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VIII UNMET SERVICE NEEDS

One of the purposes of the Act, stated in the legislation, was to assist state and local communities in providing needed public services: "to fill unmet needs for public services in such fields as environmental quality, health care, housing and neighborhood improvements, recreation, education, public safety, maintenance and streets, parks and other public facilities, rural development, transportation, beautification, conservation, crime prevention and control, prison rehabilitation and

other fields of human betterment and public improvement."1

It appears that many sponsors performed hasty analyses of the latest budget requests from operating departments, determined which staff slots were left unfilled because of fiscal shortages, and defined the functions of those unfilled slots as "unmet public service needs." The fiscal needs and constraints of the departments were, according to the Coalition sample, the single most important consideration in determining the unmet needs for public services. Even elected public officials, presumably responsive to the requests of the local community, apparently played little part in creating these new job opportunities. The community rarely had lead time or sufficient knowledge to bring pressure for particular services. Surveys of communities and neighborhoods with high unemployment,

1. Section 2(5).

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theoretically areas toward which the EEA program was to be directed, were used rarely or not at all. Apparently no formal procedures were established or significant effort made to adjust bureaucratic requirements to specific unmet needs in the community. In many cases, special surveys of operating agencies and departments were conducted, but the surveys tended only to restate the dilemma of unfunded positions. "Unmet public service needs" were determined finally, for the most part, by agency and department heads.

The survey instruments attempted to cross-check the process of how unmet needs were defined locally by asking the Program Agents to "list up to six specific criteria utilized in establishing priority of unmet service needs." The majority answering this question indicated that needs were determined primarily by city departments. A few of the returns specified that there

had been some sort of community involvement. Some of the survey instruments carried no response whatsoever.

Program Agents were asked to rank, in order of importance, the nine categories of public service need established by the Labor Department. (See Table XII.)

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An examination of the rank order of stated priorities in each of the Labor Department's nine categories (See Table XII) derived from the sample of Program Agents shows a considerable difference in pattern from the rank order based on an analysis of actual placements reflected in the AIS data. The averages for the classifications are much more closely "bunched" in the Program Agents than they are in the actual job distribution. The jobs in the "Other" category2 were largely administrative jobs, according to the Department's data, whereas the identification of "others" by the Program Agents in the response to the survey included "rehires," libraries, museums and similar substantive areas, rather than just administrative positions. An analysis of examples of the types of PEP jobs indicates that a high proportion of jobs contained in the other categories were clerical and administrative. (See Appendix, Tables XVI

and XVII.)

The lowest five categories (Social Services, Parks and Recreation, Environmental Quality, Fire Protection, Other) represent a marked break from the top four (Public Works, Law Enforcement, Health and Hospitals, Education).

2. Labor Department definition:

Category includes all governmental

Typically,

functions not included in categories 1 through 8. this category will include administrative organization such as the Comptroller's Office, Personnel Office and similar administrative units.

The relatively low status accorded to Social Services is particularly disturbing, for within that category fall such diverse but important areas as housing relocation, family and employment counseling, child care, welfare and community development. It appears that the Program Agents surveyed regarded the EEA more as a means for strengthening existing bureaucratic structures than as an instrument for helping to solve

the social problems of the disadvantaged communities.

Yet, of the occupations identified in the Labor Department's Guidelines for Section 5 as expanding Public Employment jobs (see Table XIV)--which the Program Agents list as classifications in which they intend to hire personnel--46.5 percent are in the five classifications which represent only 27 percent of the AIS. The five classifications are Fire Protection, Social Services, Environmental Quality, Parks and Recreation, and "Others." AIS data, however, represents actual hirings.

The