Mr. BALDWIN. And that is without any further action on the part of the Congress?

Mr. CONWAY. You are technically correct.

Mr. SCHERER. He is legally correct also.

Mr. HARVEY. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. FALLON. Mr. Harvey.

Mr. HARVEY. Mr. Conway, you submitted your list of projects which you claim, as I understand it, are in the planning stage and ready to go.

Is that correct?

Mr. CONWAY. These are a list of the planning advances that were specifically authorized under our 702 program during 1961, and it is assumed that they have progressed to the point where they are prepared to go.

Mr. HARVEY. In connection with this program or this bill, that we are talking about today, you are not telling us that these are 12month projects, are you?

Mr. CONWAY. No. No. This is a list of the total planning advances made under the 702 section of our act.

Some of them may be longer than 12 months. Some of them may be shorter, considerably shorter, and so on.

But you can tell from the magnitude of the projects and the nature of them how long it will take.

Our Commissioner can probably answer more specifically on that. Mr. HARVEY. Well, a $2,600,000 project for an incinerator for example, would not be what you would call a 12-month project, would it?

Mr. WOOLNER. It would not normally, Congressman, unless it were possible to develop a segment of that, and it is my understanding, under the proposed law, that a segment could be built within 12 months.

Mr. HARVEY. Let me ask you this question: Are these particular projects here or, rather, on these particular projects has the land been acquired on all of these projects?

Mr. WOOLNER. Where there are complete plans we would require that the agency developing the plans have title to the land.

Mr. HARVEY. Well, have these communities that you have designated in this list here been experiencing difficulty in borrowing money from your authority?

Is that why they are being submitted here at this time?

Mr. CONWAY. Many of these communities are not eligible for public facility loans under our regular program. They are only eligible for planning advances.

The reason for this is that our regular public facilities loan program has a population ceiling on it of 50,000. Communities in excess of 50,000 population are ineligible to participate in the public facilities loan program unless they happen to be in areas designated as redevelopment areas, in which case the population ceiling is 150,000. So that with those population ceilings in effect, many of these communities are ineligible to participate in the loan programs. Mr. HARVEY. Well, I am bothered by this.

This same committee passed Mr. Blatnik's water pollution bill, and I expressed at that time that a man can come here and go to three different agencies with regard to building a waste treatment plant.

He can go to your organization and borrow money to build one, as I understand it. That is one of the projects included.

He can go to Mr. Hodge's agency, the Department of Commerce, and he can get a hundred percent of it under the ARA, and he can go to Mr. Ribicoff and get 30 percent of it up to now under that organization.

Now, as I understand it, under this bill, what we are doing is increasing loans on a waste treatment plant, increasing the amount up to 50 percent, and you are saying to the community that "if your community cannot pay for the other 50 percent we are willing to loan you that much." Is that right?

Mr. WOOLNER. Congressman, I do not think, in a given instance, there is necessarily three choices. Under the ARA program, the project would have to bear some relation to industrial expansion. A great many of the communities that are seeking help do not have an industrial plan and there is no direct relationship between the project they propose and industrial expansion.

At the same time, this help, under ARA, is limited only to those areas that have been designated. So that in a given instance there might not be three choices.

Mr. HARVEY. There is no question in your mind that those three alternatives are open, is there?

Mr. WOOLNER. Those three alternatives are open to communities in ARA areas, and in many of the communities outside of ARA areas there will be a combination of the grant available under HEW and the loan available under the Housing Finance Agency.

Mr. HARVEY. Well, I am just thinking out loud here, but, what if you have a community of 100,000 people, for example, that have just voted to tax themselves to pay for a new waste treatment plant and a new sewage disposal system, and so forth, then in another community, a short distance away, we come in and give them a 50 percent grant or a 100 percent grant, if we can conceivably do so, does not that smack to a certain degree of unfairness in the treatment of these citizens of close communities, let's say?

Mr. CONWAY. Congressman, already scheduled public works in a community would not be covered by this. This bill is not designed to provide new financing for something that is already scheduled. It is designed to accelerate and get into motion additional public works, not to take the place of

Mr. HARVEY. Of short-term public works

Mr. CONWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. HARVEY (continuing). As I understand, of less than 12 months' duration?

Mr. CONWAY. Yes, sir.

Mr. HARVEY. And you will agree that this list that you submitted does not specify short-term public works projects? In other words, an incinerator for a county of 200,000 is not a short-term project?

Mr. CONWAY. If that particular project takes longer than 12 months it would not fall under this bill.

Mr. HARVEY. And that would be true of many other cases that you submitted as well. Is that not correct?

Mr. CONWAY. I would think that a large percentage of the projects. on that list would fall into the category of projects that could be completed fairly quickly.

Mr. HARVEY. I have one other question along the lines of what Mr. Baldwin was asking you.

How much of the money, that was appropriated last year under the ARA, for the loan program under the public facility loans, how much of that money have you committed as of this time?

Mr. CONWAY. We would have to supply that for the record because the funds that are available are ARA funds and administered by the Commerce Department.

Mr. BLATNIK. Will the gentleman yield?

Am I correct that you recommend approval if these projects meet the specific criteria that has been set out?

Mr. CONWAY. That is correct. The application is made to the ARA. If, in turn, they consider it within the guidelines of the law, they refer it to us to check out the various things, and we then make a recommendation back to ARA and they process it from that point on. So you are asking us, in effect, to supply figures that are in the Commerce Department. They can supply them or we can get them for you, I am sure. We would have to do it that way for the record. Mr. HARVEY. I have no further questions.

Mr. WRIGHT. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. DAVIS (presiding). Mr. Wright?

Mr. WRIGHT. I should simply like to congratulate Mr. Conway on his appareance here today.

Further, I would like to comment that for the past 12 years I have had some experience with your Community Facilities Administration and with Mr. Pere Seward, both as mayor of a municipality and later as a Member of Congress. I have found him, and those who work with him, always at all times most cooperative, most helpful, most informative, and I should like to say to you that I regard him as an exemplary public servant. I think the Government of the United States is fortunate to have such persons associated with it.

Mr. CONWAY. Thank you, Congressman. We appracite your remarks and Mr. Seward is here with us and I am sure he does also. Mr. BLATNIK. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Blatnik?

Mr. BLATNIK. Mr. Conway, on page 5 you refer to the survey done in 1960 by the Census Bureau and completed last December of 1961. Do we have the results of that survey? Will they be included in the record?

Mr. CONWAY. We can supply for the record two tables which contain practically all of the information that you would want and we can supply it for the record.

(The material referred to follows:)

TABLE A.-U.S. summary of construction plans of State and local governments covering the 18-month period, July 1960 through December 1961, by plan status and cost size of project

1 Type A projects are defined as projects for which all planning actions necessary in advance of starting work or advertising for bids are scheduled to be completed during the periods shown (excluding any projects already underway or advertised for bids as of June 30, 1960).

Type B projects are defined as additional projects not recorded as Type A, but already included in a master plan, capital budget, or equivalent, for which all planning actions would be completed between July 1960 and December 1961 if authority and funds for their planning and construction were available at the time of the survey.

Source: Mail-canvass survey of public construction plans conducted by Governments Division, Bureau of the Census, between August and November 1960, covering all States and a sample of local governments. NOTE. These data are estimates subject to sampling variation.

TABLE B.-U.S. summary of plans of State and local governments for “Type A" construction projects, by level of government (projects on which planning is scheduled for completion between July 1960 and December 1961)

1 Estimates subject to sampling variation.

* The category "residential buildings" includes not only public residential housing but also group quarters, such as nurses homes and student dormitories. In this summary table, the residual heading "All other" includes detail obtained separately for natural resource projects, general adininistration buildings, and a miscellaneous class, "other public facilities."

Source: See table A.

Mr. BLATNIK. In previous efforts to accelerate public works projects by community facilities, for justified, needed things which our local municipalities are unable to undertake themselves, the problem of getting them underway in as short a time as possible was due to the inadequacy of advance planning.

Is that not correct?

Mr. CONWAY. This has been one of the problems and, of course, this is what motivated the Congress to set up our present advance planning program, and it has been a very successful program.

This has been the third program that our agency has gone through. Mr. BLATNIK. So you do have the machinery

Mr. CONWAY. We have the machinery and the experience, and it has been very effective.

Mr. BLATNIK. The small communities need help. In most cases the township or the village clerk, rather, will do the paperwork and try to do his best, within his competence, to supply the information which is required and which in many cases is technical.

They do need this technical assistance

Mr. CONWAY. That is correct.

Mr. BLATNIK. To work out the engineering and the technical aspects of the project.

In days past we had small projects on the shelf with only minor adjustments for alterations which would be required to get them in action and under construction within a short period of time?

Mr. CONWAY. That is correct.

Mr. BLATNIK. Mr. Conway, am I correct that most of your testimony here was directed to the standby legislation of this committee? Would you have any comments or recommendations? In short, may I ask you this: Does a need exist in terms of several millions of men and women unemployed in areas?

Do they also have a need for bona fide local public facilities?

Do you have any comment to make or may I ask, would you be in a position to handle any immediate accelerated program_such as that recommended up to $600 million recommended by the President yesterday?

Mr. CONWAY. Yes, Congressman. We would be in a position to handle an immediate program.

I did not direct myself, my remarks, to specifically one or the other because the contents of our statement covered both situations, whether it is an immediate program or whether it is a standby program.

We do have an ongoing advance planning program. We submitted a list of projects that would, in effect, be immediately available to start construction on. Work has been done.

We would be in a position, with our field staff, which is all tooled up and available to go into action on a program that would be adopted by the Congress in the immediate future.

Our relationship as an agency, to the $600 million program would be essentially the same as our relationship to the $2 billion standby program. The only difference essentially would be the eligibility of the areas to be covered.

In the case of the standby bill, it is really the country as a whole that is involved. In the area of the $600 million program it is what we