view that many have of the states as
effective members of our federal system.
This, in turn, can be traced to one or
more of the following: (1) the feeling
that government in the United States is
becoming more and more centralized in
Washington; (2) the low visibility of
state politics, caused by the shift of pub-
lic attention to Washington during the
depression and war, the country's pre-
occupation with foreign affairs, and
complex state legislative procedures and
administrative fragmentation; (3) the
obstructionist role of some states in the
Negro's struggle for equal rights in the
past decade; and (4) the built-in stand-
pat bias of many states.
This skepticism also stems in part
from the fact that we have fifty state
governments. For some, it is easy to
judge all fifty on the basis of the be-
havior of two or three. The generally
negative attitude of the reporting press
toward state government tends to mag-
nify the cases of failure and corruption
and to underplay or ignore instances of
outstanding and responsible perform-
ance.
A LOOK AT SOME RECENT INDICATORS
But looking at state government as it
is, rather than having hazy feeling about
it, what can be said about whether the
states actually will "deliver the goods"
in the attack on urban problems? The
record-to-date suggests a mixed re-
sponse, first, because there are fifty dif-
ferent states and, second, because there
are both hopeful and discouraging
signs.
The ACIR's success in implementing
its state legislative program provides
one index of state effort in this field.
The Commission keeps tab on the de-
gree to which states adopt legislation
similar in language or intent to "model"
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statutes which it has drafted to imple-
ment its recommendations. This com-
plex task involves tracing developments
in fifty states and defining and identi-
fying legislation which meets the criteria
of similarity to Commission proposals.
Using a conservative approach, the
Commission found that in the 1965-66
biennium, at least forty-three states
adopted one to four pieces of legislation
similar to its draft bills or consistent with
Commission recommendations. These
actions covered twenty-two of the sixty-
three separate ACIR draft proposals and
ranged from property tax reform and
revision to financial and technical as-
sistance to local governments. In addi-
tion, thirty-eight states enacted one or
more statutes that are consistent with
ACIR recommendations, but are either
not yet framed in model bills or are
framed along lines differing from the
specific approach of ACIR bills.
These figures clearly highlight one
basic finding: greater state legislative
progress during the past two years com-
pared to that of the preceding 1963-1964
biennium. This conclusion, however,
tells us nothing about the distance still
to be covered. Neither does it enable us
to weigh the qualitative significance of
different kinds of legislation in terms of
developing a positive state role in urban
affairs. Adoption of one program for
state financial assistance to localities, for
example, might well be much more cru-
cial than adoption by five states of laws
authorizing localities to contract with
one another. To get this kind of ap-
praisal, it is necessary to probe the
substance of the legislation enacted.
Such a survey reveals some encourag-
ing and some not so encouraging trends
in state legislative activity on the urban
frontier. Significant ones merit atten-
tion.
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