The Mayors Call for Help

"Strong promises but no action," snapped Miami Mayor Maurice Ferre. Declared Denver Mayor William McNichols: "I'm disappointed." Complained Boston Mayor Kevin White: "What policy? What action? They haven't done anything to date."

These angry statements reflect the biting mood of the chief executives of many cities, who are upset with Jimmy Carter for not paying more attention to the problems of urban America. They voiced their complaints in interviews with TIME on the eve of two get-togethers in San Francisco: the first, which ended last weekend, rallied more than 100 top officials from metropolitan areas; the second, which continued this week, was the annual meeting of the National League of Cities, attended by 4,300 municipal officials.

As a chill fog swirled around the Bay Area, these officials let off steam by calling for a more comprehensive--and costly --federal policy to uplift the cities and fight urban unemployment. They emphasized the stickiness of that problem, shown by the fact that unemployment last month slipped only fractionally, from 7% to 6.9%, although the number of Americans at work soared by 950,000.

To be sure, the President had defenders among the mayors. Said Moon Landrieu of New Orleans: "The Administration gives out good vibes. It's moving as rapidly as possible." Added Tom Bradley of Los Angeles: "The fact that in ten months the world hasn't been turned upside down should not be disappointing. Things don't happen that fast in Washington."

Even critics applaud a number of Carter's moves. His Administration has redesigned several aid programs to provide more funds for the declining cities of the Northeast and Midwest and less for the booming Sunbelt. One example: 75% of the $3.5 billion in block grants for community development, approved by Congress last fall, must be spent specifically for the benefit of poor neighborhoods. In addition, his economic stimulus program made available $8 billion, enabling cities and towns to hire some 725,000 people who otherwise could not find jobs, and $4 billion for public works in areas with high unemployment. New York City, for instance, received $800 million from these programs, allowing Mayor Abraham Beame to draw up a balanced budget for this year, though the city is still financially strapped. Said Beame of Carter's first ten months: "It was a good beginning. I'm encouraged."

But the encouragement among hizzoners is limited indeed. The mayors contend that Carter has fallen short of his pledge to their annual conference in 1976, when he declared: "America's No. 1 economic problem is our cities, and I want to work with you to meet the problem of urban America." Griped Denver's McNichols: "We have no mayors involved in the Administration. We're out of things, and I think that's a mistake."

Worse, large numbers of mayors and other urban leaders--particularly white liberals and spokesmen for black and Hispanic groups--suspect that the Carter Administration is not showing more urgency about urban problems because it believes that no amount of money can solve them. This fear is exaggerated; still, only after National Urban League Chief Vernon Jordan and other black leaders publicly criticized him last summer did he order Patricia Harris, the Housing and Urban Development Secretary, to speed up work on an overall urban policy. She delivered proposals to the President last month; the final version of them will be included in his State of the Union address to Congress in January.

Harris recommends that the Administration boost federal aid to the cities --now about $50 billion a year--by almost $8 billion and focus on two areas:

Public Service Jobs. This year's $8 billion pot would be sweetened by another $4.7 billion to allow cities and towns to hire an additional 475,000 hard-core unemployed. They work as street cleaners, hospital aides, clerk-typists and in other low-skilled occupations. Further, the Administration would continue to support a variety of new Government-financed job-training programs approved by Congress this year to prepare 443,000 disadvantaged young people--more than half of them from black and other minority groups--for employment in industry.

Economic Development. A federal urban development bank would be set up, with a first-year appropriation of $2 billion, to offer grants and loans to industries willing to locate in or remain in deteriorating cities. Officials who worked on this proposal were divided over how the bank should function. Some wanted it to provide low-interest loans for no more than 75% of the cost of a plant in a slum neighborhood; the rest would have to come from private lenders. Others recommended that the Government ante up as much as 100% if private lenders are unwilling to participate.

The mayors generally want more public service jobs, but they are divided over an urban development bank. In a somewhat similar approach, St. Paul used $500,000 in federal funds this year to buy ghetto property, which it then leased to Control Data Corp. for a new plant that will employ up to 600 people. Los Angeles' Bradley regards the bank as a promising way of attracting "longterm, permanent jobs" to his city's slums. But Frank Morris, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, believes most firms leave downtown areas because of the high cost of doing business in a city, not because they lack investment capital.

Some mayors maintain that Washington should give the cities large amounts of aid, with no strings attached. Says St. Louis Mayor James Conway: "We know how we can best use the money. Most big-city mayors realize that they are the developers of last resort in their cities." Baltimore's William Schaefer rejects this pig-in-a-poke approach. Instead, he would leave it up to the mayors to draft their own redevelopment plans, but Washington could refuse to pay for projects that looked wasteful or impractical. Boston's Kevin White has already written a plan for his city. It calls for $120 million in federal seed money to create 14,000 new jobs and rehabilitate four neighborhoods. He expects to raise another $500 million from city, state and private sources.

But where will all the federal money come from? Admitted Seattle Mayor Wes Uhlman: "We just don't have enough money in the federal treasury to solve the cities' problems." Carter will be cool to any grandiose help-the-cities scheme that risks feeding inflation or further jeopardizing his elusive goal of balancing the budget by the end of 1980. He also wants tax cuts next year to stimulate the economy. The likely result: he will approve only about half of Patricia Harris' spending proposals--enough to soften the mayors' criticism but far less than they want. qed

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