Federal-State Administrative Relations in the Regulation of Public Service Enterprises

Recent years have seen increasing experimentation with and reliance upon interlevel administrative collaboration for adapting our traditional practices of government to the rapid extension and elaboration of national policies. In many instances, collaboration across the levels has been based upon the well-tried device of the grant-in-aid. In others, the practices of conferring, advising, transmitting official information, and acting jointly or interdependently for the performance of governmental services have been quickened. In yet other instances where federal as well as state agencies now regulate the same areas of business enterprise, a considerable body of collaborative interlevel practice has been developed. It is with this last field, especially as the collaborative action is directed toward the regulation of public service enterprises, that we are here concerned. Prior to 1933, federal regulation of public service enterprises had a long experience with railroads (1887), a longer experience with banks coming under the national system (1863), and a shorter experience under the Federal Reserve System (1913), and a yet shorter experience with water-power enterprises (1920). States and localities developed agencies and practices for the regulation of railroads and local transportation systems, banks, water, gas, telephone, and electric utilities, and, in the twenties, highway bus and trucking operations.