The Press MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1966. "Creative Federalism”

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30978, 7 February 1966, Page 12

The Press MONDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 1966. " Creative Federalism”

When he forecast, in his recent State-of-the-Union Message to Congress, increasing federal participation in state affairs, President Johnson said he proposed to “modernise” relations between city, state and nation. He used the term “ creative federalism ”to describe the co-operative role of the Federal Government and the states in the process of modernisation thus envisaged. It seems clear enough that social improvement on the scale planned by Mr Johnson must impinge at many points on state powers; and it is a question, at this early stage, what the general reaction will be. There are some fields in which federal assistance will obviously be welcomed by state and city governments, confronted by demands beyond the scope of their limited and already diffusely spread resources. The recent transport strike in New York makes a case in point, since its solution is expected to add, over two years, between 50 million and 70 million dollars to the cost of the city’s transport system. The Mayor, Mr Lindsay, has already suggested that the state government should take over many of the city’s welfare programmes. But the city and state resources—not in New York alone—are already strained to the limit, and increased federal help seems inevitable. This may involve the virtual abolition of state boundaries to permit planning on a broad regional basis.

This was evidently in the President’s mind when he proposed the modernisation of relations between the cities, the states and the nation. In view of their material needs, the champions of states’ rights in the administrative sphere will find it hard to resist the logic of argument for a vastly widened federal responsibility, even if the corollary is that it leads to a shrinking of their own powers. State and city administrators cannot have it both ways. They urgently need more federal money, and presumably will have to accustom themselves to the idea that more aid means the surrender of powers hitherto jealously regarded as being wholly within the province of the state legislature. Already Mr Johnson has promised new laws to authorise federal intervention in strikes harmful to the national interests. A request for federal assistance was made, during the New York crisis, by Mayor Lindsay and by business interests which suffered crippling losses.

Mr Johnson’s State-of-the-Union blueprint showed very clearly what his “ Great Society ” planning will involve. There are to be federal programmes for the reform of state and city police forces; for supervision of state jury selection; for the rebuilding, in some cities, of “ entire sections and neighbour- “ hoods ”; for the prevention of river and air pollution: for greater federal responsibility for housing, urban development and transport; for better medical care, better education and less poverty. Mr Johnson has said that he will offer other proposals affecting “ entire metropolitan areas ”. No useful purpose will be served by offering resistance to a trend that seems inevitable. The Washington correspondent of the New York “ Herald-Tribune ” thinks that when states lack the capacity, or the will, to render needed public services, the people are bound to turn “ to the arm “ of government which can and will perform them ”.