Question:
Do you feel that when you were a
regional director, there was any tension between you and Washington in terms of what was
successful or not?
Answer:
I think, at the time that I was in the regions, there wasn’t that problem because we didn’t
have that pressure on us. We could do whatever we wanted to do at that point. The definitional
pressures and problems emerged with the cutbacks. We had to survive, and the question was,
how do you survive? That’s where the schism really began, Heidi. I think at that point my
argument was that I didn’t see a reason why we had to throw the baby out with the bath water. I
wasn’t convinced that Congress needed the numbers; when I testified before Congress, it was of
our own volition that we shared the number of disputes -- they didn’t ask us about that. And
even when they did, they weren’t terribly interested. What they were more interested in was
whether you could tell them what you did in their individual districts; now that’s what was more
interesting to them politically. The sheer numbers....well, they would just get glassy-eyed. First of
all, you’re talking about numbers -- when I was there, of doing 1060 cases a year, against an
agency like Health and Human Services doing, you know, 40 times that number, whatever it is
they were doing. So, the point being that I was never convinced that Congress was terribly
impressed by the numbers, but we sort of convinced ourselves that we thought they were -- some
people did. When I got to Washington, some of us tried to get the agency to rethink itself, which
was very, very difficult to do.....to look at different kinds of measurements of success, and then
do more to work harder in convincing Congress and the Attorney General’s office that these
were more important things to do. It was an uphill battle......slightly more successful in the Carter
administration, less compelling in the Nixon administration and in the Reagan administration --
they really didn’t care, frankly.
