comment on what you said.

Our Highway 80 program is complete to San Francisco. There are some minor reassignment that have to take place on it.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. But there are long stretches of it between Chicago

Mr. JOHNSON. And also our State has carried on a very fine highway program in addition to that, and we have been following it for some time, offering a lot of good public works that have kept down unemployment and kept the economy up.

And now, this legislation that we are asking for here, I hope we never have to use the standby. I hope these other programs carry on and are speeded up and will keep our country in the economic condition that we hope it will be in.

Now, the emergency legislation we are asking for here is very necessary now to assist the depressed areas. We would have complete control over it. And now, the standby that we are asking for is legislation, we hope, which will stop any further recession.

If certain conditions exist at that time, why, it is self-triggered and it goes into operation and it does stave off further recessions.

Mr. SCHWENGEL. Mr. Chairman, I agree with the objective, but I say this is not the answer. We ought to come to grips with the real answer, and we will find a lot of answers that will not cost any money. I think this would be welcomed in California, as it would be welcomed in any other place.

Mr. CRAMER. I just wonder what the answer would be to a request by the Governor of California that he be given the powers over State legislative matters that this bill gives the President, to the exclusion of the Congress, including the $600 million bill.

I think their answer would be a flat "No."

Mr. JOHNSON. I disagree with you. The people in the State of California just gave the Governor the right to spend $1,750 million for a water program.

Mr. CRAMER. That is right, by a direct authorization for a direct program, not letting him transfer welfare funds or highway funds to this public works new program.

Mr. JOHNSON. He has a great deal of authority. He and his water research

Mr. CRAMER. I agree with that. I agree that within a program or within a department it is one thing, but a transfer of authority between departments and even out of absolute areas that are even more

needed than public works, such as public welfare and unemployment compensation, to transfer those funds into a public works program, which the President is asking Congress to do here I am confident the legislature would say, "Well, who is legislating, the Governor or the legislature?"

That is the problem we have in this legislation.

That is all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. JOHNSON. Any further questions?

I want to thank you, Mr. McKinney, again for your testimony and the answer to the questions by the committee.

Mr. MCKINNEY. Thank you again for permitting me to be here today.

Thank you.

Mr. JOHNSON. The next witness is Mr. William Moss.

Will you take the witness chair, Mr. Moss?

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM MOSS, CHAIRMAN, COUNTY PLANNING COMMITTEE, FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA., ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COUNTY OFFICIALS

Mr. Moss. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the committee, I hope you do have just a little patience left for about 4 minutes of your time.

My name is William H. Moss, and I am chairman of the county planning committee of Fairfax County, Va. However, I am speaking today as the chairman of the national planning committee of NACO.

I will quickly tell you that I have no personal ax to grind. I make the statement that the National Association of County Officials strongly supports that portion of the bill, H.R. 10113, which would create an independent Office of Public Works Coordination. We have endorsed this principle.

You have before you, sir, a copy of the statement which I had proposed to read, but I will not read it but will paraphrase it for the purpose of saving time and for emphasis.

At the expense of getting shot in the back I will say that I do not care at this point whether you put $6 million or $600 million in this bill; that the prime purpose and the meat of the bill is in the Office of the Coordinator of Public Works. This is the purpose. This gives us the tool with which to do much of our own work.

The Federal Government's participation in the allocation of funds is fine. I personally shrink from it, but by the establishment of the Office of Coordinator each individual jurisdiction, and there are thousands of them-counties, cities, and towns are encouraged to plan a 5-year public works program, not only plan it but to get some definite plans made, such as test borings and architectural plans, in other words, already to go.

This could be done, if necessary, through the funds of the FHA, which funds presently exist, but each area, if it could be encouraged to draw up a 5-year public improvement program and not shelve it and say, "Well, now, if we have a recession, the Government is going to come in and allocate some funds and we can then get it in gear-" if they could be encouraged to draw up that plan now, that would be fine. This would be a program of projects which they need now, such