First, it sets up national priorities which do not necessarily speak to the priority problems of local communities. The concept of "maximum feasible participation" loses its meaning if the priorities do not emerge from the local community as a result of its own experiences and as a result of the expression of the people who are most affected by poverty. For instance, some communities may already have successful preschool programs but yet would find that their basic allocation has been reduced because of this provision in the law. The question again is that of local determination versus Federal dictation. A second point is that our experience has been that there exists a tragic shortage of title II funds to carry out what many local communities consider the necessary first steps in the "building block" approach to community action. Rather than cut up the available funds under title II, the most important section of the act, every effort should be made to increase the total amount without specific program allocation in an effort to further promote the concept of local determination by those who are closest to the community problem.

A third concern is that section 211 of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 which provides for preference to programs and projects which are components of a community action program is being deleted. We feel again that community action agencies and their programs must be supported firmly and specifically in their role as coordinators of services.

San Francisco has experienced enough problems to be very sensitive to the dangers in eroding the responsibilities and the integrity of the community action agency. A case in point is that on the basis of this preference clause, two unprecedented and far-reaching agreements have resulted between the San Francisco Economic Opportunity Council and the San Francisco Unified School District, and between the San Francisco Economic Opportunity Council and the local California State Employment Services.

The final concern which I shall mention is in regard to the recommendation which requires that at least 20 percent of title II, section 205 funds be used for independent funding of programs outside of the community action agency. We are somewhat confused as to the intent of this provision. Whatever the reason, it is a dangerous threat to the effectiveness and the integrity of the local community action agency. If the intent is to support groups in the local community unrepresented in the CAA, then this is a backdoor approach. OEO pressure should be to make the local CAA truly representative rather than encourage local components to pull away from the central community action agency.

A much better assignment of these funds would be to provide adequate compensation to low-income board members who frequently are using their limited personal resources in order to participate in the CAP which makes more and more demands on their time and energy as it becomes more effective.

We estimate that some 200,000 of the target area population of San Francisco have been reached and a large percentage have participated in some way in the San Francisco community action program. We have sold to them the concept of individual involvement and self

assistance.

We, therefore, hope that this new idea of local community action. with such dramatic potential will not be scuttled by introducing such restrictive legislation before the program is given a fair opportunity to prove itself.

Senator JAVITS. Thank you very much, Mr. Brandon. I understand that yours is reputed to be one of the best community action programs in the country. I congratulate you on it. May I ask, do you see any help to the program in the Economic Opportunity Corporation for which I have introduced legislation?

Mr. BRANDON. I certainly think there is a great need for the introduction of business techniques and business ingenuity into the overall effort to fight poverty.

While I have not completely been familiarized with the details of the operation of the Corporation, I certainly think the potential is a great one and we would very much like to be a part and would like at least to be consulted on the development of this particular program. Senator JAVITS. Thank you very much. We will do exactly that. Mr. Kurzman will be in touch with you.

Mr. BRANDON. Thank you.

Senator JAVITS. Our next witness is Mr. E. J. Safford, Council of the Southern Mountains, Inc., Berea, Ky.

Mr. Safford, we welcome you to the committee. You used to be here as a correspondent. We hope you are happy in your new work.

STATEMENT OF E. J. SAFFORD, COUNCIL OF THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS, INC., BEREA, KY.

Mr. SAFFORD. Thank you very much, Senator. If the Senator will permit, because of his admonition on time I would like to insert my statement and comment on portions of it.

Senator JAVITS. Without objection, the statement will be made a part of the record.

(The prepared statement of Mr. Safford follows:)

PREPARED STATEMENT OF EDWIN SAFFORD, COMMUNITY ACTION TECHNICIAN, COUNCIL OF THE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS, INC., BEREA, KY.

My name is Edwin Stafford. I work for the Council of the Southern Mountains which has a technical assistance contract with the Office of Economic Opportunity. Under this contract some eighteen Community Action Technicians have worked in seven states in the region known as the Appalachian South helping to develop and administer community action projects and other programs related to the Economic Opportunity Act.

Our technical assistance program has been operative for nearly a year. We have witnessed and participated in all phases of community action. During this time, we have been struck by certain instances in which it has seemed apparent that many of the communities and people with whom we were working were virtually excluded from certain benefits of the Economic Opportunity Act because it simply could not be adopted to their unique rural nature.

I think a most graphic example of how the present Economic Opportunity Act has somehow missed the point in rural areas is the way in which the Work Experience and Training Program, Title V of this act, has operated. Since it is designed basically as a public works program, it assumes that many state and municipal agencies will be able to take unemployed parents and put them to work in areas where they can get training. These state and municipal staffs just don't exist, for the most part, in the Appalachian South. It is not the fault of

the states and municipalities that these staffs do not exist. They are not justifilable on the basis of population density, or more important, available revenues. Because these staffs do not exist, the Work Experience and Training Program is often little more than a welfare program in which the beneficiaries are required to perform menial work which is useless as training and quite often of little value to the public.

The lesson here, I believe, is that programs for rural areas cannot assume the same sort of base of already existing professional talent in the social and public services area that can be anticipated in the urban areas. The problem of supervision and training of Title V beneficiaries is critical in the Appalachian South. Unless Congress is willing to insist on closer federal supervision of Title V programs in rural areas so that the goal of training can be made more realistic, the current plan to limit participation in the program to two years would be disastrous. I say this because it is obvious that men who have been removing weeds from roadsides or sweeping courthouse floors will be no more employable after two years on Title V than they were before they joined the program. After the two-year stint some new welfare approach will have to be devised for the majority of the men now working on Title V in the Appalachian region.

There are other examples of this same phenomena, i.e., national programs that somehow just don't work in rural areas as they were conceived by their originators. We have encountered examples in Community Action Programs and I believe that some of the changes now being considered in Title II could compound these problems. For example, the proposal to set a minimum amount to be spent on Headstart within each community's overall allotment of CAP funds could cause serious problems in rural areas such as Appalachia. Unlike cities rural counties can vary greatly from each other in terms of their demographic profile. That is to say that the ratio of Headstart aged youngsters to the overall population fluctuates from county to county much more than the same ratio would in large population centers. Yet the proposal to earmark funds for Headstart seems to be based on an overall national average. By holding small rural counties and communities, of which many have been decimated by out-migration of their young people during the past decade, you may be forcing them to spend unrealistically large sums on Headstart.

The proposal to limit the federal contribution to staff salaries of Community Action Agencies to a maximum of $12,500 a year for any one individual would limit the ability of the larger CAP agencies to attract suitable directors and other executives. This will be especially true in the coming year because of the concerted effort by the Office of Economic Opportunity to create large multi-county districts in which a single Community Action Agency has been imposed over many county agencies. The Office of Economic Opportunity's rationale for this multi-county concept has been that it will enable these enlarged Community Action Agencies to attract qualified and experienced people in the $12,000 to $15,000 range. This $12,500 ceiling will effectively reduce the ability of large Community Action Agencies in the Appalachian region to attract desperately needed professionals from outside the region. I might add that in most Appalachian counties local cash contributions are non-existent. The ten per cent in matching funds is usually supplied as "in-kind." Thus unlike urban areas, which could conceivably supplement the federal contribution to salaries with a local cash contribution, the $12,500 federal maximum would in fact set the overall maximum for Community Action Agency salaries in Appalachia.

Mr. SAFFORD. Senator, in my statement I make the point that the 2-year limit in which a person can participate in title V, the WET program, is a dangerous suggestion as it now stands, because most participants in the program will not be ready to participate in private industry after that time.

I believe our experience in the Appalachian South has shown that the training now offered in title V, by and large, will not bring the majority of those in the program to a point where they can apply for jobs in private industry. Furthermore, after discussion of this point with a friend of mine in HEW, he reinforced my feelings by giving me these figures on the title V program of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

For the past 2 years, 6,200 men have been on the title V program. Of those men, 5,000 participated in adult basic education. Some 800 are now in high school. Now this is just in the first 2 years. Following these 2 years, because we are now going into the third year, we have 300 men taking training as foremen. These would be foremen, I assume, on the WET program, supervising other men on title V who are at a lower level. Finally, we have 700 men in vocational training. Now this is 700, mind you, out of 6,200. And this is the third year for these men, 1,000 all told, who are at these two higher levels.

Therefore, it seems to me that this limit of 2-year participation is an unrealistic one. The Kentucky experience shows that we are just getting them to the level where they can train for a job in the third year, and those who are getting to that level are less than 20 percent of the total number engaged in title V.

In my statement, I also make the point that one of the basic problems in the Appalachian South is that you cannot assume the base of manpower in existing social welfare services that you can in urban areas. This is because population density and revenue simply do not size up to what they are in urban areas. Therefore, when we talk about, let us say, the Neighborhood Youth Corps or title V, as programs in which youths or men who are endemically poor can be assigned to agencies for training, we look around in the Appalachian South and we do not see any agencies to which they can be assigned for realistic training. Congress should look into this. I think you might consider bolstering the amounts available for training that can be provided directly by NYC and title V.

However, I want to now state that the House bill, which envisages taking from community action and giving to NYC, does an unwise thing. In community action we have our biggest hope for creating more of the type of professional positions in Appalachia that could enable us to give Neighborhood Youth Corps and title V participants experienced supervision and training.

Senator JAVITS. Thank you very much, Mr. Safford. I appreciate your testimony. We will profit from the experience you have laid before us. I would like to ask you, too, what do you think of the proposed Economic Opportunity Corporation?

Mr. SAFFORD. I think it is probably the best long-range approach for poverty, because it is very obvious that those of us who have left Washington to participate in the Appalachian South and other areas with desperate poverty are not going to be in those areas forever.

I think that a corporation that establishes a public stake in fighting poverty has a much more reliable chance, let us say, of staying in business. Perhaps the Senator would like to consider in his measure a provision that would enable poor people to be subsidized in buying stock in this corporation so that they would have a lasting interest in the war against poverty.

Senator JAVITS. That is so. We have set aside 5 percent of the stock for that purpose in the proposal.

Thank you very much, Mr. Safford. Good luck in your work.
Mr. SAFFORD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator JAVITS. Mr. Espada, would you come forward and identify for the record those who are with you?

STATEMENT OF FRANK ESPADA, ACTING CHAIRMAN, CITY-WIDE COMMUNITY ACTION GROUPS, BROOKLYN, N.Y.; ACCOMPANIED BY HENRY C. R. FULLER, BROWNSVILLE COMMUNITY COUNCIL, INC.; REV. MARCOLM R. EVANS, PRESIDENT, COUNCIL FOR A BETTER EAST NEW YORK; MARINA BROOK, CONGRESS OF PUERTO RICAN HOME TOWNS ORGANIZATIONS, INC.; WILLIAM B. NICHOLS, DIRECTOR, LOWER WEST SIDE COMMUNITY PROGRESS CENTER

Mr. ESPADA. Thank you very much for having us. To my left is Mrs. Marina Brook, from the Congress of Puerto Rican Home Towns Organization, Inc.; Bill Nichols, director, Lower West Side Community Progress Center, Rev. Malcolm Evans, president of the Council for a Better East New York; and Henry Fuller, representing Brownsville Community Council, Inc.

Senator JAVITS. I understand you have a statement. I hope you will keep it as close to 5 minutes as possible. We apologize for keeping you waiting all this time, but you will note we have not been sitting idly twiddling our thumbs.

Mr. ESPADA. This statement is from the City-Wide Community Action Groups. It consists of the majority of community action agencies in New York City.

We are here this afternoon to protest some very serious developments which threaten to tear the very heart out of the antipoverty program not only in New York City, but throughout our country.

It is, by now, common knowledge that the New York City allocation under title II of the Economic Opportunity Act for the fiscal year 1966-67 will fall in the neighborhood of $36 million. Out of this woefully inadequate sum, only less than $9 million will be earmarked for community-based community action programs.

There exists a wide consensus that community-based community action programs are by far the most meaningful to the poor. They are the real tool which poor people can use to build a voice in the circles of power, which they have so sorely lacked, and without which the antipoverty program will remain an abstraction in the minds and lives of those for whom it was supposedly intended.

We are very much aware of the high-powered political implications behind the effort to cripple this program. Some of our legislators most directly involved in shaping the current House version of the bill expressed contempt for community action programs, referring to them as "walk around" programs.

In the large urban centers where the democratic coalition is weakening, the word now is to cut back on any program that is not a “safe program," to hamper all of those programs that are not "politically safe." We say to you that you should not let this unhealthy scheme take root. We say to you-show us, the people, where you stand on this matter. 'Are you on the side of those who fear the power of the poor, or are you on the side of the poor as their true representatives?