Can we resolve conflicts which divide three levels of government?

              Can we resolve conflicts which divide three levels of government?  NATION'S CITIES interviews Brooks Hays about federal responsibilities toward intergovernmental relations  For 43 years Brooks Hays, special assistant to the President on intergovernmental relations, has served in a wide variety of local, state, regional, and federal assignments.  From 1942 through 1958, he represented Arkansas' 5th District in the U. S. Congress.  He was, prior to assuming his present post in December, 1961, a member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority and Assistant Secretary of State for Congressional Relations.     Mr. Hays, in your position as adviser to the President on intergovernmental matters, do you find yourself drawing much on previous experience?     Certainly I do. You could say that I'm an ex-county official, an ex-state official, and ex-department official, and an ex-legislator. I must have been born for government, if not for politics. I ran four times for office before being elected, but I love public service. My first job was with the Treasury Department 43 years ago.  When did intergovernmental activities begin to interest you?  That's hard to say. Of course, my early experience was in county government, back in Pope County, Arkansas.  I made $3 a day during county elections working for the election board. And in those days the court house was the chief focus for local government. A town of 2,000 didn't need much municipal government.  But in the 1920s when I was in charge of the Civil Law Division in the Arkansas Attorney General's office, I became very much aware of the overlapping of governmental authority.  On a national basis, my interest sharpened because I come from a poor state.  It became important to me to know that federal grants, working through the states, were providing for better conditions in communities.  I wish I had some case studies in poor towns and agricultural areas to see if victims of poverty have been aided by wise governmental actions.  Too often representatives from poor counties go to larger governments for help instead of aligning themselves with fellow rural leaders to get the kind of changes that could lead to sound alternatives and progress.  I'm sure that the problems of municipal government might be met much the same way.  It is heartening that leadership at a national level, such as the American Municipal Association provides, is getting professionalism into overlapping areas in the states. It is making a real contribution to local government.     We are interested in federal policy towards intergovernmental problems. Why is there any policy in this matter?     There is pressing need to invade the jungle of governmental conflicts.  We have reached a point in our complex society where you can't take state, municipal, and federal government and assume they will function properly with just occasional meetings in the corridor by members of committees appointed by cabinet members, governors, and mayors.  Modern government should never be envisioned as a structure; it is an organism.  The federal government, of course, has a big stake in effective state and local government. State and municipal    12      NATION'S   CITIES    •    WINTER   1962