The Coordinating Agencies: Modest Resources and Multiple Constraints

We now turn to those institutions which have the broadest range of public concerns with urban development: the three states, the federal government, and their coordinating agency in the New York area—the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission. Our concern, however, is not with the states and the federal government as a whole. As pointed out above, most state and federal agencies whose actions have an impact on urban development are limited to narrow functional concerns. Our interest in this section is those regional actors who are responsible for the interrelationship of programs across a wide range of development areas. At the state level, these include the governor's office, the legislature, and the agencies responsible for regional planning and development; at the federal level, the President and his staff, Congress, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development; and within the region, the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission. For some of these actors, such as the gubernatorial office in a state, the coordinating role is an inevitable part of a general responsibility for policy-making and resource allocation. For other coordinating agencies, such as the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, functional scope is more restricted but still embraces a wide range of state and local policies that affect urban development.

Although the explicit coordinating responsibilities of these organizations imply that they have a major role in shaping urban development, in fact their influence as coordinators is greatly restricted, for a number of reasons. First, the most powerful of these organizations—the executive and legislative units at the state and federal levels—devote much of their time and resources to issues that do not have a primary influence on the pattern of urban development. The White House and Congress are preoccupied with foreign affairs, defense, national economic policy, and general social programs. At the state level, urban development competes for executive and legislative attention with a variety of other matters, such as education, health, welfare, and criminal justice. Moreover, many federal or state issues with important implications for urban development—such as energy policy, interest rates, environ-

[59] The perspectives and behavior of public authorities are analyzed in Annmarie Hauck Walsh, The Public's Business: The Politics and Practices of Government Corporations (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978). On the nature of authority leadership, see especially Chapters 7–8.

mental constraints, or school-aid distribution formulas— rarely are considered in Washington or the state capitals primarily in terms of their impact on the distribution of residences, jobs, and transportation facilities.

A second limitation is the existence of significant state and federal constituencies that lie beyond the New York region. In 1975, 33 percent of New York State's population lived outside the region, as did 21 percent of New Jersey's inhabitants and 45 percent of the residents of Connecticut. Approximately the same proportion of each state's legislators represent districts wholly or largely outside the metropolis. Moreover, because of the region's size and complexity, most of the state legislators whose districts were within the tri-state area did not perceive the region as a whole as a relevant frame of reference either for themselves or their constituents. City-suburban conflict divides the New York area's representatives in all three state legislatures, and is particularly sharp in New York State—where suburban legislators are far more likely to make common cause with upstaters against New York City than to join forces with the city's representatives in Albany. For their part, governors and their staffs tend to think in statewide rather than regional terms on most issues.

Similar considerations are at work in Washington. Less than 10 percent of the nation's population lives in the region, and the proportion steadily declines as people move south and west. Only thirty-eight members of Congress had districts primarily in the region in the 1970s. And the diversity of their constituencies combines with individual differences within the area's congressional delegation to foreclose cohesive action on most federal issues affecting the New York region. At the White House and in federal coordinating agencies, the primary concern is with general national policies rather than with the problems of individual regions. As a result, urban development programs emanating from Washington often fail to take account of the special problems raised by the nation's largest and most complex metropolitan area.

Another restraint on these coordinating agencies is the absence of a political culture of constituency demands that are favorable to broad-gauged planning and coordination. Most of the demands from the region that are pressed upon governors or Congress come from specific functional or territorial interests. Underlying this structure of demand is a political heritage in the United States that favors public policy outcomes resulting from bargaining among organized interests, and which gives rise to suspicion when "comprehensive planning" by central units of government is advocated.^[60]

In confronting this antagonism to planning, central organizations bring varying strengths and limitations. The potential influence of elective institutions—the President and Congress, the governors and state legislatures—is substantial when measured in terms of their high degree of formal independence and financial capacity. The states also possess potential control over land use in every city and town. Yet the ability of these political institutions to shape urban development is heavily constrained, both by the diversity of

[60] See, for example, Alan Altshuler, The City Planning Process (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1965), and Edward Banfield, Political Influence (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1961).

constituencies and an "antiplanning" tradition, and by several characteristics that flow out of and reinforce these conditions. Actual control over the use of land has been ceded by the states to municipalities. A variety of public authorities have been given a wide measure of formal autonomy and fiscal independence from central control. Moreover, elected officials rarely have urban planning units attached to their own offices.

In sum, the institutions with the greatest potential influence would face considerable obstacles should they attempt to establish goals for urban areas and shape public policy to achieve these objectives. Moreover, elected officials often share in their personal attitudes the widespread belief in the advantages of local and functional autonomy. And, regardless of personal preferences, they commonly seek to avoid involvement in such conflictladen issues as coordinated planning, where proponents are likely to be denounced for "undermining home rule" or for "playing politics" with independent agencies.

All of these constraints are illustrated by the failure of various efforts to have state governments exercise greater control over land use in the region's suburbs. Legally, the three state governments have complete power over their subdivisions. They can restrict local zoning authority so as to eliminate large-lot zoning or prevent certain types of commercial activity. Or the states could take back the powers to regulate land use which have been delegated to local government, either performing the function themselves or assigning it to the counties or regional agencies. The legal potential of the states is largely neutralized, however, by political realities. All local governments—in older cities, rural areas, and suburbs—perceive a common interest in maximizing local control over local turf. These interests are well-represented in the legislatures of Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York. In addition, all three states have strong home-rule traditions that provide a rationale for those who defend the municipal status quo in zoning.

As a consequence, measures that threaten local control over land in the name of more rational and coordinated development rarely attract much support in the state capitals. In 1967, suburban opposition foreclosed action on a Connecticut bill setting one acre as the maximum lot size in the state. The fight against the bill was led by officials from Darien, New Canaan, and other affluent suburbs in Fairfield County where lots of two to four acres were common. Proponents of the bill argued that zoning laws designed "to keep the peasants out are putting out the flame under America's melting pot." Suburban opponents answered that "the issue is simply whether or not communities can continue to determine their own destinies"; and countered with a proposal that the state constitution be amended to guarantee municipal control over land-use regulation.^[61]

Two years later, a furor developed in New Jersey when the administration of Governor Richard J. Hughes sought to take away some of the authority delegated to local governments in the Municipal Zoning Enabling Act of 1928.

[61] Representative Norris L. O'Neill, Democrat of Hartford, and Representative Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., Republican of Greenwich, quoted in William Borders, "Suburban Zoning is Again Attacked," New York Times, March 26, 1967. Weicker at the time was also first selectman (i.e., mayor) of Greenwich.

The proposed law required local zoning ordinances to consider the housing needs of all economic groups, as well as regional transportation and open space requirements, and state, county, and regional plans. It prohibited the use of zoning to exclude anyone for racial, religious, or ethnic reasons, and shifted the burden of proof in such matters from the challenger to the municipality. Also proposed was a state role in land-use regulation in flood plains and in areas adjacent to airports, highways, and parks. Less than two weeks after the proposals were made public, adverse reaction had become so vehement that Commissioner Paul N. Ylvisaker, whose Department of Community Affairs had developed the new legislation, found it necessary to begin a discussion of the issue by emphasizing what was not in the bill: "There is no state zoning. There is no reduction in local zoning power," Ylvisaker insisted. "There is nothing here that can force a municipality to provide low-income housing. . . . No state planning czar or super-agency is created to oversee local zoning."^[62] But Ylvisaker failed to put local fears to rest. Municipal opposition was overwhelming, and legislators responded to their constituencies by killing the bill in committee.

In New York, state legislators gave short shrift in 1971 to proposals to prohibit discriminatory zoning, establish state standards for acreage and floor space in new housing, and require that towns which zoned for industry also zone some areas for housing within the financial means of industrial workers. At the same time, another effort was underway in New Jersey to modify suburban land-use controls in order to ease what Governor William T. Cahill called the state's "crisis in housing."^[63] Although Cahill's actual proposals were modest, his tough talk about "statewide zoning" and the need for "harsher measures if nothing else works" alarmed local officials and legislators.^[64] Reaction was so vehement that Cahill was abandoned by most fellow Republicans in the legislature, and his program perished in committee. Suburban dissatisfaction with what opponents of the zoning proposals called a "Cahill power grab" also played a part in the governor's defeat in his bid for renomination in the 1973 Republican primary, at the hands of a vigorous defender of local autonomy.^[65]

Cahill's successor, Democrat Brendan Byrne, was equally unsuccessful

[62] Quoted in Arthur G. Kent, "The Zoning Issue: A Study of Politics and Public Policy in New Jersey" (Senior Thesis, Princeton University, 1972), p. 44. Kent provides a useful account of the local and legislative reaction to Ylvisaker's proposal.

[63] A Blueprint for Housing in New Jersey, A Special Message to the Legislature by William T. Cahill, Governor of New Jersey (December 7, 1970). Cahill, a Republican, succeeded Governor Richard J. Hughes in January, 1970, following his successful 1969 campaign against former Governor Robert B. Meyner.

[64] Quoted in Earl Josephson, "Cahill Wants Zoning Solutions," Trenton Times, August 13, 1970; and Ronald Sullivan, "U.A.W. Maintains a Jersey Suburb Keeps Out Poor," New York Times, January 28, 1971. Cahill's housing and land-use program called for state-determined quotas for low-income housing with voluntary compliance by municipalities, creation of a Community Development Corporation whose proposed projects would be subject to local veto, a uniform statewide building code, and simplification of the laws governing local zoning. The proposal for state-determined housing quotas was the most controversial element of the package.

[65] John Chappell, president, United Citizens for Home Rule, quoted in Dan Weissman, "Home Rule: Local Forces Line Up Against Statewide Planning Bills," Newark Sunday Star-Ledger, April 24, 1973. Cahill was defeated in the primary by Representative Charles W. Sandman, Jr., who then was beaten in the general election by Brendan T. Byrne.

in persuading the legislature to alter local control over zoning. On the most controversial aspect of the zoning issue—the provision of low-income housing in the suburbs—Byrne sought to bypass the legislature by directing the Department of Community Affairs to prepare a "fair share" plan which would provide low-income housing guidelines for each community in the state. Localities that failed to comply with the plan could face the loss of state aid for education, sewers, and other programs. Suburban legislators attacked Byrne, challenging in state court his authority to alter local control over land by means of an executive order, and proposing an amendment to the state constitution that would safeguard local zoning.^[66] In the face of suburban hostility, Byrne soft-pedaled his support for dispersing low-income housing and emphasized the need for rehabilitation in the older cities rather than new subsidized construction in the suburbs.^[67]

Appointed officials concerned with urban development and regional planning tend to be more oriented than most elected officials toward the advantages of broader coordination. Career officials of state planning agencies usually have been involved in developing the housing and land-use proposals which legislators have resisted. Despite their location in state agencies with access to the governor, however, state planners and other appointive officials with broad perspectives typically play modest roles. State plans do not govern the actions of local governments or other state agencies. As a result, state planners offer advice and serve as public advocates for a broad-gauge approach to urban development, while—as described in Chapter Three—local governments regulate actual land use using very different criteria. And functional state agencies undertake the highway, sewer, water, and other public projects which strongly influence the pattern of development in the region.

Federal efforts to coordinate urban development are thwarted by similar forces and pressures. Most federal resources reach the metropolitan area through functional programs—for roads, sewers, water supply, mass transportation, mortgage insurance, and a variety of other housing, transport, and community development programs. Functional agencies and their clienteles have strongly resisted efforts that threaten to dilute the specific goals of narrowly focused programs. For example, the attempt by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1969 to use water and sewer grants as a lever to force suburbs to accept lower-income housing was successfully resisted by beneficiaries of the grant program and their supporters in Congress. Bergen County's Republican congressman, William B. Widnall, led the attack against HUD's efforts, arguing that local needs for water and sewers rather than regional housing considerations "should be primary" in distributing federal funds under the program.^[68]

[66] See Ronald Sullivan, "Housing Goals: List Stirs Debate," New York Times, September 19, 1976; and Martin Waldron, "What Limit Executive Power?" New York Times, July 17, 1977.

[67] See State of New Jersey, Division of State and Regional Planning, A Statewide Housing Allocation Plan for New Jersey, Preliminary Draft for Public Discussion (Trenton: November 1976); Ramona Smith, "Governor Waffles on Poverty Housing," Trenton Times, December 9, 1976; and Joseph F. Sullivan, "A Softening of Some Issues," New York Times, December 10, 1976.

[68] Quoted in Barbara Gill, "Readington May Seek U.S. Aid Again," Trenton Sunday Times Advertiser, August 8, 1971. Widnall was one of the original sponsors of the water and sewer legislation, as well as the ranking minority member of the Banking and Currency Committee which handled the water and sewer program and other HUD activities.

Efforts by HUD to coordinate and guide urban development are also weakened by its own functional activities. Water and sewer officials in HUD were much more interested in advancing their program than in spreading low-income housing—especially since the housing objectives aroused suburban and congressional hostility, and thus threatened the water and sewer program. Similarly, the broad goals of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, which sought to increase housing opportunities in the suburbs, have been subordinated to HUD's desire to maximize suburban participation in the community development grant program. In the program's initial years, HUD made little effort to ensure that participating suburbs were preparing housing plans that complied with the statutory federal requirements.

Because of these constraints, federal officials concerned with urban development have attempted to encourage coordination through institutional development at the metropolitan level. A principal federal goal has been the creation of areawide institutions capable of planning comprehensively and of coordinating the development activities of local, regional, state, and national agencies. Federal grants have been available for comprehensive planning since the late 1950s. Beginning with the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1962, an expanding list of federal functional grants in metropolitan areas has been conditioned on the existence of a comprehensive planning process carried on by state and local governments. Since 1966, Congress has required that all applications for federal grants in a number of key urban programs be reviewed by a regional agency to ensure that the project was "consistent with comprehensive planning developed or in the process of development for the metropolitan area."^[69]

In response to these federal requirements, regional agencies sprang up in every metropolitan area in the nation, and they soon were grinding out all sorts of comprehensive plans. Few of these agencies, however, have evolved into influential participants in the development process, Most were organized in order to ensure the continued flow of federal aid, not because of strong commitment to regionalism on the part of local or state officials. A number have been dominated by highway interests because the earliest federal requirements for comprehensive planning dealt with roads and mass transit. Consequently, most of the plans produced by these agencies reflect the particularized interests of existing governments in the area and of major functional groupings. Controversial issues typically are avoided, particularly those arising from social, economic, tax, and service differences in the metropolis. With few exceptions, regional agencies have not obtained control over land use, important operating responsibilities, an independent financial base, or other means of ensuring the implemention of their plans.^[70]

Reinforcing the weakness of the regional coordinating agencies has been the ambiguity of the federal government's commitment to its metropolitan offspring. Little real power has been provided to these agencies by Washing-

[69] Section 204, Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966, 80 U.S. Statutes at Large (1966), p. 1262. Under this law, programs subject to review were airports, highways, other transportation facilities, sewers, water supply, open space, conservation, hospitals, law enforcement, and libraries. Over the next decade, scores of other federal grants were added to the list, which totalled over 140 grant programs in the mid-1970s.

[70] See, for example, Melvin B. Mogulof, Governing Metropolitan Areas: A Critical Review of Council of Governments and the Federal Role (Washington: Urban Institute, 1971).

ton, largely because of resistance by functional agencies and grass-roots interests to any authoritative role for general-purpose regional bodies. Thus regional agencies evaluate federal grant requests in terms of their compatibility with metropolitan plans, but federal agencies that administer the various aid programs are free to disregard their recommendations. And when general revenue sharing and block grants for community development were initiated in the early 1970s, neither program made any provision for distributing funds to metropolitan agencies. Instead, all federal assistance was allocated to local governments, thus reinforcing their development capabilities and reducing further the relatively weak role of regional planning units in the development process.

In the New York area, federal ambiguity has combined with the region's size and complexity to produce a coordinating agency with almost no independent influence on urban development. The Tri-State Regional Planning Commission was created by the three states to ensure federal funding of highway and transit projects in the metropolis. Organized as the Tri-State Transportation Committee in 1961, the agency initially served as a planning and coordinating body for the major transportation agencies in the region. Its functional scope expanded in 1971, not in response to pressures from within the region for a broad-gauged planning body, but because Washington steadily increased the list of grant programs covered by comprehensive planning and review requirements.^[71]

Despite its functional expansion, Tri-State remained heavily skewed in the direction of its original transportation mission. Throughout the 1970s, five of the nine state officials on the commission were from transportation agencies, as were three of the five federal members.^[72] The Port Authority has been closely involved with Tri-State from its beginnings. A top Port Authority official was "loaned" to Tri-State at the outset to organize the new agency as its first executive director, and the Port Authority has always been represented on the commission by a nonvoting member. Tri-State's top staff also reflects its transportation origins. Its executive director from its founding to 1978 was a transportation planner, as were many of his deputies. Inevitably, Tri-State's general orientation has reflected its initial tasks, the interests of its dominant commissioners, and the perspectives of its staff. As a result, Tri-State has naturally tended to look at the region through the prism of transportation needs and facilities.

Tri-State's perspective also is strongly influenced by the dominant role of state officials on the agency. The commission was created by the states, and from the beginning it has primarily served state interests—and particularly those of their transportation agencies. Nine of the 15 commissioners are state

[71] The agency was renamed the Tri-State Transportation Commission in 1965 following the passage of enabling legislation in the three states. Six years later its name was changed to the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission to reflect its broadened functional scope over water and sewer grants.

[72] The five state transportation officials included the heads of the three Departments of Transportation, the chairman of the Connecticut Public Transportation Authority, and the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The three federal transport officials were the regional directors of the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, and the Urban Mass Transportation Administration.

officials, and all but one of the local members is a gubernatorial appointee.^[73] Tri-State's agenda is set largely by the states, the chairman of the commission has always been a state official, and state representatives dominate the agency's executive committee. Discussions within Tri-State typically are framed in terms of state interests, priorities, and objectives. From the beginning, state officials on Tri-State have functioned almost exclusively as representatives of their agencies and their states. Given the structure of the commission—five members from each state, with voting arrangements requiring that a majority of each state delegation agrees with a proposal—all of the commissioners tend to think of themselves primarily as members of state delegations, whether they are state officials or not. Because of this structure the commission functions essentially as a logrolling body, with almost all decisions made on the basis of an implicit agreement that "you back my plan and I'll back yours."^[74] As a result, Tri-State has reinforced the major political divisions of the region rather than mute them with an areawide perspective.

Within this framework, Tri-State's staff has primarily served the states rather than the abstraction called the "region." The commission's work is almost entirely derivative, reflecting the development goals and particularly the transportation-oriented priorities of its dominant members. The staff maintains a low profile, emphasizing its technical role and seeking to avoid controversy and publicity. Staff work is long on data, and short on analysis and recommendations. As the Regional Plan Association notes, "the Tri-State staff performs like a consulting firm, primarily providing data and responding to study requests of state and federal agencies. They seldom take the initiative to raise hard issues for Commission consideration, and little of their research reaches the public."^[75] Tri-State's basic regional development guide has been characterized as "a vague mixture of what will happen and what should happen [which] masks rather than illuminates the critical issues."^[76] Until the late 1970s, public attention rarely was directed to Tri-State's plans or reports; hearings were not held on its proposals; few reporters or group representatives attended meetings; and many major regional issues—such as the fourth jetport controversy—never came before the commission.

Tri-State also is constrained by the pervasive fear of regionalism discussed earlier in the chapter. An effort by the commission to play the independent planning and development role advocated by the New York Times and the Regional Plan Association would be opposed by suburban officials, local private interests, and their political representatives in Albany, Hartford, and Trenton. A case in point is suburban reaction to Tri-State's cautious efforts in the 1970s to comply with federal requirements that each metropoli-

[73] The exception is the chairman of the New York City Planning Commission, who is an ex-officio member. This official also is the only local representative among New York's five commissioners.

[74] Michael Sterne, "For Planning Purposes, L.I. Wants to Be a Breakaway Province," New York Times, April 9, 1978.

[75] Regional Plan Association, Implementing Regional Planning in the Tri-State New York Region, A Report to the Federal Regional Council and the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission (New York: 1975), p. 4. See also Regional Plan Association, "Report to the Three Governors and Legislatures on Official Regional Planning in the Tri-State Region" (New York: December 7, 1977).

[76] Ibid., p. 24; see also Tri-State Regional Planning Commission, Regional Development Guide (New York: 1968), passim.

tan area develop a comprehensive housing plan that addressed the needs of low-income families. Tri-State's effort was typical of its activities—low key, research oriented, and developed with little publicity.^[77] But the suburbs reacted adversely, expressing fear that low-income families would be dispersed from the older cities under some kind of regional housing plan. On Long Island, these fears fueled the demand for separation of Nassau and Suffolk counties from Tri-State, a demand which found a sympathetic audience among the two counties' state legislators and with New York's Governor Hugh Carey, who was eager to please voters in the state's two largest suburban counties. In 1979, Tri-State's critics won a partial victory. The Long Island Regional Planning Board was designated in place of Tri-State to review most federal grant applications for Nassau and Suffolk counties, with only those Long Island projects deemed by the state as having broader regional impact to be reviewed by Tri-State. And in 1980, a strong movement developed in Connecticut to withdraw from Tri-State.

The limited role of the Tri-State Regional Planning Commission in the 1970s underscores the comparative advantage of functional over coordinating agencies in terms of influencing development. Lacking resources, autonomy, and a clearly defined mission, Tri-State has been reduced to monitoring trends and processing paper—once decisions are made by functional agencies in the region—so that federal planning and review requirements can be met.

Tri-State's weaknesses also underscore the importance of the ability to concentrate resources. Tri-State has broad areal and functional scope, yet it cannot bring much influence to bear on development. Important limitations are found in its lack of formal independence, its dependence on federal and state grants, and its complete absence of control over land use. Skillful leadership might have overcome some of these shortcomings by dramatizing the agency's role and proposals. But Tri-State's leadership has been provided by its dominant state commissioners—who have sought to restrict rather than expand the agency's independent role, and who have utilized Tri-State in part to serve the commissioners' own state-agency needs. Consequently, Tri-State is left only with planning skills to go with its broad but shallow functional and areal scope, a combination which generates a great deal of paper but very little independent impact on the pattern of development in the New York region.

[77] The housing plan attracted more public attention than most Tri-State programs, in part because of the sensitivity of the question of dispersing low-income housing, and in part because the Coalition for an Equitable Region (a group of civil rights and fair housing organizations led by Suburban Action Institute) publicly urged Tri-State to play an active role in securing compliance in the region with the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 and other federal laws.