Glitch Apparently Gives Urban Program Extra Year of Life : Computer Revives Senate-Killed Grants

The Senate, in a predicament that will sound familiar to anyone in this electronic age who has ever tried to straighten out an error on a bank statement, discovered this week that it is hard to argue with a computer.

When the Senate narrowly passed a budget package in the wee hours of the morning on May 10, Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) proudly pointed to the Urban Development Action Grant program as one of 13 that would be terminated. Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N. M.) believed that to be the case and so did his staff.

Spitting Out Numbers

But the computer furiously spitting out the numbers that went into that official budget document thought differently. And, in the end, the computer ruled.

It took days for the Senate to straighten things out. Domenici explained Friday that, in his staff’s haste to churn out a final document after an exhausting week of budget debate, it unwittingly had produced a budget that gave the action grant program a one-year lease on life. And the Senate, without realizing that the program had survived, approved it.

Later on May 10, after everyone had caught a little sleep, computer printouts distributed to reporters showed that the 1986 budget included $300 million for the action grants, 80% of this year’s level. The document indicated that the Senate would not allow the program to expire until 1987, and even that decision could be reversed in next year’s budget negotiations.

Figures Questioned

Reporters quickly questioned those figures, but the Budget Committee staff assured them that the Senate Republican leaders who prepared the budget had decided to kill the program in fiscal 1986, which begins Oct. 1. Most of the journalists reported that the program was dead.

Instead, thanks to the computer, the popular program, under which cities receive federal funds for projects that spur economic development, now seems almost certain to survive at least one more year.

The House Budget Committee voted Thursday to cut action grant funds next year by only 10%, a position that seems certain to prevail when the entire House considers the budget next week. Then, it will be up to House-Senate negotiators to reconcile their versions of the budget, which differ substantially on many issues but hardly at all on urban action grants.