TESTIMONY OF GOVERNOR ROBERT W. SCOTT OF NORTH CAROLINA

BEFORE THE SENATE SUBCOMMITTEE ON EMPLOYMENT, MANPOWER AND POVERTY

TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 1972

Mr. Chairman And Gentlemen:

Thank you very much for the opportunity to discuss

manpower legislation.

My name is Leigh H. Hammond. I am deputy secretary

of the North Carolina Department of Administration.

My statement is in the name of Governor Robert W. Scott

of North Carolina, for whom I have the honor of speaking today. Governor Scott's statement is:

You gentlemen probably have heard more than you want to

hear about the need for manpower reform legislation.

I am pleased

to see that the discussion seems no longer to question the need for reform. In my mind, and I take it in yours, the case for reform is well-documented. Thus, we need to decide on the course

for the future the course that will produce the result we all

desire.

That result should be training and jobs available to

all who can and will use the opportunities.

My concern today is not so much with specific legislation, though there are several bills with very desirable features. My concern is with basic principles that manpower legislation must, in my judgment, contain if we are to make the needed improvements in our manpower programs.

The Governors of this nation are interested in and should

be responsible for developing comprehensive, flexible manpower programs.

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TESTIMONY BY GOVERNOR SCOTT

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They made this clear in February when the Committee on

Human Resources, on which I serve, and then the full National Governor's Conference endorsed the principles of the "Comprehensive Manpower and Employment Act of 1972" (H. R. 13461 and S. 3346). Although several of my comments today will reflect the situation in North Carolina, I also speak for the National Governor's Conference in supporting the thrust of that bill and manpower reform in general.

To carry out their duty of developing comprehensive manpower programs, governors should have clear authority to designate planning areas needed within their states for manpower

purposes.

In North Carolina, we have divided our state into seventeen multi-county planning regions. This grouping was not for manpower planning alone, but also to try to draw together natural groups of cities and counties to encourage them to work together in a partnership in leadership with the state. Our aim, simply, is to develop each region to its highest potential.

Attached to this statement is a copy of "North Carolina State Policy On Regionalism" along with a copy of "North Carolina Handbook On Regionalism." These set forth in considerable detail the logic of our concept of regionalism in a state that has emerging urban centers of substantial size and, at the same time, massive portions of its area characterized by low population density with agriculture as the prime income

source.

the problems resulting from that diversity --make it abundantly
clear that flexibility in manpower planning and in delivery of
manpower training is imperative if each state, in its own way,
is to gain the most from a federally-sponsored effort.

facts best known by informed state planners and others, can be

nade on how to group cities and counties for manpower delivery

purposes.

Without this authority at the state level, we can easily see the prospect of some of our more urban areas, with their natural alertness, aggressiveness and venturesomeness, winding up with more than their fair share of available manpower Please note that I said more than their fair share

resources.

of available resources

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I certainly don't mean to imply more than they need, for resources even without so many restraints are likely to fall short of what is actually needed for most of our regions. Meanwhile, in some of our more rural and 1 frankly more needy areas, there may not be adequate local resources to help them find either what they need or what is actually available to them. They may not find these programs and use them, that is, unless the state is left free to encourage and help in designing programs from a statewide

point of view to see to it that manpower services are available on as uniform a basis as possible.

TESTIMONY BY GOVERNOR SCOTT

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The significance of this approach is documented in out-migration figures for many of North Carolina's counties and regions. (A table showing some of the more pertinent figures is attached.) In one of our planning regions in northeastern North Carolina, we had a net out-migration between 1960 and 1970 of 17.8 per cent. In another nearby region, out-migration was 16.8 per cent. It was 15 per cent in the region just north of Raleigh, and it was 9 per cent in four other of our more rural regions.

Why?

These North Carolinians are leaving because they must go

elsewhere to seek training and jobs.

And, where are they going?

You have but to look up the Eastern Seaboard to

Washington, to Baltimore, to Philadelphia or New York to find

the answers.

And, what happens when they get there?

If they don't wind up being dependent upon public assistance, they must still be trained for jobs available there. That is a costly process, one that denies us the

potential of some of our most precious North Carolina citizens and one that places burdens on other sections of the country that they do not seem to be able to handle very well.

I submit that for every person trained at this point

in some of the larger cities of the Eastern Seaboard, we in North Carolina are presently sending another displaced, untrained farm worker or another untrained high school dropout who decided he couldn't make it by staying at home.

And we are being left often with an aging, unskilled population or a very youthful unskilled population. Both groups are consistently identified in all target groups of manpower programs, and in our state, the evidence suggests that the size of the target groups is increasing, not decreasing as it should be. We must devise training programs to reach the people

where they are now. And, very frankly, with some selfish aims for we want to train these North Carolinians and keep them because we need their contributions to the economy as well as to the cultural and social life of our state.

And, even if we are not able to succeed in our

ambition to provide jobs all across our state with a growth
policy that will emphasize development of smaller urban
centers throughout our rural areas, we are still better off
if the citizen who does leave has been trainèd for work before
he leaves.

At the moment, much of the emphasis in manpower programs is aimed at residents of larger urban areas and this is understandable.

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But such a formula leaves North

Carolina short when we try to deal with our main problem

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the relocation into industrial and service occupations

of those who were previously agricultural workers.

Now, let me make this point, very clearly and

very directly. Perhaps at the outset of some of these

manpower programs, there was need for the federal government

to deal more directly and specifically with urban programs and with non-state-oriented planners and sponsors.