Now comes the federal government to tame the bureaucracy, slash the red tape, and save the Chicago Housing Authority from years of mismanagement by bumbling locals.
And if you believe that, I have some lakefront property I want to show you in Melrose Park.
He’s a suave and articulate guy, that U.S. Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros. And his public-housing troubleshooter, Joe Shuldiner, looks to be a no-nonsense type. But show me someone who thinks that the staff of the Department of Housing and Urban Development is going to roll up its civil-service sleeves and get its hands dirty cleaning up the mess at CHA and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t had many dealings with HUD.
Things are better than they used to be, it’s true. Edwin Eisendrath, the former city alderman who runs HUD’s Midwest office, is an open and affable fellow. He replaced Gertrude Jordan, who was nearly as invisible as “Silent” Sam Pierce, the Republican HUD secretary during the Reagan years. I covered HUD and CHA back then but never did manage to track down Jordan. Heck, it was hard enough getting through to her press secretary, Adolf “he’s-in-a-meeting” Slaughter.
HUD under Cisneros is a more earnest and open bureaucracy. But it is still a bureaucracy, and when the time comes for the G-9s and G-10s to actually do something that might make a difference–fire the janitors who can never be found or evict the cracked-out moms whose kids bust the elevators–they will retreat behind their organization charts and policy manuals. After a while they’ll declare victory and move on to make headlines in some other city.
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I wish it were otherwise, but last week an old friend at City Hall lagged me a copy of some recent correspondence between HUD and the City of Chicago. The paperwork paints a very different picture of the “new” HUD than that described by Secretary Cisneros.
Remember “empowerment zones”?
Late last year the Clinton administration chose Chicago as one of six cities in which a big slice of the job-starved ghetto would get taxes on business lowered and numerous federal regulations waived.
To achieve the latter, the cities were told to ask HUD, which runs the “EZ” program, for waivers on those federal rules and regulations that tend to restrict economic development efforts.
So Chicago asked for waivers on 72 nettlesome federal rules and regulations.
HUD’s answer: 7 waivers granted, 21 outright denials, 32 maybes, and 12 we’ll-get-back-to-you-on-thats.
In other words, the city got less than 10 percent of the waivers it asked for.
“Attached is a summary of actions taken in response to your requests for funding and waivers of federal administrative requirements,” reads the cover letter signed by Andrew Cuomo, Cisneros’ hot-shot assistant secretary for community planning and development. “We are committed to making the most flexible possible decisions regarding your requests. . . .”
Attached was a listing of those “flexible decisions” by HUD and the other federal agencies that enforce the rules. Excerpts from that list are printed below. Sorry about all the acronyms–think of them as spices in the bureaucratic stew:
– Waiver request: Relief from Davis-Bacon (law requiring union-scale wages) for federally funded projects within empowerment zone. Approval status: NO. No broad statutory authority to waive.
– Waiver request: Allow the use of Joint Training Partnership Act funds to upgrade skills of entry-level people who are placed as part of EZ related programs. Approval status: NO. JTPA eligibility requirements are statutorily based; Department lacks authority to waive.
– Waiver Request: Allow joint eligibility requirements and enrollment procedures for complementary federal programs such as JOBS, JTPA and CDBG. Approval status: NO. Statutory requirement. Cannot be waived.
– Waiver request: Allow EZ residents to self-certify their eligibility for federal job training. Approval status: NO. Statutory requirement. Cannot be waived.
– Waiver request: Eliminate uncertainty of total cost which is major deterrent to reinvestment in contaminated properties. Approval status: OTHER. Most effectively addressed at state level. EPA Region 5 is willing to discuss.
– Waiver request: Modify current Head Start eligibility criteria to allow children currently enrolled to remain in program despite an increase in family income. Approval status: NO. HHS has no authority to change eligibility under the Act.
– Waiver request: Permit Chicago to access the national pool of unused Low Income Housing Tax Credits for reallocation to projects located within EZ. Approval status: NO. Treasury Department does not have the authority. Requires statutory change.
And on it goes, 12 pages of denials, delays and discursions that would make Franz Kafka blush; 12 pages of impeccable bureaucratese explaining why 65 of 72 federal rules Chicago wants waived for its empowerment zone either cannot be waived or will have to be studied further.
In the meantime, City Hall has been unable to fully pitch businesses on the advantages of moving into the zone because it doesn’t yet know what all those advantages will be, thanks to HUD.
This is the outfit that is going to cut through all the red tape and bureaucracy at the Chicago Housing Authority?
Now, about that lakefront property in Melrose Park. . . .