income tax and therefore, the net take home pay of a worker in Houston would be about the same maybe or a little below or a little above the District.

LOOKING AT CHARACTERISTICS OF POPULATION

I think you can look at like functions if you look at the characteristics of the population, which is being served.

To give you another example, suppose that you said that in City A you have 142 miles of alleys and streets and in City B, which would be the District, just for this example-142 miles. You ask what are the characteristics of the neighborhoods? Do you have more trash, more people with compactors, or more garbage disposals? What is the tonnage that is taken out of City A or City B? Do you have a number of apartment buildings, do you have detached houses?

The point I am making is that unless you look at the total picture of the characteristics of the people you are trying to compare and the population, with the function, you again don't get into the right kind of comparisons.

I think what you really want to look at, it seems to me, and it is difficult to measure always, is if you have 1,000 people of similar characteristics, being served by City A or City B, what would it take to have the same average level of service delivery? That may be something that you could theoretically do. It is very difficult to do, if you are in one city and you have three teachers teaching 40 young people, it may take six teachers, in a city, just because of socio-economic conditions, to bring the level of educational achievement up to the same level.

That is the point I am making. You have to look at the function, but you also have to look at the characteristics of the population which you serve. What is the District like? Who are the people who live here? What are their problems? What are their needs and what is the uniqueness of our city? That's why I think you can't really do it.

Chairman JULIAN DIXON. Mr. Pursell?

OPENING REMARKS OF CONGRESSMAN PURSELL

Mr. PURSELL. Thank you, Mayor Barry for coming again this year and for your leadership over the last year. Many of the members of the committee have tried to be somewhat fair in our appropriation process. Understandably we may or may not disagree or agree with the total Federal payment policy. I personally support basic Home Rule and District voting rights, as you do, but I think if you look at what the Congress is addressing in total overall budget reductions, to some extent, some of us are disappointed because there are going to be reductions in aspects of our federal budget which you and I pay taxes to and no reductions on let us say, foreign aid. That makes it more encumbent upon us, as members, in a very unfair, discriminatory way, to say that we have to look at holding the line of the budget on other aspects of municipa! programs.

My cities in Michigan are cutting back staff as you are. We may be out federal revenue-sharing programs around the country, so we are going to have cutbacks throughout the entire country.

I think your public responsibility has been very consistent. This year, we will attempt to have some fiscal integrity in trying to reduce our inflation nationally.

NEW PROGRAMS IN FISCAL YEAR 1981 BUDGET

I want to ask a couple of questions specific to the budget. Do we have any new programs this year at all?

Mayor BARRY. In terms of 1980 or 1981?

Mr. PURSELL. In terms of the budget proposed, are you proposing any new programs outside of last year, like summer youth employment, anything significant?

Mayor BARRY. No overall major thrusts such as housing or jobs for the youngsters. We have specific kinds of program requests that we are asking new positions for. I will just give you one that I would like to ask some support of and that is the office of Business and Economic Development.

We tried for the last 2 years to get that office funded with city funds. It is now funded by a grant that is declining. This is the Community Development Block Grant. Economic development is an area that I would like to put the same kind of emphasis on that I put on the jobs and housing programs last year. The request for this office is only 18 positions and $715,400.

Mr. PURSELL. I am not so much interested in the positions as I am the programs.

Mayor BARRY. That is one of the major programs. We are also continuing to press for improvements in our housing community development area to try to get more ownership, and to increase the housing inspectors so we can get the apartments and units fixed up much more quickly.

HIGH PRIORITY ON HOUSING

Mr. PURSELL. Let us take housing, since I think you are right in saying that it should be a community priority-probably the number one priority. Have we got any new housing starts or any new developments in apartment construction or availability of renovated homes, apartments and condominiums from last year to this year? Are we making any progress in housing availability for new people at different income levels?

Mayor BARRY. Mr. Pursell, we all know that when it comes to low to moderate income housing starts, the economies of housingand Mr. Moore, when he comes before you, will discuss this-does not allow for low to moderate income housing to be built without subsidy.

If you were to build

NEW HOUSING STARTS

Mr. PURSELL. Any HUD projects developing in the community; do you have any HUD programs ongoing now? Mayor BARRY. Yes. We do.

Mr. PURSELL. Are they targeted for construction or development? Mayor BARRY. Yes. We have over eight or nine housing developments assisted by HUD which are close to being complete or occupied. I would have to ask Bob how far along we are. I believe there are 3,000 units now under construction and contracts signed. These include both HUD-assisted and locally funded projects. One is right down here off Capitol Hill-300 units of family and some elderly housing. As you drive down Florida Avenue, Bladensburg Road, you will see Section 202 development which is elderly housing. Mr. PURSELL. Let's go back to last year from this year, how many

new

Mayor BARRY. From January 1979 until now, I would say 3,000. Mr. MOORE. 3,065.

Mayor BARRY. New housing starts, either new construction or renovation since January 1979 until now.

Mr. PURSELL. This is under construction or in the planning stages?

Mr. MOORE. Most of them now are going to be occupied starting next week, the ones we started last year.

Mr. PURSELL. How many actually will be occupied this year? Mr. MOORE. We have about 500 occupancy agreement applications for rental units and sales contracts and occupancy will occur between now and June.

CITY OWNED HOUSING

Mayor BARRY. Let me say a point regarding housing. Last year I came before the committee and I was very precise, and I would say we had identified about 733 city-owned houses. The great majority of boarded up houses you see are privately owned.

We have tried to find a way to differentiate. If you look, you will find a white sign that means it is not under any kind of contract to have anything done to it, a blue sign means renovation is now going on and a red sign means new construction, which is under construction.

Since I appeared before the committee last year, we talked about the 733 city-owned houses and over 400 of those houses are now under actual construction. A significant number of them, starting next week, will be occupied as people will actually be moving into those units.

I guess the bottom line would be 6,600 new and rehab housing units, with 60 percent of them going to low to moderate income people. Not only in Washington but around the country, you have very few new housing starts in the rental area.

HOLDING OVERSIGHT HEARINGS ON POLICY ISSUES

Mr. PURSELL. I appreciate the fact that with interest rates and mortgage costs what they are, low income and middle income people just can't get into any kind of upgrading in housing and improvement.

From a planning standpoint, we are going through a whole budget process for the next month, talking about departments, fire and police-all of which are important-but we are not really

addressing ourselves to the major substantial changes that it is going to take to make the City of D.C. viable in the next 10 years.

You and I are going to come back here, or those that are around this table 10 years from now, and we are going to be in the same place that we are today. We ought to minimize our detailed committee process here and look at some oversight in terms of planning, development and rehabilitation where we could be helpful as members of Congress, to talk to HUD and other groups to say this is the kind of 10 point or 5 point program that we need here in D.C. to make it really a viable city. This is what we all want.

I just get very frustrated. We, as members of the committee sit around here and hold committee hearings on minor points and do not address ourselves to the big issues. That bothers me.

From that point, let me ask another question-

Mayor BARRY. If I could comment on that, let me agree with you on one point and disagree on the other. Let me agree that it may be that the committee ought to look at the major program areas as opposed to one position here, or four positions there. I certainly agree with that thrust.

CONSTRUCTION OF NEW OFFICE SPACE

I would strongly disagree with you that the character and composition of our city is not being greatly improved. Let me just indicate a couple of things. One is that in 1979, and the city government certainly has been pushing this, in the District of Columbia, we constructed more new office space than all of Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Chicago and New York combined.

Mr. PURSELL. Is that outlined in your budget?

Mayor BARRY. We didn't pay for that, so we are in a unique situation where we were not asking for 18 positions.

Mr. PURSELL. The private sector is doing that?

Mayor BARRY. With the help of our licenses, and our sewer hookup process. We have to give sewer certificates.

Mr. PURSELL. I realize that is a partnership. We have built up Detroit too, but that was all private money. Basically it took some leadership on the part of the mayor and other people to help encourage it. I think that partnership is important but is the growth and development reflected in the budget documents presented to us?

Mayor BARRY. I have to check and see. In the sense of what we have done, which I think to some extent has been a mistake, we are trying to get out of that. We have only brought items to the committee that were directly funded by appropriated funds as opposed to saying actually here is what we are trying to do now. That is why I gave you an overview of our city and here is what part the Federal-

Mr. PURSELL. You don't hesitate to go to OMB and talk about new fundamental policy changes in the funding formulas and long range planning. I think that is a responsibility that this committee ought to share and look at too, to help you along in developing a Home Rule concept.

Louis Stokes and I sit on the Labor/HEW committee-we should be down there at ten o'clock and we are here out of courtesy to you

and we ought to be talking about those fundamentals and the major, necessary changes that you want and the Council wants. The House and Senate would like to get some agreement on those major points.

We sit here and look at line items on each budget detail and that is a waste of time in my opinion.

INVITATION TO TOUR CITY

Mayor BARRY. Let me just say that in terms of the way the city is developing, I'd like it very much if one day we could take a trip around the city for 3 or 4 hours. I think you will find that in the Barnard areas, 14th Street and 7th Street, you will see major construction going on. We just opened up a new supermarket, the first one in 10 years at 8th and O Streets, N.W. We are looking at neighborhood development, as to how you can get more businesses there; how you can build more housing. I think you will see the face of our city, with the exception of H Street, which has not changed nearly enough, but we have some plans to move that ahead too, that we will look back in 5 years and see a significant amount of new housing for people

The other thing, Mr. Chairman

NEED FOR LONG RANGE PLANNING

Mr. PURSELL. You don't have to defend that; I am making the point that we ought to see that development here before this committee, what the long range 5, 10 year plan is and how we are making progress in phase one, phase two. We need to see how we can fundamentally support a federal budget to support those increments in order-within our scarce resources to make those things really happen.

Then we can go back to the floor and say, fundamentally this is what is happening in D.C. and gain support for a substantial policy rather than this continual bickering back and forth of who has more positions than Detroit, Houston or someplace else. I tend to share that overall philosophy.

RECENT AUDIT BY ARTHUR ANDERSEN

With regard to one other point earlier you indicated the need for an audit.

The previous Mayor, if I remember, had one central financial operation and you have broken it out into three separate agencies. I do not object to how it is done.

Are you talking about an internal or external audit?

Mayor BARRY. External audit. Arthur Andersen and Lucas Tucker, the auditors, in 1979 did what is called a balance sheet audit. They took our figures, and gave us a balance sheet audit. This year, they are doing it externally.

CURRENT AUDIT BEING PERFORMED

If you mean by an outside auditing firm, they are now doing a full-fledged audit of the District's books.