administrative law, and constitutional law which was my major at the University of Chicago Law School.

Chairman HILL. Where were you commissioner, Doctor, if I may

ask?

Mr. FULLER. In New Hampshire.

Everybody knows that there is no real difference in actual intent between a year-to-year lease on a schoolhouse and a 30-year lease on a schoolhouse. Certainly no one contemplates that a lease will be broken and a schoolhouse used for something else after a year or two. This is obviously such a flimsy legal device that at the very best it would be contested in the courts in numerous States.

Then, even if the firm of New York lawyers should prove to have been correct, any aid under title 2 for school construction would have been tied up in extensive litigation in a number of States for a longer time than must have been intended by President Eisenhower when he said that he was proposing a plan of Federal cooperation

*** designed to give our schoolchildren as quickly as possible the classrooms they must have.

The best that could possibly be said for title 2 would be that it might be amended and made into a long-range plan of some kind which could become generally effective 5 or 10 years from now. This is not what the President of the United States said he wants. Senator DOUGLAS. Mr. Chairman.

Chairman HILL. Senator Douglas.

Senator DOUGLAS. Dr. Fuller, I wonder if you have given any thought to the question as to whether appeals could be taken on this matter from the State courts to the Federal courts.

Mr. FULLER. I believe, Senator Douglas, that in most of the States the court of final appeal would be the supreme court of the State. We have had some experience, as you know, with four of these State school building authorities already. The one in Indiana is still tied up in litigation.

The one in Maine was contested on constitutional grounds, and it was held that it could not incur debt any more than a department of the State itself could incur debt, and that whenever it exceeded that debt limit of the State, it would be unconstitutional to whatever extent it exceeded that debt limit of the State.

Senator DOUGLAS. That is a somewhat different version from what I gather was the statement of the New York lawyers 2 days ago.

Mr. FULLER. I would like to refer to Dr. Remmlein here. She has been digging into the law books on this. Would you like to add a word, with the permission of the chairman?

Chairman HILL. Surely, go right ahead.

Mrs. REMMLEIN. The Public School Authority Acts have been declared constitutional because of particular reasons.

For instance, in Georgia there is a constitutional provision-
Senator DOUGLAS. I was speaking of Maine.

Mrs. REMMLEIN. Maine? That is correct, as Dr. Fuller stated. It is now inoperative because they amended their constitution and changed the debt limit, after first changing it to exempt the authority bonds from the 1951 limit, which was 5 percent.

In 1954 the voters adopted a constitutional amendment in Maine that raised it from 5 percent to 7, and the new language did not contain the exemption of the authority bonds.

Senator DOUGLAS. That was the statement which I made 2 days ago. Mrs. REMMLEIN. Yes. Now that is the reason. The Maine decisions and there was a former decision in Maine that was for a public building authority, nonschool, and the general prevailing view has been that the authority cannot exceed the debt limit.

Chairman HILL. The constitutional limit.

Mrs. REMMLEIN. That's right. And in the other States, there were special reasons why they could.

Mr. FULLER. Even as a long-range program, Mr. Chairman, most of the chief State school officers would not favor title II because it would set up separate State agencies and because it would be too expensive and because it would be an example of Federal discrimination against schools in contrast with generous Federal grants to highways, hospitals and other physical facilities in the States.

It would make education a financial orphan, relegating it to the local real-estate tax and denying it broad sources of tax income that every other important service has. We can't take it for that reason, Mr. Chairman.

There is one other very important point that should be made here, and it concerns State-local relationships in education.

I am sure the Senator from Michigan will be interested in this state

ment.

The State school-building agencies which might be set up under S. 968 would deal directly with local school boards in building schools. There would be no vote of the people of each district as is now required to authorize local school district bonds. Thus the local autonomy and control we want would be violated by a State agency under Federal direction. This alone would be enough to cast doubt on the wisdom of title 2 if we did not assume that there would be special State legislation to remedy the situation.

I would like to reassert here and reemphasize, Mr. Chairman, that among the educational administrators of the United States, I know of no group which more sincerely desires local autonomy than the chief State school officers.

They do have to operate under State laws. Some of those State laws are mandatory, some of them prescribe minimum requirements, but by and large and in officially stated and officially adopted policy, the chief State school officers want the maximum of local initiative and local control in education.

We regard the State educational agencies as service agencies to the maximum extent, and I think that it is impossible for us to overemphasize our position on that.

Now, if this title 2 were to become law, you would have a noneducational agency set up specially at the State level to try to avoid State government debt limitations. Therefore it would have to be quite independent from the State government and beyond public control, and you would have that agency under Federal controls of the most objectionable type building schoolhouses in local school districts without local votes on the school projects.

Senator DOUGLAS. Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HILL. Yes.

Senator DOUGLAS. May I ask Dr. Fuller what is the passage of 968 which states that the buildings may be constructed without local referendum?

Mr. FULLER. There is nothing in this law which would require any local school district to float bonds. These bonds would be bonds of the State school building authority which would be a noneducational agency set up outside of the regular government of the State. They would float the bonds, and then the local districts would be at the mercy of these State agencies under Federal direction and control themselves.

We think it is a completely untenable plan and we are very strongly objecting to it for those reasons.

Chairman HILL. Doctor, your State school agency is certainly in most cases a constitutional agency, isn't that true?

Mr. FULLER. I think in all, perhaps.

Chairman HILL. In all. Well, certainly then it could not be used, because if you used a State agency, a constitutional agency, you would necessarily fall within the constitutional provisions, such as debt limitation, isn't that true?

Mr. FULLER. That is true.

Senator SMITH. Do I understand you object to this idea of the State agency under any conditions? You object to the Maine plan, you object to the Pennsylvania plan, you object to the Georgia plan and the Indiana plan? Isn't that true?

Mr. FULLER. We have said that the principal objective is to get school buildings. Now, under the peculiar conditions which existed in Georgia and Pennsylvania, it may have been the only way to get school buildings.

But let me assure you that under those State authorities, set up as they were in those States, that the State educational agencies, the regular agencies in the States, were given the maximum amount of authority in regard to those authorities. Now under this bill

Chairman HILL. And there was no Federal Government in those situations?

Mr. FULLER. No. Under this bill you have Federal direction and Federal control and Federal limitations such that you could not get State authorities which would be as acceptable even in dire emergencies as those in Georgia and Pennsylvania.

I could add, though, that the interest rates in those agencies have been much higher, of course, and that where local authorities have been established in the States, you find most of the bonds, $76 million worth in a year, according to the Commissioner of Education, which have been sold at 3% percent or more.

That is, it is only, as in the State of Kentucky, where there is a 2 percent constitutional debt limit, which they have been unable thus far to change, that they set up local school building authorities. In order to avoid a debt limit, you remove the credit of the agency of government that has the debt limit, and so it is outside the debt limit. Therefore, its bonds are not as well secured. Therefore, they require higher interest rates.

Senator DOUGLAS. You are saying a very significant thing, Dr. Fuller. You are saying that the authorities floating bonds for school construction at high rates of interest are those which either have local authorities to circumvent debt limit or State authorities, isn't that true?

Mr. FULLER. Well, I don't know whether you could generalize that way, but we would think of S. 968 as setting up a system which would

not really aid in getting school buildings in the States at reasonable interest rates and without unnecessary delay.

Later on in my testimony, Mr. Chairman, I want to read into the record some of the reactions of the chief State school officers of various States.

Chairman HILL. Doctor, will you tell me why you should pay a higher interest rate and carry a heavier burden for the building of schools than you do for roads?

As far as I know our highway system-and we have got a wonderful system throughout all of the 48 States-we have financed it with Federal and State credit, isn't that true? We haven't tried to set up some other outside agency which required paying much higher rates for the money, and costs a great deal more.

Mr. FULLER. No, I don't see any reason why any plan which would bring Federal participation should do anything except lower the interest rate, rather than raise it.

Chairman HILL. Well, unless Federal participation would lower the interest rate, then I ask you why in the world is there any reason or justification for Federal participation?

Mr. FULLER. Well, the reason why Federal participation is necessary is the school crisis in the United States.

Chairman HILL. I understand that, but if there is going to be a higher interest rate, if the Federal participation means an additional heavier burden than these people would carry if they took the trouble to do it themselves, why bring in Federal participation?

Mr. FULLER. Well, frankly title II would do more harm than good. Senator LEHMAN. Doctor, may I ask you this question. You may have covered it in your statement, but I was out of the room for a short time.

In addition to the points that you have raised in your statement, with which I am in full agreement, it seems to me there is a practical difficulty for which I do not see the solution. Obviously as far as the school buildings constructed under title II are concerned, title would not vested in the district.

Mr. FULLER. It depends on whether they want to or not in the law. It is optional.

Senator LEHMAN. But then of course that would immediately involve the question there of debt limitation.

Mr. FULLER. That's right.

Senator LEHMAN. It certainly is not intended that the title be vested at this time in the school districts. And it is proposed under this plan to set up an entirely new State agency in those States which do not have them now. I am almost convinced that that would be unconstitutional in the State of New York, although I am not prepared to argue that question now, but it would be an entirely separate political entity.

Now supposing a school district would enter into a lease with the agency and it wanted to increase the size of the schoolhouse or construct a playground or make necessary repairs, under whose authority would that lie?

Wouldn't that immediately be a conflict on the one hand between the school district which occupies the schoolhouse, and which is responsible for the conduct of education within the district, and, or the other hand, the authority for the Federal Government?

Today, of course, if there was to be an addition to the schoolhouse, it would have to be referred to a referendum, referred to the voters of the district so that new bonds could be issued or funds secured. But here you would have a divided authority, it seems to me, between the newly established authority which would not even be the recognized educational agency of the State-such as is in my State, the school district and the Federal Government. I don't know how anybody could authorize that.

Mr. FULLER. Well, you are coming back, you see, to one of the really critical objections. You would have an independent or quasiindependent State agency, noneducational in character, set up outside of the regular State agency for education building schools in local communities, and denying the people of those communities, unless you made special provisions for it in State laws, which conceivably could be done, you would be denying them the local initiative and local control which we prize so highly and which the President praised so highly in is message.

Senator LEHMAN. That control would be lost, and as I view it, there certainly would be the possibility of a great conflict in authority. Mr. FULLER. I think it would be lost, and you might be interested, Senator Lehman, in a telephone conversation I had with the State superintendent of Kansas. He called up and he had an entirely different slant.

His first reaction was, that it would be contrary to the feeling of the people in Kansas to rent their school buildings year by year. Those school buildings are local institutions.

Senator ALLOTT. Would you repeat that, please?

Mr. FULLER. It would be contrary to the feelings of the people in the school districts of Kansas to be in a position where they had just a 1-year lease from some outside agency on their local school building.

They are accustomed to regarding the local school building as a community school, as a local institution, and they don't want to be in a position where they have to renegotiate a lease every year in order to avoid some kind of a legal requirement.

They wouldn't regard it as their own schoolhouse in a fundamental sense. Now, maybe that doesn't make sense logically, but that is what he said the feeling of the people of Kansas was on it.

Senator ALLOTT. Mr. Chairman,

Chairman HILL. Senator Allott.

Senator ALLOTT. Doctor, upon what basis do you make this broad assumption that the interest rates are going to be very much in excess of the rates which schools could get. I don't see anything in your testimony which gives the background for such an assumption.

Mr. FULLER. Because we have conferred with the people in the four States which have the authorities, and their interest rates are higher. I could supply statistics for the record which would prove that conclusively.

Senator ALLOTT. Well, now didn't Pennsylvania under this lawsince 1947 they have built 750 school buildings under their own law. Is the point that we are after schools to prove them for children, or what are we here for?

Mr. FULLER. Oh, they built a lot of schools in Pennsylvania, but they have built a lot of schools in other States, too. I don't know that they