Anger of the "Wily Stalkers"

By Ed Magnuson

Mayors assail Reagan's budget slashes

More than three-fourths of all Americans live in urban areas that have populations of 30,000 or more. Thus it was no minor political matter when the Reagan Administration last week managed to antagonize the highest elected officials of the nation's cities. Meeting in Minneapolis, the 50th annual conference of mayors bristled with charges that the Administration was virtually abandoning a half-century-old tradition of federal financial help for the cities and was, in effect, telling them to "drop dead."* "There is no other national government anywhere in the world today which has washed its hands of its cities and essential industries to stand back on the sidelines like a disinterested party," declared Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, newly elected president of the mayors' conference. Contended Jacksonville's Jake Godbold: "What the Administration is giving us right now is not help but misery." John Rousakis of Savannah, Ga., charged that Administration policies were designed to "take the monkey off the Federal Government's back and put it on the back of local government."

Much of the angry rhetoric was triggered by the draft of a proposed statement on urban policy prepared by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Leaked to the New York Times, apparently by someone in the department who opposed the policy, the 160-page statement argued that past federal aid to the cities had actually contributed to their decline rather than helped them. Money from Washington had created "excessive dependence of city governments and city dwellers on the Federal Government." The report called for the Administration to make sharp cutbacks in such aid. In the phrases that most embittered local officials at the conference, the statement said that the recipients of the help had been transformed "from bold leaders of self-reliant cities to wily stalkers of federal funds."

President Reagan promptly sent a message to the mayors promising that he would not break off the historic "partnership" between Washington and the cities. HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce assured the mayors that the "staff report" had never been approved by the President. Pierce also had not approved the draft, which reflected the views of Emmanuel S. Savas, assistant secretary for policy development at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Robert Carleson, a Reagan domestic policy adviser. Carleson had been welfare director of California when Reagan was Governor of that state. One critic of the Administration's urban policy within HUD conceded that the mayors had a just complaint. Said he: "Instead of dealing with the problems of the cities, HUD has ignored them. We haven't done our job."

Despite Pierce's calming words, many of the mayors remained convinced that the controversial draft represented the Administration's real attitude toward the nation's cities. "Even as a draft statement, it shows the kind of mentality we are dealing with," complained San Francisco

Mayor Dianne Feinstein. "I find it unbelievable." Mayor Lee Alexander of Syracuse charged that the document "draws a battle line between mayors of cities and the White House." New York Financial Expert Felix Rohatyn, who had helped save his city from bankruptcy, insisted that " 'drop dead' in draft form is no better than 'drop dead' in final form." Said Mayor Young of the draft: "It scares the hell out of me and should frighten every mayor."

Although about one-third of the big-city mayors are Republicans, criticism of the Reagan budget cuts as they affect cities was unusually bipartisan. The mayors gave a standing ovation to Rohatyn. He urged the Administration to revive the New Deal's old Reconstruction Finance Corporation to provide longterm, low-interest federal loans so that cities, which find interest rates too high to float municipal bonds, can rebuild bridges, sewers, firehouses, schools and deteriorating mass-transit systems. Such a revolving fund, he said, should "selfdestruct in ten years" as revitalized cities repay the loans. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder of Chicago's self-help Operation PUSH, charged that before Reagan, federal programs for the cities were "humane, sensible, broadly based," while under Reagan they are "anti-poor, anti-worker, antiblack, part of a meanness mania against the masses."

Jackson also got a standing ovation, but the conference took no action to carry out his call for some 500 mayors to march on Washington, with 1,000 followers apiece. "Haifa million voices in mass, disciplined, direct action," he insisted, "will get results." The mayors seemed more sympathetic to Young's urging that "a national coalition" of mayors, as well as business, labor, academic and government leaders, be organized to draft an "urban agenda" to be presented to Congress and the President immediately after the November elections.

After all the oratorical fireworks, the conference approved some 60 resolutions, many of them urging the continuation of federal help to various urban programs at their current levels. The mayors agreed that such entitlement programs as welfare and other aid to the poor should not grow, but should not be seriously curtailed either. The conference even conceded that across-the-board federal budget cuts should be accepted as long as they are "consistent with the well-being of our cities and support those in need."

"We won't get a reversal of policy," observed Democratic Mayor Douglas DeGood of Toledo, "but the outcry over some proposed budget cuts may well make Washington think twice, and modify some of the more extreme thinking. At least we've sent a message. Now, we can only hope it is heard."

--By Ed Magnuson. Reported by Lee Griggs/Minneapolis and Jeanne Saddler/Washington

* The phrase was used in an oft-quoted New York Daily News headline after President Gerald Ford in 1975 said he would veto federal funds to help New York City avoid bankruptcy. The headline: FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.

With reporting by Lee Griggs, Jeanne Saddler

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