the Commissioner nor his assistant is required to be a resident of the District.

The argument that this is a step toward home rule doesn't impress me. Rather, it is more logical to expect that the White House plan would defer any further consideration of "home rule" because Congress would give such a new plan a lengthy time of fair trial before making further changes.

My plan is designed to bring back into balance the role exercised in D. C. government by the White House and to give the residents of the District more of a role in the government of their own city. Its ambition is to reflect the three interests in the operation of this city: that of the residents whose home it is; that of the Executive whose Administration is quartered here; and that of the Congress which represents the American people whose national capital it is. These interests are reflected in the three Commissioners, one of whom is to be elected by the people of the District in my plan, and the other two of which are to be named by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate.

My bill eliminates the requirement that one of the Commissioners be a member of the Army Corps of Engineers, but it does provide that three officers from the Corps may be delegated to the Board of Commissioners to assist in the governing of the District.

The Executive interest, that is, the interest of the Executive Branch of Government, is further reflected in the naming of the president of the three-member Board of Commissioners and in the designation from the administrative branch of some members of certain agencies, commissions and boards which operate in the District. But the tripartite interest of the city's residents, the Administration and the Congress is maintained on these boards, agencies and commissions which have importance in the planning and development of the District by having at least half their membership filled by the Commissioners.

My plan provides for the independence of the Commissioners and the smooth continuity of their service by having them appointed for staggered three-year terms and providing that they can only be removed for cause.

While I am pleased and flattered that much of my bill is included in the later proposal, H.R. 11872, made by Chairman McMillan and Mr. Nelsen of the committee, I regret that they did not include the election of one of the Commissioners by residents of the District. However, the committee version does include one idea which I like very much and would like to see added to my legislation, and that is the provision whereby the chairman of the Commission can act on his own when no two members concur on a matter.

By designating a "city manager" approach which would see the Commissioners name a Managing Director to head a Department of Management, I think both my bill and the McMillan-Nelsen bill correspond, to a degree, and answer the problem of how to obtain singleminded administration of the detail of municipal government.

My plan also provides for three deputy managing directors for program development, general administration and operations review, respectively, and is more detailed in concept than the McMillan-Nelsen bill, therefore. Naturally, I prefer it because it spells out authorities in more detail and actually provides for the conduct of certain re

sponsibilities, particularly in the staff area of planning and evaluation. There may be other preferences for organizational structure. Mine is suggested as one concept and might be improved with further committee consideration or at some future date in light of actual experience in operation.

The McMillan-Nelsen bill calls for the Commissioners to recommend additional changes in the organization of the District government within one year and ask Congress to legislate further changes. Under my plan, these changes are made in this legislation as far as the National Capital Housing Authority, the District of Columbia Redevelopment Land Agency, the National Capital Planning Commission, the Joint Board on Mass Transportation, the Recreation Board, the Board of Library Trustees, the Zoning Commissioner, the Board of Zoning Adjustment, the Zoning Advisory Council, and the Public Service Commission are concerned. I feel some reorientation and rearrangement of these boards should be made at once. However, I have no objection to the idea that the Commissioners should be required to study their operation and make recommendations within one year concerning any further changes. But I do think the Commissioners should be empowered in this legislation to make such changes as they feel are necessary in the agencies, boards and departments which are clearly under their full control, and should only be obliged to return to Congress for reorganizational authority in those areas where Congress and/or the President retains direct jurisdiction. After all, under the Constitution, Congress retains the ultimate jurisdiction, anyway, and the difference here is the degree of jurisdiction being delegated at this time.

I am delighted that the McMillan-Nelsen version adopts the idea of an elected school board from my bill, and would have the members of that board be representative of wards or neighborhoods. This, of course, maintains the local control of neighborhood schools which is a fundamental concept in American education. While my 15-member board might be more unwieldy because of its very numbers, I feel it might more adequately reflect divergent interests within the District. But I will settle for nine if we can get them elected. I think it will strengthen education in Washington to have the parents have a directly represented voice in the education of their children.

The greatest disparity in the McMillan-Nelsen bill and mine is the complete omission in the committee bill of a nonvoting representative in the Congress. I have included this Member-without-a-vote as a temporary expedient until the U.S. Constitution can be changed, as has been proposed by various kinds of legislation now being heard in the Committee on the Judiciary, to allow for voting representation in Congress for the District. While that is not the subject of this legislation or under the purview of the District Committee, it has some bearing on this legislation.

It is my strong feeling that good and responsive government and responsible good citizenship both require that the citizen has some voice in his local government. I have tried to provide this in my legislation through the election of one of the three Commissioners and through election of the nonvoting delegate in Congress. I feel this is an intelligent compromise between those who advocate complete home rule for the District and those who would provide D.C.

residents no voice at all in their own government. Such a compromise is necessary if we are to get a good plan through Congress and not be faced with the take-it-or-leave-it choice of the President's unfortunate Reorganization Plan No. 3.

There is nothing new in my plan and nothing very radical. Practically all the ideas have come from legislative proposals previously made by Members of Congress and many of them have been introduced by members of this very District Committee.

My plan merely puts them in a single package. Mine is not a partisan plan, although it has been portrayed that way in the press to some degree. I feel it will get support on both sides of the aisle. I am pleased that members from both parties in this committee have taken it as a point of departure for their own legislation, but I would hope they don't depart too far from it. If it has no other virtues, however, it is at least amendable.

Finally, I am sure most members of this committee are aware that I have joined my colleague on the Executive and Legislative Reorganization Subcommittee of the Government Operations Committee, the Honorable John Erlenborn of Illinois, in introducing a resolution to extend for an additional sixty days (to 120 days) the present sixty-day period which Congress has to consider a Presidential reorganization plan. Our subcommittee will meet on this proposal tomorrow and indications are that it will approve either a 30- or 60-day extension beyond the August 10 deadline for Congress to act on Reorganization Plan No. 3. This should give the House District Committee time to refine and polish a good bill for the improvement of the government of the District of Columbia. The fact that the President's Plan waits in the wings should be an additional incentive. I wish the committee well in its deliberations on this problem.

Mr. ABERNETHY (presiding). I want to thank the gentleman.
Have you any questions, Mr. McMillan?

Mr. MCMILLAN. I wish to thank you, Mr. Brown, for taking the time to join us this morning in trying to see if we can get together on some kind of legislation to improve the government of the District of Columbia. I know of Mr. Brown's real interest in this matter. He has lived in the District for years and knows the conditions in the District. I knew his late father was of great help to this committee on many occasions in getting the House to pass certain legislation which was very necessary.

I certainly want to thank you for giving us your opinion of the bill you have recently introduced, and I hope that something will come out of this which will improve the District government here in Washington.

I would like to state that we have been working hard these past four or five weeks in an effort to get some real evidence to prove that something is wrong with the present government. Before we go on the Floor of the House for consideration of any of the proposed bills, I think we should be in a position to prove that something is wrong with the present government before we enact any new legislation. The Commissioners and other people who have testified have failed to give us that testimony. We are certainly happy to have your views on this subject.

Mr. BROWN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. ABERNETHY. Mr. Broyhill.

Mr. BROYHILL. I should like to associate myself with the remarks made by the chairman in commending the gentleman from Ohio for his interest in the District of Columbia, and particularly for his constructive suggestions concerning the reorganization plan.

The gentleman is correct that a large proportion of his proposal has been included in the bill, H.R. 11872, introduced by Mr. McMillan and Mr. Nelsen. As one supporter of these proposals, I must say that I would have been willing to include more provisions of the gentleman's bill. I think the reason more of his proposal was not considered was the fear that it might constitute too large a ball of wax to get through at one time. Some of us have already been charged by one of the local papers as being somewhat less than sincere in the proposal we are supporting.

Frankly, if we were less than sincere, we could load the bill with a lot of things that we knew would not get through.

I might point out, again from my own personal standpoint, that I have introduced a bill that would provide for the election of one member of the Board of Commissioners. I think this is an area of reasonable compromise between those who feel that the people in the District of Columbia should have a greater voice in the management of local affairs, and those who wish to protect the Federal interest. Here again, however, we questioned the wisdom of adding that feature in this proposal which has been introduced by Mr. McMillan and Mr. Nelsen because some may disagree with us on that, and you can add enough such proposals to where you can make opponents of everyone.

In regard to the nonvoting delegate, it was felt that we stood a pretty good chance of getting a voting Member of the House for the District in the very near future. Some of us are not quite so optimistic as I am in that regard, but I think we have a very keen interest on the part of the House Committee on the Judiciary, and that would indicate that we have a good chance of getting the amendment ratified by the States and getting a voting member of Congress almost as quickly as we can get a nonvoting delegate.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. Broyhill, may I comment on that, if I may. I think your point may be well taken about getting it through the two bodies of Congress, but it certainly will take some time to get that through the State legislatures across the country to get a voting delegate approved as a matter of constitutional change.

Mr. BROYHILL. The 23rd Amendment was ratified in March 1961, and I think it was approved by the Congress in 1960. I may be off a few months, but it was ratified in record time.

Mr. BROWN. I think this may present a different problem, however. Mr. BROYHILL. We are not in disagreement with the idea of the nonvoting delegate proposal. At the same time, however, I would point out that each of the other proposals the gentleman has included in his bill, sound as it may be, might be objectionable to enough additional Members to make the bill more difficult to get enacted.

Mr. BROWN. I am moved to comment that one of my distinguished colleagues on the Government Operations Committee, who also served on the Hoover Commission, likes to refer to politics and legislation as the art of compromise. It seems frequently he would like to have you compromise to his position, but I guess that is the way we all are. In

the Congress we like to get our own position through and let everybody else do the compromising.

I do feel we have a real problem-and I agree with you there-in getting an adequate compromise that can get through the Congress and get through fairly quickly in the face of the imminence of the consideration of the President's plan.

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I would like to see the change be what is needed for the situation now with the possibility of future changes, rather than inadequate change for the present need. I think as a Congress we have an obligation-this comes to the point raised by Chairman McMillan-w have an obligation to try to relieve ourselves of the unnecessary detail of District government, to see that as much of that as possible can be handled by the Commissioners or whatever the local policymaking agency is, rather than keeping the Congress involved in that unnecessary detail.

At the same time, if we can get some flexibility into the operation of the District government so it can change with the times, I think we serve the government well. Hopefully, this will tend to do this by getting a reflection of local viewpoint in government.

Mr. BROYHILL. The gentleman will recall that when I testified before his Government Operations Subcommittee, I tried to emphasize the fact that there is no argument as to the desirability of improvement of the governmental structure of the District of Columbia. I do not know of any organization or structure, in business, industry, or government that cannot stand some improvement. I think the majority of this committee feels that it could be improved.

There is no question but what the President's reorganization plan did have, as the gentleman has said, a result. Whether it is desirable or not, it did have the effect of expediting the consideration of this legislation. Prior to the reorganization plan being proposed, we had heard nothing in this committee, formally or informally, to indicate that there was any great emergency or crisis in the District of Columbia which required action on the part of the Congress or of this committee.

I would state again with emphasis that this committee has not been derelict in working in that field because, as I say, we were not advised as to the seriousness of any problem which existed. As the chairman pointed out a moment ago, we have not learned a great deal about this being any real emergency with which we are confronted, but we have a deadline and, because that deadline is before us, we have to act on some proposal.

I think if we had more time we might come up with perhaps a little bit more in the line of what the gentleman has proposed.

Some of us feel that in this particular bill we have answered the main thrust of the President's proposal, that is, the desirability of a single administrative board and a separate policy-making body. That is done in Mr. McMillan's and Mr. Nelsen's proposal; although a different number of persons is involved, the line of authority is still separated.

As far as giving the people of the District of Columbia a greater voice in the operation of their government is concerned, such as by the elected school board which the gentleman has proposed, that is provided for in this bill. It is a great step forward. It is certainly a

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