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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

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York

CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

STEPHEN HORN, California

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

BOB BARR, Georgia

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE WELDON, Florida

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

C.L. ‘‘BUTCH’’ OTTER, Idaho

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,

DC

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

JIM TURNER, Texas

THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

——— ———

——— ———

———

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

DAN MILLER, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

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

(III)

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

(1)

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

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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:]

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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 reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:10 Mar 26, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00009 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77858.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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spective 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 loVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:10 Mar 26, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00010 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77858.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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cated 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:]

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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

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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

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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

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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:]

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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 alltime 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:]

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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

24

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 inforVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:10 Mar 26, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00028 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77858.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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mation 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.

26

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

27

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,

28

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.

29

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:]

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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-ofdate, 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 SecVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:10 Mar 26, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77858.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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retary 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

34

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:]

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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

44

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 beVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:10 Mar 26, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00048 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77858.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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lieve 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

46

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.

47

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

48

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.

49

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

50

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 quesVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:10 Mar 26, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00054 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77858.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
51

tions, 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?

52

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

53

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

54

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 onestop 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 adverVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:10 Mar 26, 2002 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00058 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\77858.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
55

sarial 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 onestop 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.

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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

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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,

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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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