Plenary Session Transcripts

Governors Attending:

Guests:

Discussion Subjects:

Federal-state relations; business of being Governors; economic problems of employment, effects on state government, and migration; highways and highway safety; fiscal operation and control; natural resources; and national defense

Points of Interest:

This annual meeting marked the 50th anniversary of the Governors' Conference and the 100th anniversary of the birth of Theodore Roosevelt, who had called the Governors together for the first time in 1908. Governors adopted a resolution in recognition of the anniversary.

In an opening statement on federal-state relations, Governor Lane Dwinell of New Hampshire said the first progress report of the Joint Federal-State Action Committee had recommended that: (1) safeguards be interwoven into federal stimulative grants to ensure that they were only temporarily a responsibility of the federal government and certain functions traditionally funded by the federal government--i.e., urban renewal and atomic energy--should become the responsibility of the states; and (2) in order to implement the shift of functions from the federal government to state governments, the President should ask Congress to reduce the federal tax on local telephone service by 40 percent. The Committee was now moving to a second phase, during which its goal was to pinpoint problems likely to require federal or state action in the future. The Committee recommended that states establish commissions to study future educational needs and resources, that research be conducted on urban renewal, that public works projects be accelerated to improve employment opportunities and stimulate economic activity, that states be credited for federal tax on local phone service, and that federal and state inheritance taxes be modernized.

Governor Freeman of Minnesota disagreed with the notion that federal and state functions should be separated, because he felt they had become too intertwined. He suggested instead that focus be placed, among other things, on synchronizing the timing of federal and state appropriations, better coordinating federal aid programs, streamlining the administration of federal grants, and restricting the federal government's bypassing of states in its aid to local governments to situations in which states maintained no suitable mechanism for distributing the aid themselves.

The Cold War was the subject of discussion in a number of respects. Dag Hammarskjold spoke of the ways in which the Cold War had made the role of the United Nations more important, in part for the purpose of promoting peaceful uses of atomic energy. General Maxwell Taylor spoke of the need to reorganize the National Guard to increase the number of combat units per Army division and to ensure that only reserve troops ready for combat in the era of atomic war be retained. Perkins McGuire of the Defense Department talked about the production of weapons and how procurement programs were being targeted to make contracts with firms in states/regions where there was surplus labor.

Memorable Quotes:

Dag Hammarskjold said: "Although the conflict between the Western world and the Soviet world has fundamentally changed the conditions in which the United Nations must work, it has not rendered the United Nations' efforts less essential. On the contrary, the deeper the cleavages, the greater the need to maintain, by such means as we have, contacts across the frontiers, a forum for discussion and, above all, the possibilities for reconciliation."

Hammarskjold also said: "It is a world where tactics often are given priority over substance...it is...a world where the preacher may be tempted to give greater effort to winning the approval of the converted than to converting the sinners. If we succumb to such dangers, we lose the ability to communicate our sincere reaction to others who are of a different view, forgetting also how to listen to what they may have to say in explanation of their stands."

Selected Resolutions Adopted:
(1) Urging continuation of the Joint Federal-State Action Committee, requesting immediate implementation of the committee's recommendations for increased effort by states in areas of governmental activity that are to be federal-state-local responsibilities, and requesting implementation of recommendations for state assumption of complete administrative and financial responsibilities for functions now joint federal-state responsibility be handled gradually or through modification of tax-relinquishment to ensure that revenue sources were made available to states equivalent to the costs of the functions to be assumed; (2) urging maintenance of the strength of the National Guard; (3) resolving that the proposed Department of Defense reorganization plan be amended so that the National Guard Bureau was not transferred from jurisdiction under the Army and Air Force Chiefs of Staff; (4) urging federal funding for construction of fallout shelters and supporting legislation passed by the House and pending in the Senate to liberalize contributions to states and localities in the vital area of civil defense; (5) urging the President to meet with congressional leaders to formulate a comprehensive program to meet the nation's needs in areas such as unemployment insurance benefits, tax policies, and public works; (6) urging Governors and state legislatures to carefully consider the report and recommendations of the Council of State Governments regarding air pollution; (7) asking the federal government to study the matter of highway funding for roads that were already under construction prior to adoption of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956; (8) instructing the NGC chairman to appoint a committee to study means for solving the problem of granting public assistance to "stateless" persons (meaning those who had left one state but not lived in another long enough to have established residency); and (9) urging citizens to avail themselves of the polio vaccine and asking health groups to continue emphasizing the importance of the vaccine.