University of Vermont ScholarWorks @ UVM Center for Research on Vermont Occasional Papers Research Centers and Institutes 1993 The eV rmont State Office ofconomic E Opportunity : a case study in organizational relationships Mary Carlson Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/crvocc Part of the Public Administration Commons Recommended Citation Carlson, Mary, "The eV rmont State Office of Economic Opportunity : a case study in organizational relationships" (1993). Center for Research on Vermont Occasional Papers. 1. https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/crvocc/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Research Centers and Institutes at ScholarWorks @ UVM. It has been accepted for inclusion in Center for Research on Vermont Occasional Papers by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ UVM. For more information, please contact [email protected]. OCCASIONAL PAPER #16 CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON VERMONT UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT BURLINGTON, VERMONT 05401 802/656-4389 The Vermont State Office of Economic Opportunity A Case Study in Organizational Relationships By Mary Carlson Vermont Office of Economic Opportunity W!L/3 1-/C 7Cf . r:; 63 C37 'tfr3 © 1993 by the University of Vermont. All rights reserved ISBN 0-944277-25-X The Center for Research on Vermont University of Vermont Burlington, VT 05401 802/656-4389 We'd make mistakes. We'd get our faces bloodied. And then we'd come back for more. -Francis McFaun, Former State OEO Director v CONTENTS FOREWORD BY FRANK SMALLWOOD ... .... ..... .. .... ... .. .. .. ......... ix INTRODUCTION . ...... .... .. ... ... ..... .. ... ... .. .. ..... ... ...... I. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND . 3 A NATION MOBILIZES FOR WAR . 3 VERMONT ORGANIZES COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCIES . 7 LOCAL POLITICS FORCES NATIONAL POLICY SHIFT . 12 STATE OEO'S ABILITY TO SURVIVE IS OFTEN TESTED . 18 1971: Separation from the Governor's Office . 18 1973-1974: The demise of National OEO . 19 1977-1979: Vermont's energy program battles . 21 1981-1982: Dawn of the New Federalism . 24 1991: A fight for survival . 28 II. STATE OEO TODAY: A DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS . 31 MISSION . 31 PROGRAMS AND BUDGET . 32 ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND PROCESS . 33 Agency of Human Services . 33 State Office of Economic Opportunity . 35 State 0£0-CAA communications . 37 A case study: Th e A ddison County controversy . 38 III. STATE OEO TODAY AND TOMORROW: AN ORGANIZATIONAL AN ALYS IS . 43 ORGANIZATIONAL ISSU ES . 43 Experience . 43 Jurisdiction . 44 Ideology . 45 Political considerations . 49 MI SSION ACCOMPLISHED? . 51 EPILOGUE . 54 APPENDIX . 57 NOTES . 59 GLOSSARY OF ACRONYMS . 61 BIBLI OGRAPHY •• • •• • 0 •••••• •• • • •••• •••• • •• ••••••• • ••••• • ••••••• • •••• •• ••• • • •• 63 NOTE ON THE AUTHOR . 67 VII FOREWORD Mary Carlson wrote this paper on the Vermont State Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) in partial fulfillment of her requirements as a graduate student in the Unive rsity of Ve rm ont (UVM) Master of Public Administration program (MPA). Each student in the MPA program must complete either a public service internship or an organizational analysis research pape r. The organizational analysis option is designed to permit students who are already working in a public service organization "to prepare a manuscript focusing upon a particula r o rgani za ti on which addresses a fundamental model, concept, case study, or method of inquiry within the fi eld of publi c administration." Since Mary had spent more than seventeen years working on state programs fo r low-income citi zens, she elected to prepare a case study on the OEO program, and I agreed to serve as her faculty adviser on this project. Befo re commenting on he r case study, let me first make a few observatio ns about Mary and about the focus she decided to pursue in he r research. Mary Carlson is a fifth-generation Vermonter born to a working-class family in Woodstock, a picture-pretty Windsor County town noted for its wealth and styli sh ambience. She advised me that she felt her early formative years in Woodstock helped account fo r her lifelong inte rest in poverty issues. In 1968 Mary graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the Unive rsity of Ve rm ont. She served as assistant to the director of the Central Vermont Community Action Council (CVCAC) from 1974 to 1987. While with CVCAC, she helped design and manage a numbe r of different programs fo r low­ income constituents, including the heating-fuel loan program. Since 1987 she has served as food and nutrition program coordinator at the Vermont Office of Economic Opportunity. In this positio n, she ix X FOREWORD administers grants to regional Community Action Agencies (CAAs) throughout Vermont, and she works with state and local groups on advocacy and organizational issues. When I first met with Mary to discuss her organizational analysis project, it became obvious that she possessed a wealth of personal knowledge about the history of the state's low-income and antipoverty programs. In an initial attempt to identify a specific organizational issue for her to analyze, we focused on a difficult administrative controversy that had erupted between the Addison County Community Action Group and the Champlain Valley Office of Economi c Opportunity. However, after I learned more about Mary's experience, I encouraged her to broaden her perspective in order to provide a more extensive overview of the development and evolutio n of Ve rmont's statewide antipoverty programs which began under Governor Philip Ho ff in the mid- 1960's. I thought Mary was uniquely well qualified for this task because she had worked with individuals who had helped to initiate these programs, including Hoff 's staff assistant, Benj amin Collins. When Ma ry submitted her final manuscript to me in December 199 1, I felt that her paper fi ll ed a real need by providing docum entati on on a pe ri od of Verm ont 's social hi story whi ch has been relatively negl ected. As a res ult, I submitted her work to UVM's Center for Research o n Vermont, and I am delighted they have published Mary's paper. Basically, the paper provides an informative overvi ew of the key public po li cies that have been implemented in Verm ont during the past three decades in respo nse to President Lyndo n B. Johnson's call in 1964 for a nati onal "Wa r on Poverty." The central theme of the paper is focused on the Ve rmont Office of Economi c Opportunity's working relationships within state government, and it is not intended to be a complete hi sto ry of Vermont's War on Poverty. However, Mary's paper does raise many important issues, and it serves as a ri ch springboard for future research. To cite but three such issues: FOREWORD xi (1) The formative era. The national War on Poverty program was officially launched on August 20, 1964, when President Johnson signed the Economic Opportunity Act into law. This act posed a real challenge for states like Vermont since the community action component focused o n alleviating poverty in the nation's major cities. Since community action was initiated to deal with poverty in urban areas, it didn't fit neatly into Vermont which had the highest percentage of rural population of any state in the nation. Yet, as Mary's paper indicates, Governor Philip Hoff, a progressive Democrat, was strongly in favor of the OEO program. Hoff's concerns had been heightened in May 1964, when Paul Guare (of the state planning office) prepared a report which indicated that one-fifth of Vermont's families were living below the national poverty level (which at the tim e of the 1960 Census was $2,943 per year fo r a fami ly of four). On September 4, 1964, Hoff issued an executive order establishing the nation's first state office of economic opportunity. Vermont was the first state to respond to the national legislation, yet it still faced a unique organizational challenge in formulating the community acti on agenci es that were cal led for in the 1964 act. How should one define "communities" and develop a coordinated community action response in a predominantly rural state like Vermont which consists of hundreds of small towns? As Mary explains, one of the options considered was to establish a single CAA for the entire state. This idea was eventually dropped, and five regional, multicounty antipoverty community action agencies were created in major areas throughout the state. Under the direction of Bob Davison, the County Extension Services took on responsibility for organizing this effort. Thus, once again Vermont was out front in terms of organizational innovation as it became the first state in the nation to have multicounty organizations driving the War on Poverty in every town in the state. Yet, although this organizational response was ingenious, rural poverty still remains a major public policy challenge within Vermont today. What can we learn about the strengths and XII FOREWORD weaknesses of these early organizational attempts to deal with this problem which might be useful in helping us address current poverty issues? (2) The middle years. While the initial challenge during the formative years was one of organizational design, the later challenge became one of ongoing institutional survival in a changing political climate. Within four years after the enactment of the Economic Opportunity Act, Republican Richard M. Nixon was president of the United States and Republican Deane C. Davis was governor of Vermont. Yet Vermont's Office of Economic Opportunity continued to make innovative adjustments as it became the first in the nation to accept responsibility for taking over poverty programs when block grants were created. Mary's paper describes the efforts at downsizing and the other continuous adjustments OEO has made in order to maintain its programmatic continuity.