Coordinating Federal Grants from below

Abstract

Federal block grants, in contrast to categorical grants, were designed to give recipient governments increased flexibility to spend money as they wish. Under the traditional categorical grant form, money is awarded to local governments for specific projects or programs and is limited to the narrowly defined activities outlined in an approved grant application. Under the new block grant form, money is allocated to local governments in accordance with a statutory formula and may be used, largely at the recipient government's discretion, in a variety of activities within the broad functional area as long as certain general guidelines are followed. The new form places the responsibility on local governments to tailor grant uses to meet local needs. One of the most important consequences of the new flexibility is the freedom it has given to the recipient jurisdictions to integrate various grants as they wish, enabling them to maximize impact on local target areas by meshing federal grants with each other and with other state and local programs. Coordination among federal grants had been viewed, until the advent of the new federalism, as almost exclusively a federal government problem. As grants proliferated in the 1960s, cries for improved coordination among them proliferated also.' New mechanisms for coordinating the actions of the granting agencies were proposed and tried at the national level. Coordinating authority was assigned to various departments and agency heads by either executive order or statute. For example, the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 directed the director of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) to assist the president in coordinating the anti-poverty efforts of all federal agencies.2 Similarly an Executive Order in 1966 authorized HUD to assist the president in achieving maximum coordination of the various federal activities which were to affect urban community, suburban, or metropolitan development.' Numerous other major coordination attempts were also made in the 60s.4 Concurrent with these attempts to coordinate programs by function among the federal agencies, attempts at coordination by geographical area were being tried. Interagency coordinating councils such as the Federal Regional Councils (FRCs) and the Title II Commissions were established. The FRCs were created to coordinate the regional directors of the major federal grant-in-aid agencies in each of the 10 federal administration regions. The Title II Commissions were developed to bring together representatives of those governments and agencies with an interest in river basin development.S Bodies such as the Appalachian Regional Commission, the * Coordination among federal grants and coordination of federal grants with state grant programs and with local government's own programs and private endeavors has been greatly enhanced by the flexibility given to recipient governments by the block grant form. Coordination in the recipient local governments has been highly effective and is accomplished by three principal methods: orchestration by jurisdiction leaders, self-linking among functional specialists, and meshing by community-based organizations. Experiences with coordination among grant programs in eight local government jurisdictions in four regions of the country are described. In all of these local governments block grants are being linked with each other and are being meshed in innovative and diverse ways with federal categorical grants, state grants, and the jurisdictions' own funds, both public and private, to finance projects tailored to meet specific community needs. The allocation flexibility given to the local jurisdictions by the block grants has been essential to these integrating processes. Coordination of federal grant programs at the local jurisdiction level is considered a viable and superior alternative to attempts at coordination by the Washington end.