Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 81.djvu/729

 81

STAT.]

PUBLIC LAW 90-2i22-DEC. 23, 1967

695

and causes, and establish priorities among projects, activities and areas as needed for the best and most efficient use of resources. " (2) Encouraging agencies engaged in activities related to the community action program to plan for, secure and administer assistance available under this title or from other sources on a common or cooperative basis; providing planning or technical assistance to those agencies; and generally, m cooperation with community agencies and officials, undertaking actions to improve existing efforts to attack poverty, such as improving day-to-day communication, closing service gaps, focusing resources on the most needy, and providing additional opportunities to low-income individuals for regular employment or participation in the programs or activities for which those community agencies and officials are responsible. "(3) Initiating and sponsoring projects responsive to needs of the poor which are not otherwise being met, with particular emphasis on providing central or common services that can be drawn upon by a variety of related programs, developing new approaches or new types of services that can be incorporated into other programs, and filling gaps pending the expansion or modification of those programs. "(4) Establishing effective procedures by which the poor and area residents concerned will be enabled to influence the character of programs affecting their interests, providing for their regular participation in the implementation of those programs, and providing technical and other support needed to enable the poor and neighborhood groups to secure on their own behalf available assistance from public and private sources. "(5) Joining with and encouraging business, labor, and other private groups and organ^'zations to undertake, together with public officials and agencies, activities in support of the community action program which will result in the additional use of private resources and capabilities, with a view to such things as developing new employment opportunities, stimulating investment that will have a measurable impact in reducing poverty among residents of areas of concentrated poverty, and providing methods by which residents of those areas can work with private groups, firms, and institutions in seeking solutions to problems of common concern. "ADMINISTRATIVE STANDARDS

"SEC. 213. (a) Each community action agency shall observe, and ishall (as appropriate) require or encourage other agencies participating in a community action program to observe, standards of organization, management and administration which will assure, so far as reasonably possible, that all program activities are conducted in a manner consistent with the purposes of this title and the objective of providing assistance effectively, efficiently, and free of any taint of partisan political bias or personal or family favoritism. Each community action agency shall establish or adopt rules to carry out this section, which shall include rules to assure full staff accountability in matters governed by law, regulations, or agency policy. Each community action agency shall also provide for reasonable public access to information, including but not limited to public hearings at the request of appropriate community groups and reasonable public access to books and records of the agency or other agencies engaged in rogram activities or operations involving the use of authority or unds for which it is responsible. And each community action agency

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Public access to information.

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