RAYBURN D. HANZLIK FILES, 1975-76

Ray Hanzlik joined the Domestic Council staff in August 1975 to help coordinate the six White House forums on domestic policy. He remained on the staff throughout 1976 as an assistant to Special Assistant for Intergovernmental Affairs Stephen McConahey. The materials described consist of working files accumulated by Hanzlik and the forums staff in 1975 and by Hanzlik in 1976, arranged by function and topic.

Drawing on his past White House conference experience, Hanzlik was selected in August 1975 to coordinate the six public policy forums conducted by the Vice President in the fall of that year. In 1976 Hanzlik oversaw the dismantling of the forums staff and then joined the Domestic Council staff as Associate Director for Intergovernmental Affairs. His work under Stephen McConahey came at a time when the Ford administration, according to Hanzlik, was at the "low-point of intergovernmental credibility," and was making a concerted effort to improve relations with state and local governments. Hanzlik did research, drafted reports and memoranda and monitored various low level issues as assigned by McConahey. He remained with the Domestic Council through the end of the Ford administration.

Hanzlik's work on the forums was his most significant Ford administration service. In July 1975 President Ford charged Vice President Nelson Rockefeller with conducting a series of forums throughout the country to gauge public domestic policy concerns. Rockefeller asked his counsellor, John Veneman, to oversee the effort, recruit a staff, conduct the sessions and summarize the results. Veneman hired Hanzlik to handle to logistics of each forum and supervise the staff. By September Rockefeller and the forums staff had decided the basic format, chosen the location of each forum, and made preliminary logistical arrangements. The locations and dates of the six forums were:

• Denver, Colorado -- October 21
• Tampa, Florida -- October 29
• Austin, Texas -- November 11
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania -- November 18
• Indianapolis, Indiana -- November 25
• Los Angeles, California -- December 9

Each forum followed a similar basic format. A plenary morning session, chaired by Vice President Rockefeller, featured presentations by expert witnesses before a panel of federal officials on regional concerns within one of four broad policy areas:

• economic recovery
• resource development and the environment
• social policy
• community building

Following each witness' statement, Rockefeller or the appropriate Cabinet secretary or assistant secretary in attendance responded briefly, and then opened the floor to comments by expert observers and the general public. Four concurrent afternoon sessions continued the discussion of the four major policy areas. All of the witnesses and observers were handpicked by the forums staff based on suggestions of the Federal Regional Councils. In addition the staff relied heavily on the Councils in each host region to offset costs, arrange hotel and convention hall accommodations, and handle basic press liaison.

While media coverage of the forums was relatively heavy, opinion was mixed. Variously described as a Rockefeller traveling road show, public complaint sessions, and a serious examination of public policy, Vice President Rockefeller and the staff viewed the forums as an efficient way of generating initiatives for President Ford's State of the Union address. The forums also gave Rockefeller and the Cabinet a highly visible arena for emphasizing the Ford administration position on current domestic issues. Rockefeller hoped that the forums would provide a vehicle for inserting some long-range planning into a Domestic Council system bound up in the details of issue response. The forums staff summarized many of these views and objectives in an internal report on media coverage of the six forums.

At the completion of the forums series, the staff analyzed the nearly 12,000 pages of testimony, extracted ideas and suggestions from hundreds of written statements submitted by observers and the general public, and drafted a report form the Vice President to President Ford. This report, nearly 800 pages in length, summarized educated public opinion in each of the regions, generalized the national mood, and made a series of broad suggestions for further study. In January 1976, the forums staff gathered their working files and transmitted them to the White House for inclusion with the President's official papers.

The Hanzlik materials consist of files illustrating his two distinct functions for the Ford administration Domestic Council. A small file accumulated by Hanzlik during 1976 documents his work with Special Assistant Stephen McConahey to evaluate the overall intergovernmental activities and capabilities of the Executive Branch. Included are correspondence, memoranda, reports and other materials on a variety of low-level intergovernmental topics monitored by Hanzlik; information on a complaint by the State of Texas about possible abuse of federal community development grants; and two extensive studies done by Hanzlik and his assistant Margo Boyle on the state of intergovernmental relations and the extent of Executive Branch participation in major conferences.

The vast majority of the Hanzlik materials consists of working files compiled by Hanzlik and many of the forums staff while organizing and conducting the public forums. Included are an administrative file of memoranda, correspondence, draft agenda, and background information documenting Hanzlik's functions, especially acquiring a staff and organizing the schedule; logistical details for each forum, including agendas, briefing books, reports and witness lists; information on media plans for the forums, newspaper clippings, and a staff report on media perceptions; written statements submitted by invited observers, participants and the general public; transcripts of proceedings; and printed summaries of each forum eventually included in the final report to the President. These Hanzlik materials contain considerable materials produced or received by several members of the forums staff, including but not limited to Margo Boyle, Allen Moore, Powell Moore, and Julie Rowe.

As a working file, the Hanzlik materials do not consist of items received by Vice President Rockefeller or Counsellor Veneman. The extensive cooperation between the forums staff and the Federal Regional Councils responsible for much of the advance work is only partially documented. In addition the files contain no drafts or copies of the report to the President, and no evidence of any follow-up or impact of the forums on domestic policy formulation.

Related Materials (May 1982)
Copies of the final forums report, "White House Public Forums on Domestic Policy, 1975", are catalogued in the Library's book collection, as is a Ph.D. dissertation by Michael Turner on Vice President Rockefeller, containing a chapter on the public forums.

The Library's audiovisual collection has videotapes of the morning session in Philadelphia and Rockefeller's press conference immediately following, and audiotapes of three afternoon sessions. (The natural resources tape is currently unusable.) Also available are four reels of audiotape of the morning session in Denver and a two hour edited version of the same session broadcast on KRMA-TV; 16 audiotapes of the complete Los Angeles forum; and a poorly recorded audiotape of the Tampa afternoon session on economic recovery.

The files of several Domestic Council staff contain scattered information on the public forums; including those of James Cannon, Dean Overman, and Art Quern. More significant are the files on intergovernmental affairs: James Falk, 1974-75 and Stephen McConahey, 1976.