Federal paperwork costs: A case study of community development block grants

Abstract

Though block grants from the Federal Government to the State and local governments were widely touted as solutions to the problems incident to Federal paperwork, the expectation exceeded the practice. For selected cities and urban counties. paperwork costs in Community Development Block Grants ranged between 1 and 10% of program costs. Thus. though the ‘federal paperwork’ problem may not be as vast as some assert, it nonetheless amounts to several billion dollars annually.