SACI Misses First Cut on House Budget

The Administration's proposal to replace 18 federal programs targeting different elements of community and economic development with a single, smaller program called the Strengthening America's Communities Initiative (SACI) received another blow last week (see the Feb. 14 issue of the Digest for more information on SACI). The House Appropriations subcommittee markup of the appropriations bill for Science, Departments of State, Justice, and Commerce, and related Agencies excluded the President's request of $3.7 billion for SACI from the Commerce section of the bill.

The highlights of the markup released by the House Appropriations Committee on the topic could be interpreted many ways: summarily squashing the issue for the budget year, merely a matter of procedure, or cryptically open-ended. "The [Administration's] budget request assumed enactment of a legislative proposal transferring several economic development programs to the Department of Commerce. The relevant authorizing committees have taken no action to date on this proposal."

The SACI Secretarial Advisory Committee will hold its third and final public hearing on the SACI concept this Thursday in Clearwater, Fla. One hour of the four-hour hearing will be available for public comments; the balance will be dedicated to special presentations and discussion of preliminary recommendations and findings. According to a May 31 announcement, the advisory committee will use the deliberations from the meeting "to produce a report of recommendations and advice for the Secretary of Commerce on the implementation of the President’s Strengthening America’s Communities Initiative later this year."

Opposition to SACI was quite strong at Congressional hearings in March (see the March 21 issue of the Digest), but the hearing announcement states, "Support among economic and community development thought leaders and practitioners and public officials continues to grow as more is learned about the problems with the current federal system and about the direction of the Initiative to solve these problems and help America’s communities transition to a 21st century economy."

SSTI will report on the proposed direction of the Initiative as it becomes publicly available. Advisory Committee meeting agendas, transcripts and presentations, and background information on the initiative are available at