CDBGs were designed in part to encourage increased citizen participation in development projects. However, because local discretion was emphasized, neither the law or executive orders issued by HUD dictated a particular structure or formula specifying how participation was to be integrated into decision processes. With a few exceptions, it was not. Usually the poor and minorities were not given official roles in decisions, and in puts from citizen advisory committees were usually not considered seriously. Nor did the flexibility afforded local officials inspire a tidal wave of innovative local projects. Most new projects were based on successful experiments attempted elsewhere or were the result of federal government recommendations. To be sure, local officials their new- found empowerment, but the key question was to what forces, ideas, traditions, norms, and so on did they respond when they applied the discretion? It common for these officials to spend the funds comfortably-that is, in ways that did not offend the balance of local political forces In conclusion, CDBGs hoped that the decategorization, decentralization, and (expected) democratization of development project decision making would improve both decision-making processes and policy results. Instead, the grants accomplished only one objective: the decentralization, democratization, and decategorization of procedures, and not decisions that consciously integrated those procedures with meaningful results. Making procedures ends unto themselves turns policy and administrative decisions into as one observer commented, a "crap game," the results of which are almost totally dependent on the of politics that dominates the recipient government's arena.