The charge that the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds “has refused to permit a referendum among the Jewish communities of America on the subject of national budgeting, but prefers to leave the decision to the haphazard voting processes of the General Assembly” was made here today in a statement issued by the Committee to Oppose National Budgeting.
Replying to this charge, Sidney Hollander, president of the Council, declared that “the opposition propaganda apparently is based on a misinterpretation of the procedures being used by the Council in submitting to its member agencies the national advisory budgeting proposal which has the overwhelming endorsement of the officers and members of the board of directors.”
“There is no justification,” Mr. Hollander stated, “for the criticism levelled against the officers of the Council who are carrying out a mandate from the General Assembly of member agency delegates. The question of national advisory budgeting was submitted in 1941 in a referendum to member agencies of the Council. The referendum resulted in a vote of 135 in favor of the proposal and 119 opposed.
“The procedures being used,” Mr. Hollander continued, “are also based on an agreement with the 1942 predecessors of the current handful of individual opponents. All of the member agencies of the Council will have at least four months time previous to the Assembly to consider carefully the pros and cons of a measure which is designed to meet their needs and to improve cooperative relationships between local Jewish fund raising agencies and the national and overseas agencies which they support.”
Ezra Shapiro, chairman of the Committee to Oppose National Budgeting, made public an exchange of letters with Mr. Hollander, revealing that the Committee had urged the Council “to take account of the fact that national budgeting involves vast social changes and extraordinary transformation of American Jewry.” The Committee therefore requested that “the Council conduct a referendum among its member agencies, so that the decision reached would be fully representative of American Jewish public opinion.”
Mr. Shapiro charged that “the board of directors of the Council had originally voted that such a referendum should be conducted, but this decision was subsequently overturned by the small group of the executive committee, which stated that since ODT restrictions had been lifted and a General Assembly was feasible, no referendum was necessary.”
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