STATEMENT OF CHARLES ODELL, CHAIRMAN, MICHIGAN

COMMISSION ON AGING

Mr. ODELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, my name is Charles Odell, and my official paid responsibility is as director of the older and retired workers department of the United Automobile Workers International Union, with headquarters in Detroit.

I am honored to have this opportunity to testify in support of the Fogarty-McNamara bill to establish a U.S. Commission on Aging. Because I feel so strongly that an independent commission, rather than a bureau or office in some existing department, is needed to deal with the problems of the aging and aged. I believe you should know something of my background and qualifications to speak on this particular aspect of the bill.

Before taking my present position, I worked for 20 years in Federal service, mostly in the U.S. Department of Labor but for short periods in the Federal Security Agency. From 1947 to 1955 I was Director of Counseling, Testing and Selective Placement Services in the U.S. Employment Service of the Department of Labor.

During this period, we conducted several basic studies on the older worker in cooperation with State Employment Services. From 194750 I also served as the Employment Service Representative on the first informal Inter-Departmental Committee on Aging. This committee was chaired by Miss Jane Hoey who was then Director of the Bureau of Public Assistance in the Federal Security Agency.

I also served as the Department of Labor's Representative on the Planning Committee for the first National Conference on Aging called by President Truman in 1950, and, during this conference, I worked informally with Miss Hoey, Geneva Mathiasen, and Ollie Randall to organize the National Committee on Aging, a coordinating council for the voluntary as well as the public agencies.

In 1955, I was named by Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell as a special assistant to plan, direct, and coordinate the Department's older worker program. It is no secret that aging and the problems of older people loomed large as a campaign issue in 1956.

The Eisenhowever administration really gave some intensive attention to the problem and, with some prodding from Congressman Fogarty, a good bit of effective work was done during this period by the Federal agencies. From 1950 until I left Government service in 1957, I was continuously involved in one or another form of Federal interdepartmental committee on aging, including the Federal Council on Aging which was originally conceived as a sub-Cabinet level coordinating body.

In 1957, I became director of the Older and Retired Workers Department of the UAW. Soon thereafter, I was appointed by Governor Williams to serve as a member of the Michigan Commission on Aging.

I am now chairman of this commission. I have also served as a member of the Detroit Metropolitan Committee on Aging since 1957. In 1959, I was appointed by Arthur Flemming to serve on the National Advisory Committee to the White House Conference on Aging. I also served as chairman of one of the discussion groups at the conference.

Finally, I would mention my long and continuous service with the voluntary agency structure in aging with the National Council on Aging, formerly the National Committee on Aging, of which I am a vice president and member of the board of directors.

I apologize for this lengthy biographical sketch. I give it only to indicate that I have had some cross-section view of the problems involved in this field.

From these many vantage points, I feel particularly qualified to speak on the problem of structure for aging in the Federal Government. Having worked at all levels of government, Federal, State, and local, and having experienced as both a Federal employee and as an employee of an important voluntary agency with a program in aging, I feel that I can speak with some conviction on what will work and what would not work by way of Federal structure; and I am convinced, Mr. Chairman, that, if anything will work to coordinate and stimulate the Federal structure in aging it is the commission form recommended in the Fogarty-McNamara bill.

I am equally convinced that these problems will not be solved effectively by simply extending or augmenting the present structure of the special staff on aging within HEW. This conclusion is not based at all on personalities, there have been so many involved and I have known and worked cooperatively with all of them, it is based on deep conviction and long experience which indicates that one department or an agency cannot effectively coordinate the work of other departments.

Before documenting this conclusion, let me make it clear that I am not speaking for any of the organizations which I serve except the UAW, which has consistently supported the idea of a commission on aging in preference to a bureau of office structure within a particular department. For example, I respectfully call to your attention Mr. Emil Mazey's testimony before the Senate Committee on Aging and Aged in Detroit in November 1959. At that time Mr. Mazey, the secretary-treasurer of our union said:

While it is true that some of the more basic services for older people are administered in Washington by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, there are many services provided by other departments which do not lend themselves well to planning and coordination by the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare or his subordinates. Furthermore, most States and communities do not have an organization structure paralleling that in Washington. Therefore, necessary coordination at State level will probably best be achieved by a special coordinating staff working directly for the Governor rather than at some subordinate level within a department of State government and the same will be true at Federal and local levels. Legislation authorizing the establishment of a Coordinating Council on Aging in the Executive Office of the President and providing for representation from the major departments and agencies of the Federal Government having a direct responsibility for services to older persons, is long overdue. Such legislation should also provide for a broadly representative and continuing Advisory Council composed of lay and professional members and a goodly proportion of older persons themselves. The Coordinating and Advisory Councils' functions should be defined in such a way as to insure that the activities of the various agencies of Government that can contribute to the welfare and independence of senior citizens are properly developed and implemented. The Coordinating Council should also be given the funds and authority necessary to assist the States, through matching grants, in establishing a similar coordinating and facilitating structure at State and local levels.

In view of that testimony, our union was very disappointed when the McNamara committee recommended legislation to create a bureau

of older persons in HEW. On the other hand, we were delighted to learn that Senator McNamara and Congressman Fogarty were joining together to present identical bills supporting the establishment of a U.S. Commission on Aging reporting directly to the President and speaking with a clear voice in behalf of the interests and needs of older people uninhibited by the existing rigidities of structure for aging in the present departments or agencies of the Federal Government.

We feel so strongly on this issue because the historical record so clearly confirms our convictions. The record shows that, for one reason or another, the present structure has not achieved effective interdepartmental coordination of aging programs in the Federal Government.

As a matter of fact, there is less effective coordination today than there was during the White House Conference on Aging or even earlier during the early inception of the Federal Council on Aging.

This committee might well inquire as to when the Federal Council on Aging last met and what it has recently accomplished on the level of interdepartmental coordination. The truth is that the departments and agencies had no part, for example, in the planning of the recent conference of State executives for aging held only last week. No formal place in the program was made available to other departments or agencies, despite the fact that many State officials requested information on problems in the fields of housing, employment, surplus foods, recreation, and the like.

The failure to achieve interdepartmental coordination also manifests itself in the declining interest and activities of other departments in aging as the staff and responsibilities of HEW have been increased. When I left the Department of Labor, for example, there was a departmental coordinator and each bureau had one or more representatives on a Departmental Coordinating Committee. Today the coordinator exists only in name, but carries a full-time operating responsibility for training programs under the Area Redevelopment Act.

Little is left of the internal structure within the Department and as a result, many State agencies, such as our Michigan State Employment Security are saying they cannot afford to give special attention to the placement problems of older workers.

Even within HEW itself there is little evidence of meaningful coordination of the bureaus with an interest in aging. The old interbureau Committee on Aging and Geriatrics has apparently been abandoned, and, if an alternate structure has been created to mobilize and coordinate the resources in aging of the Department I am not aware of it.

In these two vital areas of interdepartmental and intradepartmental coordination, it is my sincere conviction that we are moving backward rather than forward. The gains made in these areas during the period of the White House Conference have been lost, in part because of a lack of funds, but mainly because the special staff on aging was unable or unwilling to exercise the kind of leadership required not only to preserve past gains but to move ahead into the many challenging areas uncovered by the White House Conference itself.

The one area in which some progress has been made as a result of the White House Conference has been in the States. It is interesting, that in recommending structure to the States, the special staff

speaks most frequently about the need for State commissions, and most States have moved in this direction. While a few have centered the coordination of aging programs in State departments of welfare this is not the prevailing pattern.

Mr. BAILEY. Could the Chair interrupt at this point?

Mr. ODELL. Yes, sir.

Mr. BAILEY. How many of the States have set up independent commissions?

Mr. ODELL. I believe 24 States have independent commissions. There are a variety of other structures, some of which are too technical for me to explain, and I do not pretend to be an authority on them, but the majority do have independent commissions, as I understand it. Mr. BAILEY. My State of West Virginia recently set up a commission, action by the Governor, and authorization by the State legislature.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BAILEY. Mr. Frelinghuysen.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Mr. Chairman, I mean this as no criticism, but the witness is talking too rapidly, and covering so many subjects, and he has so much background in this field, that I wonder if there is no prepared testimony that is available to us, or if we should not interrupt you at some time, Mr. Odell, so that we can ask you questions before we lose the thought of what you are saying? Do you have any prepared statement you could submit to us?

Mr. ODELL. I am sorry I am speaking so fast. Unfortunately, sir, I had very little time to get this ready, and my secretary is on vacation, so all I have here is a very, very rough draft of this material. Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. It was coming out so smoothly that I assumed it was printed testimony.

Mr. ODELL. Well, I write to speak, sir. I will welcome interruptions at any point, and I will try to go a little slower.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. If I could just interrupt you about a couple of points that have occurred to me as you have talked. From your experience, you have demonstrated that there has been in the past, and that is something continuing even now, an effort to improve consideration in the Government of the problems of the aging, and you have participated in part of that process.

You mentioned, as I understand it, that you felt that there could be no effective coordination of the functions of other agencies, but is not that just what this commission is going to do?

I am still a little confused as to just how far this new commission would usurp the functions which are presently being carried on in some 10 or 12 Government agencies. I do not find in any synopsis of Mr. Fogarty's bill any transfer of specific responsibilities for various programs out of these agencies, and I would assume its major function would be, at least in part, to coordinate the responsibilities of other agencies which you have just indicated might be difficult or impossible.

Would you care to comment on that?

Mr. ODELL. My statement, sir, was directed to the fact it apparently is impossible to achieve this coordination within the existing structure, within HEW, and I contend that this is so primarily because a subordinate staff level person within the Department of HEW is being

asked to take on the responsibilities of bringing coordination in other departments, where he must work down through the Secretary or the head of the department or agency into the structure of that agency.

My feeling is that there is hope for coordination only at the level of an agency speaking with the authority and support of the President, and inquiring and urging and stimulating cooperation and coordination within the departments through that channel.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. I am not quite sure I understand that. Is it your thought that this new outfit, with direct access to the President, could tell a Secretary, a Cabinet officer, that they can run his Department better than he can?

Mr. ODELL. No, sir.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Well, that is, in effect, what it seems to me your testimony is telling us.

Mr. ODELL. My thought is that coordination of this kind of thing in the Federal Government, or at any level of Government, is difficult. I am suggesting that it

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Well, does this coordination imply authority? Can they shuffle people around and set up a different way of doing the job in the department?

Mr. ODELL. I do not believe that they should, or that they can. I am suggesting that if there is any hope for achieving coordination, which all of us see as being necessary, it will be better achieved at this level than it will be at the present level of structure, where the individual involved is not free to function with any clear voice. They are constantly hemmed in by the departmental structures in which they work.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN. Well, unless you take them out of the departmental structures in which they work, are they not still going to be hemmed in, whether or not you established a new group to supervise, to see whether the job is being done well or not?

You say there is little meaningful coordination at present. And you seem to be particularly critical of the present operation of HEW. I am not sure whether we are going to get any witness to rebut your charges, but if that is the case, I am not sure how you are going to get any better job, except by saying that this new unit can run the job better than Secretary Ribicoff can, he has been neglecting his problems, and the subordinates under him.

It amounts to just about that, and I would think you might aggravate the structural problems that we have now by superimposing an additional group with no authority, but with an interest in improving the coordination of programs which you just said they would not have authority to reshuffle.

Mr. ODELL. Well, I am assuming that a commission structure with good leadership, and with a close working relationship with the President, can establish a higher level of concern than the internal bureaucratic considerations that seem to prevail in our present action and thinking about this problem.

I would quote Marshall Demmick, who spoke to our conference last week, who said

The role of the coordinator is not one of bumping bureaucratic heads together. It is one of achieving a higher level of interest and concern in the interests of doing something about a problem that transcends the bureaucratic interests of any particular group.