Community Development

The Federal Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community Program Gao ID: T-RCED-98-27 October 28, 1997

This testimony focuses on the Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community program, which targets federal grants to distressed urban and rural communities for redevelopment and social services and provides tax and regulatory relief to attract businesses to distressed communities. GAO discusses the (1) program's implementation in six urban empowerment zones: Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, New York, and Philadelphia-Camden; (2) factors that program participants believe have either helped or hindered efforts to carry out the program; and (3) plans for evaluating the program.

GAO noted that: (1) all six of the urban EZs had met the criteria defined in the program's authorizing legislation, developed a strategic plan, signed an agreement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and their respective states for implementing the program, signed an agreement with their states for obtaining funds, drafted performance benchmarks, and established a governance structure; (2) however, the EZs differed in their geographic and demographic characteristics, reflecting the selection criteria in the authorizing legislation; (3) many officials involved in implementing the program generally agreed on factors that had either helped or hindered their efforts; (4) for example, factors identified as helping the program's implementation included community representation within the governance structures and enhanced communication among stakeholders; (5) similarly, factors identified as hindering the program's implementation included preexisting relationships among EZ stakeholders and pressure for quick results; (6) from the beginning, the Congress and HUD made evaluation plans an integral part of the EZ program by requiring each community to identify in its strategic plan the baselines, methods, and benchmarks for measuring the success of its plan; and (7) however, the measures being used generally describe the amount of work that will be produced (outputs) rather than the results that are anticipated (outcomes).



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