Community Services Block Grants (CSBG) provide federal funds to states, territories, and tribes for distribution to local agencies to support a wide range of community-based activities to reduce poverty. Smaller related programs-Community Economic Development (CED), Rural Community Facilities (RCF), and Individual Development Accounts (IDAs)-also support antipoverty efforts. CSBG and some of these related activities trace their roots to the War on Poverty, launched in the 1960s. Today, they are administered at the federal level by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The Community Services Block Grant (CSBG) provided over $600 million to states in fiscal year 2005 to support over 1,000 local antipoverty agencies. The Department of Health and Human Services's (HHS) Office of Community Services (OCS) is primarily responsible for overseeing this grant; states have oversight responsibility for local agencies. At the request of Congress, GAO is providing information on (1) HHS's compliance with federal laws and standards in overseeing states, (2) five states' efforts to monitor local agencies, and (3) federal CSBG training and technical assistance funds targeted to local agencies with problems and the results of the assistance. States were selected based on varying numbers of local agencies and grant amounts and recommendations from associations, among other criteria.

Focuses on the new Community Services Block Grant program-which was administered under a centralized categorical format by the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity from 1964 to 1973 and the U.S. Community Services Administration from 1974 to 1980. The actual impact of this switch from a centralized to a more decentralized federal funding system is analyzed by comparing fiscal, written rulemaking, and informal behind-the-scenes federal administrative and political actions under the old categorical format. These trends are then incorporated into an updated administrative and political overview of the 1960s war on poverty effort, to provide a clearer picture on how the U.S. government's war on poverty was faring in the 1980s.