Ford Broadcasts, 1965-1966: 12237637

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

WETA-TV DOCUMENTARY ON GREAT SOCIETY, ET AL.

This is an extension of what the Kennedy Administration tried to do when it conducted regional White House conferences throughout the country.

As we Republicans see it, creative federalism promotes not so much a partnership between the federal government and the states and localities as it does a dependence upon the federal bureaucracy.

This so-called "creative federalism" is marked by a shift away from the old, across-the-board grants in aid toward specifically targeted programs that carry with them greater federal restrictions. This, of course, means less authority for governors. It means more and more that Washington is running the whole show, bypassing states and working directly with local communities as in the anti-poverty program or as in employing a federal boss to direct a multi-state program like Appalachia.

Local officials are wary of such potential czardom, and well they might be. The term "federal coordinator," as employed in the proposed Demonstration Cities bill, sounds innocent enough. But it is another step toward creating a new layer of federal bureaucracy--the "federal mayor."

Is it only Republicans who worry about this new trend toward greater federal dictation to states and local communities? Not at all. It was California's Democratic governor, Pat Brown, who recently moaned that "while an increasing number of Government services are administered under joint state and federal auspices, the governor is brought into the policy-making discussions only infrequently, informally and haphazardly."