Redlining Rural America

...Twice cursed, they have not once been taped...

...The trouble with this line of reasoning is its failure to take into account the BLS' primitive methodology...

...The purpose of the measure was to create several million temporary construction jobs by pumping money into communities prepared to build roads, schools, hospitals, parks, and other public facilities...

...The same legislator is quick to point out to anyone who will listen that Karras is not even a Carter appointee, but "a Nixon-Ford holdover...

...But when the economists included in their calculations the three factors named above thereby creating a new measurement they called a "Sub-Employment Index"the totals exceeded 40 per cent...

...The subcommittee attached so little importance to these proceedings that it did not take the trouble to have them printed up...

...The second defense the Administration's contention that the smaller communities need less help than do the cities is as spurious as the first one, albeit considerably tougher to analyze...

...Neither did anyone else, and Karras' hokey interpretation of the law was allowed to slip by unchallenged...

...For while 8 per cent of the total funds had, in fact, been earmarked for the states, no one could say exactly whether any of that money would ultimately go to rural areas...

...so we really invoked the qualifier which I believe is in the Conference Committee report...

...Karras, for instance, conceded to members of the House Public Works Oversight Subcommittee that the law does appear to compel inclusion of small communities in the national program, but insisted it contains "a qualifier" that says, to use his language: "When this causes a severe handicap or impediment to the administration of the program, you do not have to do it...

...In truth, he is an Eisenhower-Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon-Ford holdover...

...The legislators are not amused...

...As for allocations to counties, Commerce had no figures And probably no plans...

...Ergo: nothing in, nothing out...

...The figure he arrived at was 42 per cent...

...More or less by fiat, the Administration has redlined all towns With populations below 50,000 (in other words, 28 per cent of the total citizenry...

...He's sending all the money to Philadelphia and New York, and there's nothing left over for us rural folks...

...declaring he was still "puzzled," said: "I would like to come back to this later...

...A Western congressman, who asked that his name be withheld, told me he fears "Carter has forgotten his origins...

...Official jobless figures in the counties hovered around 5.5 per cent...

...Department of Labor...

...Officials at Commerce, to be sure, seem a little embarrassed by the flak they have attracted...

...States of the Union REDLINING RURAL AMERICA BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS Washington Rural-based congressmen here are distressed that President Carter's $4 billion public works planthe centerpiece of his post-Inaugural economic packagewill in no way benefit their constituencies...

...In approving the public works bill last winter, the members of a joint Senate-House Conference Committee showed they were aware that BLS unemployment Figures did not tell the whole story...

...I ran into defense number one on my initial telephone call to Commerce, when I asked a spokesperson for its Economic Development Administration the agency that manages Carter's program to explain why towns with fewer than 50,000 residents were not receiving public works funds...

...Nevertheless, by early March Commerce was already interpreting the legislation in ways that suited its own needs...

...The fact that Karras' interesting testimony remains unpublished has not, however, discouraged the Deputy and others from citing it, along with the subcommittee's failure to object, as proof that Congress has given a green light to rural redlining...

...Certainly he has nothing personal against those Americans unfortunate enough to be both jobless and rural...

...It was, Karras seemed to be saying, an open-and-shut case: "We made the judgment that, indeed, going below 50,000 (in population] would interfere with the administration of the program...

...Sometimes I wonder if we really won the election...

...Professor Louis Smith of the University of Mississippi, who helped conduct the study, compiled a Sub-Employment Index for all of rural Mississippi...

...it was instructed by Congress to parcel out funds to communities in amounts proportionate to their needs the higher the unemployment, the greater the allocation...

...The agency relies for most of its data on urban-based state employment offices, places often beyond the reach of rural poor people, and sometimes beyond their ken...

...To do this, Commerce has relied on computer-taped data supplied by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and there's the rub...

...To Administration officials, the decision to deprive more than one-fourth the country of public works benefits seems a reasonable solution to a difficult technical problem...

...If the redlining of rural America is hardly a new phenomenon, it is doubly sad to see such an old, tawdry device so readily adopted by a President who bills himself as a country boy, and whose own home countyfull of shacks and poor peopleis itself a model candidate for public works...

...For openers, BLS statistics peg rural unemployment at around 5 per cent, a full two percentage points below the overall national rate...

...Similarly, Deputy Assistant Secretary George T. Karras has contended that any consideration of small towns would play havoc with Commerce's efforts...

...But they are," she answered...

...No such qualifier happens to exist, yet Karras succeeded in muddying the waters and confusing the subcommittee...

...It's the Imperial Presidency all over again," said one Democratic congressman...

...These include: discouraged workers who have long ago given up looking for jobs, "involuntary part-time workers" who would prefer full-time employment but can't find any, and full-time workers whose incomes fall below the poverty line...

...This alternative was adopted as being the most fair, considering the time constraints on the program," wrote Robert T. Hall, assistant .secretary for economic development, in a letter to Congress...

...The language was both clear and unequivocal...

...His biases, one guesses, come less from partisan politics than from an allegiance to tidy bookkeeping...

...The cities are much worse off than the smaller towns," I was told by BLS economist Richard Rosen...

...All projects are supposed to be under way by September 30...

...She explained that a portion of the $4 billion dollars was being sent directly to state and county governments, which in turn could allocate to towns not included in the BLS tabulations...

...You don't have your facts right...

...Recently, a consortium of economists looked at unemployment in four rural Southern counties and reported their findings in a (still unpublished) study to the U.S...

...In defending themselves, they have abandoned the usual technological excuses and have come up with two new ones: first, that really, nothing has happened...

...At 51, Karras has devoted most of his adult life to government service, with a few years off in the '50s when he worked for an upholsterers' union in Philadelphia...

...All this strikes at least some liberals on the Hill as remarkably familiar: Once more we are witness to an executive branch that revises laws and rewrites regulations whenever the Congressional versions are not to its taste...

...in the opinion of most congressmen, it was also binding...

...He never did bring the matter up again, though...

...Representative David Bonior (D.Mich...

...Their report stipulated that wherever the Bureau's numbers betrayed gaps, Commerce should fill them in with statistics provided by the individual states or towns...

...I tried to follow this hopeful trail, but it soon grew cold...

...Behind much of the bitterness lurks an uneasy feeling that the White House has intentionally thwarted the wishes of Congress...

...If I'd known that small communities were going to be trampled in the stampede to get this money out," says Representative Charles Rose, a North Carolina Democrat, "1 never would have supported the program...

...It is simply that the BLS computer finds them and their assorted miseries a nuisance to record...

...But to many rural politicians the decision seems part and parcel of a growing tendency toward urbanism within the Administration...

...second, that things aren't as bad as they seem, because rural communities do not generally suffer from widespread unemployment...

...It wouldn't make sense to channel funds into areas where the need is relatively slight...

...I do not mean to suggest, incidentally, that the urban plight is any less severe than the rural one...

...The Department of Commerce handles the money and keeps an eye on the projects...

...In addition, the BLS conveniently overlooks several categories of rural workers who in a more rational world would be routinely punched into the computer tape...

...I am simply saying that the Carter Administration has badly underestimated the extent of rural unemployment, and in the process has casually broken its promise of economic aid to millions of small-town residents...

...The BLS does not collect unemployment statistics for towns with fewer than 50,-000 people...