responsibilities for implementation of operations at the neighborhood level and provide support and direct supervision of Program Coordinators in each neighborhood. Program coordinator (one in each neighborhood).-As with Field Operations Director, this position is not part of Administration, but is included to indicate relationship to administration. The Program Coordinator will be responsible to the Field Operations Director. This will be the major staff for operations and development of Neighborhood Boards. The Coordinator will supervise community development workers, aides and trainees. He will also coordinate and be responsible for activities of all operators of Crusade for Opportunity and delegate agency programs within the neighborhood. Additionally, he will be responsible for Crusade for Opportunity liaison with other neighborhood agencies and institutions. Program specialists.-Program Specialists are also included to show relationship to administration; they are not part of this component. The Program Specialist will report to the Deputy Director for Program and will function in three specific areas: 1. Assist Director of Field Operators in implementing technical aspects of operating programs. 2. Assist the Training Director in developing and carrying out inservice training program for operators of service programs. 3. As a resource to staff and Boards in development of new programs. D. Deputy director for administration The Deputy Director for Administration reports to the Executive Director. His primary function is to provide all necessary administrative support for all program activities of the Community Action agency. The Deputy Director for Administration in consultation with Financial Director will also assist the Executive Director in contract negotiations with participating public and private agencies and with the various levels of government; he will also assist the Executive Director in preparing and reviewing program and administrative budgets. E. Director of public information The Director of Public Information reports to the Deputy Director for Administration. It is the overall purpose of his department to interpret the meaning of the Community Action Program to the community at large and to make clear the stake which the community has in a coordinated attack upon the causes of poverty. He will also be a resource to the Neighborhood Boards; develop and maintain a speakers' bureau and will utilize public media in order to inform the various CFO publics as to the problems and progress of the Crusade in overcoming these problems. This staff person will also be responsible for preparation of reports as required by the funding agencies. F. Financial director The Financial Director reports to the Deputy Director for Administration and will be responsible for administering and coordinating the operations of his division including (1) maintaining appropriate accounts and procedures to meet requirements of funding agencies; (2) preparation of financial reports for these agencies as well as for Board of Directors and Membership; (3) supervising the "housekeeping" functions of the Crusade for Opportunity: keeping of personnel records, purchasing and inventory, property management, etc., in connection with its operations; (4) assisting the Executive Director and the Funding and Finance Committee in developing sources of non-federal contribution. Director of Research and Development. This position is not funded as part of the administration component but is included here to show its relationship in the administrative structure. The Director of Research and Development will report directly to the Executive Director and among his other duties will serve as a resource to the CFO Board, Neighborhood Boards and staff. 4. Timetable Effective immediately. 5. Evaluation The administrative structure will be subject to on-going evaluation to determine if it is indeed supporting the stated goals of the program. Data is presently being collected to determine the impact of administrative decisions on program as perceived by program operators; this will also be fed back as part of the continuing assessment process. 6. Resident participation See Neighborhood Organization, CAP 7-I. Mr. KURZMAN. Mr. Henry Smith and Mr. Thomas Scott, board of directors of the Suffolk County Economic Opportunity Commission. Senator CLARK. We are happy to welcome you before the subcommittee. Do you have a prepared statement? Mr. SCOTT. Yes, we do. Senator CLARK. That will be printed in full in the record at this point. (The prepared statement of Mr. Scott and Mr. Smith follows:) PREPARED STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONERS THOMAS SCOTT AND HENRY SMITH, JR., SUFFOLK COUNTY (NEW YORK) ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION This testimony is presented on behalf of the Suffolk County Economic Opportunity Commission, the county community action "umbrella" agency. In the brief time available to us we want to touch on a number of matters of particular concern to our Commission and the county which we serve. We have chosen to emphasize these particular points in the belief that it would be of use and interest to this Committee in its deliberations to share in some of the ideas of a local community action agency. We cannot begin without making note of the devoted and sincere efforts of the Office of Economic Opportunity officials in the northeast regional office, especially Messrs. Saal Lesser, William Salinger and Lawrence Faye, who have provided immeasurable assistance to us. We wish here to emphasize a number of problems which directly affect the poor of our county and their participation in the anti-poverty program. The problems of participation of the poor in the anti-poverty program are many. One which has affected our Commission is the question of the cost to members of the poor in participating in Commission activities. We know that there are funds available for the actual transportation costs and necessary child services for members of the poor in their work with the anti-poverty program. However, many of the persons on our Commission (and several who have had to leave the Commission) are "of the working poor." In order for them to attend Commission meetings they must lose a day or an evening's wages, a cost which they cannot afford to bear no matter how great their concern for our program. We believe that provision should be made for the reimbursement of actual wages lost by persons who are poor as a part of their participation in the work of the anti-poverty board. Related to this concern is the question of the actual control of the local poverty programs. We accept the concept of the participation of the local government (be it town government or county government) in the poverty program. However, we believe there must be a clear delineation of the areas of authority of local government and the areas of autonomy for the community action group in the neighborhood which must have the authority to run its own program. Of particular concern to us is the matter of employment of poor persons in the poverty programs. In our summer programs (as well as others)-Head Start, Summer Remedials, Summer Pre-Kindergarten Programs, and Upward Bound Programs-we have been engaging members of the community, who are themselves poor, to work with the children in these programs under various titles such as Neighborhood Aides, Teacher Aides, Program Aides, etc. We are concerned that the jobs provided by the anti-poverty program are such that they not only provide an income for the persons employed, but that income be adequate and that the jobs offer further advancement opportunities for the persons who are interested and capable of taking advantage of them. In this light, we are especially disturbed at the requirement mandated by the regional office of the Office of Economic Opportunity, that such aides be paid at the rate of $1.50 an hour. This especially disturbed us in that persons doing the same work in these programs last year were paid $2.00 per hour. This means, gentlemen, that a person working on a full-year basis is barely above the poverty line ($3,120.00), if he works a full year and if he has a family of four. We believe that this antipoverty program should not be in the position of paying at the bare minimum, but rather should offer encouragement by its own actions to persons to become employed and to enable them to earn an adequate, if not more than adequate, income. Therefore, we urge that programs such as ours be permitted to pay $2.00 an hour as the minimum wage to persons employed by us or by our delegate agencies. In the context of the needs of the poor themselves, we would like to call to your attention the importance of the availability of funds to a community action agency which are not specifically earmarked for a particular program. While we are encouraged by the success in Suffolk County and elsewhere by such programs as Operation Head Start and others, we believe it is only through the availability of unearmarked funds which will allow us in concert with local community groups to develop programs appropriate to their problems and their needs. To restrict community action funds-either by cutting their total or by earmarking them for specific programs-will, we believe, serve to seriously reduce the potential effectiveness of the antipoverty program in our county. We are deeply disturbed by reports that the funds for community action programs under Section 205 of Title II-A of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 will be reduced. While there are many agencies and institutions in the community which can provide a broad range of services, it is the particular genius of the Economic Opportunity Act that it allows a community action agency flexibility and broad scope in the development of community action programs. Should this be truncated, we believe that the effectiveness of our existing program and the potential effectiveness of the programs in this county would be greatly increased. We urge that this Committee allocate additional funds for community action and that it not so emasculate the program by earmarking funds for special purposes as to reduce the potential effectiveness of community action. Another matter which concerns us is the protracted period necessary (or apparently necessary) in the funding of proposals and also the crash basis of funding of proposals. While these two objections seem to be mutually exclusive a word of explanation will make them clear. Some of our programs, especially those involving community action groups, have taken upwards of a year to be funded. This length of time serves only to discourage the people in the local community who once again feel that they have been tricked and misled as to an opportunity for change. On the other hand, many programs which must start at a certain date-such as summer Head Start and summer Remedial Programsare not funded until the very last minute. In our county, we still have not had final and official word regarding our summer Head Start and summer Remedial Programs; informal and unofficial word has allowed us to make the necessary beginnings on these programs, but I am sure that you can recognize that school boards and other agencies in the community are unwilling to commit themselves in the expenditure of funds unless and until they have a firm commitment from us (which we can only give on the basis of a firm commitment from the Office of Economic Opportunity) that the funds will be forthcoming. We would hope that as the Office of Economic Opportunity program becomes more regularized. that there will be a greater amount of "lead time" in the approval of programs so that they can begin when necessary and that persons in the local community will not remain "hanging." To turn to another matter, there are in our county two Indian reservationsthe Poospatuck and the Shinnecock. These two reservations fall under the jurisdiction of the State of New York and not that of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In that distinction lies many of our problems. Almost all of the federal legislation to benefit the American Indian is restricted to those Indians who are residents or former residents of reservations under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In fact, this distinction between those Indians who are residents of federal reservations and Indians who are residents of other reservations is pointed out by a recent community action memo, No. 38, dated June 3, 1966, from Mr. Theodore M. Berry, Director, Community Action Programs. Office of Economic Opportunity. That memorandum indicates the availability of funds outside of community action agency "guideline funds" for a program to benefit residents of federal Indian reservations. Thus, the residents of the two Indian reservations in Suffolk County are frozen out of these funds and must rely upon the general allocation to our county community action agency. We be lieve that there should be no distinction between residents of federal Indian reservations and those on other Indian reservations. We urge you to consider the elimination of this invidious distinction between Indians who are residents of federal reservations and those who are not. A particular need of the Indians in our county is in the area of housing. Since the land on the reservation is held in common, for the good of all the members of the Tribe and their progeny, banks will not provide mortgage loans for the construction of individual houses on the reservation since, in the case of foreclosure, the cannot take title to the land. We are concerned with the availability of funds for the repair, renovation, and construction of houses for the residents on our reservations. We urge that this Committee take particular concern with the problems of the residents of state Indian reservations and allow in the Economic Opportunity Act the necessary flexibility in order to meet the needs of Indians, the oldest and today the poorest citizens of this country. In a different area is a matter which was highlighted in the so-called McCone Report on the Watts area of Los Angeles. This relates to transportation facilities. It was pointed out in that report that many of the people in the Watts area, lacking a car, would have to spend several hours and several dollars in order to get a job, if they were trained and if the job were available. The same is true in Suffolk County. In a county which is eighty-one miles long and approximately twenty miles wide, there are but two east-west public bus routes, and an equal number of north-south bus routes. There are vast areas of our county, especially those areas populated by the poor, which have no means of public transportation. The cost of providing such public transportation is beyond the present capabilities of local town governments and of our county government. We believe that the matter of public transportation ought to be of concern to the Office of Economic Opportunity and to other government agencies. We are encouraged by the recent grants to Los Angeles and other areas for assistance in transportation. I believe that they must move far beyond both the "token" efforts which have been made and begin to provide the needs of vast areas of the country, including our own Suffolk County. A further problem of the poor of Suffolk County, and elsewhere in the country, is in the area of medical services. We are fortunate that in New York State the legislature has recently passed enabling legislation under Title XIX of the so-called “Medicare Act," which provides for full payment for the entire range of medical services for the so-called "medically indigent" (defined in New York States as those persons with a net income of less than $6,000.00 for a family of four). Having assured payment for medical services for those persons covered by the Economic Opportunity Act, we now are faced with the problem of delivery of medical services in a county which lacks a county hospital, which has very few public outpatient clinics, which is saddled with a county medical society which has formally gone on record of opposing the State Medical Assistance Program. We are concerned with the ways in which the Office of Economic Opportunity can assist in the coordination and the integration of medical services for the poor. We believe that the concept of a multi-service center, which has become such an important part of our county program, and is, we understand, an integral part of the programs throughout the country, is an appropriate model for medical services. The special problems faced by the poor in seeking medical services demands that they not be forced to go from one office to another, from one clinic to another, from one specialist to another in order to receive services; we believe that it is necessary for there to be housed in convenient locations the full range of medical services. We urge that the Office of Economic Opportunity engage in programs which will promote the integration and coordination of medical services for the poor on a basis which respects their dignity and the privacy of the doctor-patient relationship. A final matter is the unavailability of federal surplus foods for our Head Start and other programs. Surely, there is no more appropriate use for such food than to feed these children. Clearly, here is a matter for greater coordination between the respective federal agencies. Let us close by emphasizing that we have touched upon but some of the issues relevant to the anti-poverty program in the belief that these illustrations would offer some substance for your deliberations. We urge your careful consideration of the matters before you and call upon you and your colleagues in the Senate and the House to give no less a priority to the needs of our poor than to any other program of the government, and we affirm, that despite its shortcomings and inadequacies, the program of Office of Economic Opportunity does provide in its broad sweep and its commitments to community action the best present hope for federal concern in meeting the needs of the poor. We in Suffolk County are pledged and committed to winning the "war on poverty." We call upon you to fashion and supply us with all of the necessary tools. We will mobilize our communities to use those tools well for the good of all of our people. Thank you. Senator CLARK. Who will make the oral statement? Mr. SCOTT. We will go through some excerpts from the complete report we have on file, sir. Senator CLARK. You are Mr. Scott? STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONERS THOMAS SCOTT AND HENRY SMITH, JR., SUFFOLK COUNTY ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY COMMISSION, COMMACK, N.Y. Mr. SCOTT. I am Mr. Scott. This is Mr. Henry Smith. Senator CLARK. For my information, where is Commack in Suffolk County? Mr. SCOTT. It is about the central of Suffolk County. It is half way between the east and the west. Senator CLARK. Is that west of Riverhead? Mr. Scorr. It is west of Riverhead, yes, sir. It is approximately 30 miles from Riverhead. Senator CLARK. I grew up in Hampton; that is why I asked. Senator Prouty. Senator PROUTY. Mr. Chairman, I am faced with a problem that I am sure you can understand. As you know the subcommittee of the Labor Committee is presently marking up a minimum wage bill. I am a member of that subcommittee and should be there. Also the Senate is taking up the highway safety bill which is of major importance. I am a member of that committee, and I should be on the Senate floor, I regret that I cannot stay this morning. I will try to be back part of the time this afternoon. I appreciate your showing up this morning and hope to have you with us this afternoon. Now, gentlemen, will you please proceed in your own way. Mr. SCOTT. First of all I would like to introduce Mr. Henry Smith who works for the Grumman Aircraft Co., Bethpage, Long Island, and he is the Suffolk director for CORE as well as commissioner in the Suffolk County Economic Opportunity Commission. I myself am a grocery clerk. I am a rank-and-file member of the executive board of the local 342 of the Meat Cutters Union and a commissioner on the Suffolk County Economic Opportunity Commission. I will read a prepared statement. Should the committee feel at any time they wish further comment or ask a question they are invited to do so. This testimony is presented on behalf of the Suffolk County Economic Opportunity Commission, the county community action umbrella agency. |