DOI DOJ DOL DOT DOTRES EDA EEOC EPA ERS FEMA FmHA GAO HHS HUD JTPA NEA NEH NFAH NSF PBGC SBA SBIC UDAG USDA Department of the Interior Department of Justice Department of Labor Department of Transportation Economic Development Administration Economic Research Service Federal Emergency Management Agency General Accounting Office Department of Health and Human Services Department of Housing and Urban Development National Endowment for the Arts National Endowment for the Humanities National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation Railroad Retirement Board Retired Senior Volunteer Program Small Business Administration Small Business Investment Companies OBJECTIVE, SCOPE, AND METHODOLOGY By letter dated February 18, 1987, Representative E. Thomas Coleman asked us to review all federal programs to determine those that are essentially rural and to recommend which of those programs could be made more productive by being relocated in a new Rural Development Administration. Such an agency would have been established in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) by the proposed Rural Development Reorganization Act of 1987 (H.R. 2026), which Representative Coleman introduced in the 100th Congress on April 9, 1987, but which had not been acted on at the time the Congress adjourned. Subsequent to the request, we agreed with the Representative's office that our objective would be to provide information relating to the following questions: Further, we advised Representative Coleman's office that insufficient information was available to recommend which rural programs could be made more productive by relocation to a new Rural Development Administration. However, we agreed to make some observations regarding such an agency. We To define rural America and to assist in answering the other questions, we initiated an extensive literature search, which provided information on rural America and rural development. also interviewed rural development and public administration experts at USDA, the Congressional Research Service, the National Academy of Public Administration, the National Governors' Association, and the National Association of Counties, and reviewed existing laws and current and past legislative proposals relating to rural development. To determine the share of federal funding received by rural areas and to specify which programs are rural development-type programs, we created a data base drawn from large-scale federal data systems. The two primary data systems we used were the Consolidated Federal Funds Report (CFFR) and the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance. In consultation with Representative Coleman's office, we developed the definitions of rural and of development that we used to identify rural development-type programs. The CFFR, compiled and maintained by the Census Bureau from data provided by federal agencies, is the only governmentwide data individual federal programs. USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) adds codes, called Beale codes, to the CFFR data base to represent 10 categories of counties by population size. We used the Beale codes to designate rural counties by applying the definition of rural (i.e., a county with an urban population under 20,000) that we had developed in consultation with Representative Coleman's office. The CFFR data, used in this way, provided financial information on individual federal programs for both rural and nonrural counties. The CFFR had two major limitations with respect to this review. First, at the time of our review, the most recent available CFFR data with Beale codes included were for fiscal year 1985. Second, the CFFR does not provide data on all federal programs; for fiscal year 1985, slightly more than half of the federal domestic programs in the Catalog were reported by the CFFR. However, ERS estimated that the CFFR-reported programs included, in dollars, about 93 percent of the total federal domestic spending for fiscal year 1985.1 The Catalog is compiled and maintained by the General Services Administration from information submitted by federal agencies. It is a governmentwide compendium of federal domestic programs, projects, services, and activities that provide assistance or benefits to the American public. The Catalog is published annually, usually in May or June, with an update, usually in December. We used the Catalog as the best available source for identifying federal programs (likely the most comprehensive available listing); providing annual financial data on individual programs for the most recent available years; and obtaining program information, such as legislative authority, program objectives, type of assistance, uses and restrictions, and eligibility requirements. The Catalog provides financial data at the federal level; it does not show distributions to states or counties. We combined CFFR data with Catalog data to take advantage of the strengths of each source. This combination is possible because, in most cases, the two systems use a common program number to identify individual programs. The CFFR system's county-level expenditure data enabled us to calculate, for programs included in the system, the percentage of total program expenditures going directly to rural counties. We then applied the "percent of rural expenditures" to Catalog financial data to provide an estimate of federal funds going to rural America. We used Catalog, rather than 1J. Norman Reid and Elliott Dubin, Federal Funds to Rural Areas: Fair Share? Right Mix?, a background paper prepared by the Rural Business and Government Branch, ERS, USDA, for the Task Force on Rural Development, National Governors' Association, Center for Policy Research (Feb. 1988). CFFR, financial data in this calculation because Catalog data were available for a more recent year (fiscal year 1987). To help identify rural development-type programs, we devised a structure for categorizing federal programs on the basis of their economic development and associated purposes. The structure consisted of six development categories: economic development, agriculture/natural resources, infrastructure, human resources, general entitlement, and special groups. We then assigned each federal program in our data base to one of the six development categories, on the basis of available descriptions of the program's objectives (e.g., provide assistance in building or improving physical facilities, such as libraries or schools, or provide training to program participants to assist in obtaining employment). We did our work primarily between August 1987 and June 1988 in Washington, D.C., with updates as appropriate through October 1988. The purpose of our review was to identify rural development-type programs rather than to review or evaluate any particular agency's programs or program administration. Consequently, and as directed by Representative Coleman's office, we did not obtain formal agency comments. However, USDA officials reviewed a draft of this briefing report for technical content, and their comments have been incorporated as appropriate. |