When We Ran The Country

Okay, alright already, it's overstated, but we tried to run it. 'We', you ask? 'We' were a small group of hot shots - well warm bodies anyway - assembled within the Executive Office of the President in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the early 1970s to coordinate the delivery of federal services, especially among the grant making departments and agencies of the government.

For decades, the President and the Bureau of the Budget (BoB) were criticized for their inability to bring rational management to the federal establishment and, during the first administration of President Richard M. Nixon, this defect was rectified - as best a piece of legislation and reorganization can - and OMB was born. Mr. Nixon and his most powerful associates determined that they would indeed attempt to lash the beast toward good behavior.

To digress, I worked for the federal government for well over a third of a century and have been observing its workings during the twelve years of my retirement. During that nearly half a century, never has a president come close to Mr. Nixon in his grasp of how government works at the management level. That is not to say anything more than that. The actions that led to his resignation remain reprehensible, and his role in the Watergate debacle diminishes his memory. But, again, I never felt that any other chief executive understood the levers of administrative power as well as RMN.

When Nixon was elected, I was working at the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs (HUD). Meanwhile in the Executive Office of the President many initiatives were being tried to make sense of the federal grant making and state and local assistance programs. One that preceded ours and that was closely related it was the so called 'Flying Feds'. The agencies identified highly qualified employees and made them available to state and local governments to provide expert advice.

To make a long story short, that program was a bust. Sometimes the feds weren't properly identified and weren't right for the job. Often, the state or local elected official requesting the assistance was imposing something from above that just wasn't going to be accepted by his or her bureaucratic underlings. From this venture came the slogan, "I'm from the federal government and I'm here to help." which lingers to this day as a vestige of bureaucratic arrogance.

In any event, the President and his minion continued to cast for ways to get a handle on the federal beast. Among those with ideas was Ken Kugel a long time federal manager who had been around the government and the Bureau of the Budget for many years and whose most recent assignment had been with the Agency for International Development (AID). Ken told us - his troops, the 'we' in this story - that as he observed the way the ambassadors coordinated the efforts of the officials from all of the agencies in the country the idea was sparked of similar cooperation among the domestic agencies.

He kicked the concept around with such old BoB Mandarins as Bill Kolberg and Bill Boleyn. Out of this came the concept of Federal Regional Councils (FRCs). By Executive Order, the President created ten standard regions of the federal government. It was no longer sufficient for an agency with state and local assistance programs to locate its regional headquarters where it saw fit but, rather, all such regional centers would be located in the same ten cities - Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Kansas City, Dallas, Denver, San Francisco, and Seattle.

This was a major advance, and as a result the Mayor of Manchester New Hampshire could go to Boston to plead for all of his grants and beat up on the bureaucrats he perceived were yanking his chain. No longer did he have to go to Boston, New York, and Philadelphia and make separate cases, and so it was with the governors and mayors across the nation. It made sense then and it still does. Nixon is unlikely to be remembered for such tinkering, but, from a management perspective, this is an important legacy.

There they were, ten uniform regions with all of the important agencies working - independently - to assist the states and cities. Another need was for an OMB coordinating mechanism to breath even more life into the concept of one-stop shopping and coordinated delivery of assistance.

Kolberg, Kugel, and their friends sold the concept of Federal Regional Councils (FRCs) to the President's top staff and within a short period the concept was born. Within each region, the regional administrators of all of the major grant making agencies would meet on a regular basis and coordinate their activities with the other levels of government. One of these regional federal administrators was promoted in grade and title to the role of Chairman of the FRC.

Back in Washington, the Under Secretary of each of the grant making agencies became a member of the Under Secretaries' Group under the coordination of the Deputy Director of OMB. The baby cried and drew breath. The Under Secretaries could hardly avoid the call from the President and their clout added to the drama and push at the regional level.

Still another nurse maid was perceived to be needed to bring the plan to full fruition. Staff had to be provided in both Washington and in the field. A small staff from the Regional Chairman's agency was dedicated to the task in each FRC, and the highly titled Under Secretaries' Working Group came into being. The Assistant Secretary for Management in each member agency was charged with day to day oversight of the function in each agency, and - usually - one staff person did the work. This group was chaired by Ken Kugel.

I don't know how or why but I became that HUD's staff working group member. The task was in addition to other work on a myriad of department projects. I met with my counterparts from the other agencies at OMB where I came to know the people there who were pumping air into the new entity. The agency staff people, especially the relatively lower ranked ones like me were enthusiastic as we saw any chance at an improvement in managing the federal government as a potentially great advance.

It soon became clear, however, that the higher ranking agency people were not nearly so keen on the idea and were dragging their feet, however discreetly, to avoid getting too close to the embrace of OMB. Students of the federal government know that the lines of command and control do not go straight from the president to the departments heads to the regions. That's the story for political scientists and for another day. Suffice it to say, The departments and agencies were as much under the sway of Congressional Committees as they were to the president.

The great power reserved to the president was that of appointment. The top brass in each department is appointed by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate, and the interest groups and committee chairs from the Congress often provide the field of candidates. Surely, dear reader, you're not shocked at this? For the sake of argument, let's just assume I know what I'm talking about. That's huge and many of the 'we' would support you, but we have to move on if you are the least bit interested in the story.

To recapitulate, the Executive Office of the President, including - I think - the President and the Mandarins of OMB saw the Federal Regional Councils (FRCs) as potentially useful vehicles for coordinating the activities and grant making of major agencies such as Housing and Urban Development; Health, Education and Welfare (Since renamed and reorganized); Labor; the Environmental Protection Administration, Transportation; the law Enforcement Assistance Administration; and others.

The Congressional whales and the top echelons of the agencies saw the FRCs as mechanisms undermining their powers and traditional ways of doing business. In fact, I think both parties were correct and an improvement in state and local assistance could be deduced, at least I thought so - as did my buddies at OMB and in the agencies.

The system was very interesting and I asked Kugel for a job. Within a few months, I found myself working at OMB as a Regional Representative. I liked and admired the managers and my co-workers. Over the coming years and months, I thought the system performed reasonably well - from the perspective of one committed to its success.

Before any great change in Executive Branch management could be perceived, however, the great crisis erupted. The break in of the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex occurred and the Nixon Administration was on its heels and on the defensive. Opponents of the FRC initiative were soon in the ascendancy and we quickly lost momentum.

After Nixon resigned, interest in FRCs disappeared and the Ford Administration was far more into healing the country and the relations with Congress that had been so strained by the Nixon debacle, including his overreach for power. Those of us working on the effort, took our leaves over the coming months and years and nothing remained of it after several years.

The management and staff of that small office devoted to regional coordination and related activities was, in my judgment, one of the finest groups of people I ever served with. They were called upon to do far more than grant coordination.

Before the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) became the relatively well oiled machine that it is today, our OMB staff and the agencies working with it successfully coordinated federal disaster assistance to State and local governments and citizens devastated by hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and a host of other natural disasters. Long forgotten, some of my colleagues did wondrous work under very trying circumstances.

The staff and the agencies worked closely together to bring aid to communities adversely affected by military base closings and by major new facilities such as the Trident Submarine Bases on the East and West Coasts of the U.S. My friends performed brilliantly under terrible conditions during the oil embargo of 1973 to create the federal organization designed to deal with the crisis.

I would like to name all of the people who served in the agencies and in OMB to achieve what 'we' did, but I know that very worthy people would be left out. Some of these people went on to superlative careers as high as Cabinet level appointments. Others served with distinction in less lofty but very important positions.

To this day, those still alive meet regularly to reminisce about that short but sweet period. That time and its adventures created bonds that still mean much to us, and we remain great friends. There were men and women, young and old, Black and White. It was a time and place in which we served with pride. Time has not diminished our enthusiasm. The federal government has changed and there is little point in re-creating such an organization, but those of us who served will always speak of that time and our associates with pride and fondness.

Wildbill944