services to veterans, resulting from the enactment of the Veterans Readjustment Benefits Act commonly referred to as the cold war GI bill (Public Law 89-358), the President's directive that each returning veteran be contacted personally, and the establishment of U.S. veterans assistance centers as directed by the President. Upon passage of the cold war GI bill on March 3, 1966, a backlog of 3.8 million post-Korean veterans immediately were covered by its employment provisions. This new legislation also extends coverage to virtually all members of the Armed Forces as they are separated from active duty. Since the new legislation has no termination date, there will be a cumulative increase in the post-Korean veteran population. According to Veterans' Administration estimates, there will be 7.1 million post-Korean veterans by June 30, 1972. The cold war GI bill extends to post-Korean veterans the same maximum of job opportunity which the earlier GI bills provided war veterans. The remaining $518,000 is requested to provide that part of increased costs resulting from the recent Federal pay increase (Public Law 90-206) which we are unable to absorb. We are absorbing $74,000 of the total cost. Of the estimated $518,000 requirement, $476,000 is requested for positions financed for trust fund activities. An additional $42,000 for this purpose would be transferred from the Office of the Manpower Administrator for general fund activities. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement on the supplemental request for the "Bureau of Employment Security, salaries and expenses. GRANTS TO STATES FOR UNEMPLOYMENT COMPENSATION AND EMPLOYMENT SERVICE ADMINISTRATION Mr. HULL. Thank you, Mr. Goodwin. The request is for $295,000, which is an increase of less than onetenth of 1 percent over what has already been appropriated. Why could not this small additional cost be absorbed? Mr. GOODWIN. That certainly is a good question, and I think the best answer to it is the general situation in which we find ourselves. You remember that when we were up here on our regular request for 1969 we told you that we anticipated a $14 million supplemental. In fact, the Bureau of the Budget had authorized us to proceed on a spending rate which involved a $14 million deficiency. That authorization has now been withdrawn and we are forced to make some savings between now and July 1. This will result in a cutback in resources available to State employment security agencies. We are going to have to really skimp and reduce activities substantially in order to balance out by July 1. This means that the only way we can go forward with this particular activity involving the veterans is if we do get favorable action from the Congress on this request. VETERANS ASSISTANCE CENTER Mr. HULL. Would you describe what a veterans assistance center will be and then tell us what the State employment services will do as the result of these centers that they do not already do? Mr. GOODWIN. I will be glad to, but I am sure Mr. Omohundro can do a better job of that than I can. With your permission I will suggest that he respond to your question. Mr. ОмOHUNDRO. Mr. Chairman, the veterans assistance centers were established at the President's request in his message on veterans on January 30 of this year. He asked the Administrator of the Veterans Administration to establish centers to assist the returning veterans in all of their needs and to make sure that all returning veterans know the benefits that are available to them. At the centers there will be representatives of the Civil Service Commission, the Office of Veterans Reemployment Rights, and volunteer representatives from community organizations, such as the Red Cross. The majority of these veterans assistance centers are established in Veterans Administration regional offices or in whatever facilities the GSA can find that would be readily accessible to the veterans. The employment service representative stationed at the center is called a veterans' employment representative. His primary job in the veterans assistance center will be to give the veterans adequate information pertaining to jobs and occupations, including information about specific positions which are currently available in the immediate area. He will also give the Veterans' Administration representatives who are working in these centers information as to what kinds of positions and jobs are open in the various local public employment offices. As you know, in these major metropolitan areas that are listed there are anywhere from three to five separate employment offices which specialize in the various skill areas. The veterans' employment representative will keep the Veterans' Administration people informed as to the jobs that are available, acquaint them with the workings of the public employment services, and also provide the veteran who visits the center any supporting service in the area of employment, job training-anything involved in manpower activities. Mr. HULL. We thought the Veterans' Administration was going to establish and maintain these centers, but I see on page 13 that part of your request is for rent of premises and for heat, light, and water. What is the division of such costs between you and the Veterans' Administration? Mr. CURTIS. We will not participate in the financing or the planning of the centers. The amount in the budget will be to pay whatever increased rent might result from the 13 positions that we are requesting. Thirteen of the jobs are for the contact program of the President and not for the veterans assistance program. We would not participate in the rental payment for the veterans assistance centers. SALARIES AND EXPENSES Mr. HULL. Mr. Goodwin, on "Salaries and expenses, Bureau of Employment Security," the request is for an additional $780,000, of which $518,000 is for increased pay costs under Public Law 90-206. EXEMPLARY REHABILITATION CERTIFICATION ACTIVITIES The larger part of the remaining $262,000 is $173,000 to carry out the Exemplary Rehabilitation Certification Act. This law became effective on October 15, 1966. Why was not the need for these funds. foreseen when your 1968 budget was prepared late in calendar year 1967? Mr. GOODWIN. We made some proposals at that time. We had some difficulty in getting final approval. Mr. Chairman, we have had to avoid publicizing this program to any extent at all because we just have not had personnel to handle the additional load. Mr. HULL. You do not have enough personnel or you do not have competent personnel? Mr. GOODWIN. We do not have enough personnel to take on this new function if it were to be publicized and we were to get a large number of applications, as I am sure we would. We need these additional people in order to take on the load. We think we ought to be publicizing the benefits of the act. We ought to be telling the people that are given this kind of discharge by the armed services that Congress has entitled them to this kind of a certification. We ought to be telling the veterans organizations to let people who come to them know about the benefits. There are a good many things we ought to be doing to tell these people what the Congress has made available to them. We want to go ahead with publicizing the program. We would need these 10 positions in order to carry out the program when that is done. Mr. HULL. Mr. Goodwin, how much is included in your 1969 budget for this work? Mr. GOODWIN. This figure is annualized. There is no further staff increase in 1969 over and above this figure. In other words, it is 10 positions. COSTS OF EXEMPLARY REHABILITATION CERTIFICATION INVESTIGATIONS Mr. HULL. It would appear to me that a rather thorough investigation of a person should be made before you issue one of these certifications and there are hundreds of thousands of potential applicants. This could cost many millions of dollars over the next few years; could it not? Mr. GOODWIN. We have taken the approach, Mr. Chairman, that the burden of proof is on the person seeking the certification. We have spelled out what he has to furnish us in order to prove his case. I do not think we could come in and recommend the amount of personnel that would be needed for a full field investigation of every applicant. That would force the cost up to a prohibitive figure. But we should have, without any question, a few people that we can send into the field to make investigations of the special cases where we cannot develop the facts based on the methods we are now using. Mr. HULL. What do you estimate the average cost of a thorough investigation of these applicants to be? Mr. GOODWIN. We have not developed one yet. We can check into that and furnish one for the record. Mr. HULL. That will be fine. (The information follows:) UNIT COST OF EXEMPLARY REHABILITATION CERTIFICATION INVESTIGATIONS The expense of our investigations depends upon how serious the applicant's offense was in the military. The committee report indicated that a greater degree of examination should be made of the serious offender's application before granting the exemplary rehabilitation certificate. We see that investigations will vary across a spectrum. I will identify four points along this spectrum, although individual cases may fall at various points along the scale. The minimum investigation will be made without field work or contact with the applicant except by correspondence. The estimated cost would average about $40. Cases which should have some light field investigation by BES staff would cost an additional $150 in staff time plus an estimated $50 for travel. Total cost would then be $240. Applicants are entitled to oral hearings. A hearings officer will travel to designated points to take oral testimony. The additional cost of these cases would be another $50 plus $50 for transportation. Not all cases would have field investigation before reaching this stage, so the costs of oral hearings would range from $140 to $340 depending on whether there had been field investigation by BES. In the event of aggravated cases where no decision can be made either way, a full field investigation could be made by the Civil Service Commission. Our information is that such investigations cost the agency from $400 to $500. We expect there would be very few of these. VETERANS EMPLOYMENT SERVICE Mr. HULL. The Veterans Employment Service now has 141 positions and you want funds for three more. Do you not really think under existing circumstances you could reprogram these 141 employees' work so they could take on these additional activities? Mr. GOODWIN. No. We think with the big expansion in the work of the Veterans Employment Service, it is essential that we have at least these three additional employees. This still means they will be absorbing a good deal of the increase in the workload. In other words, you reach a point where you cannot absorb any more. Mr. HULL. Thank you very much, Mr. Goodwin. |