Republican presidential nomination. Romney was confirmed by the Senate without opposition on January 20, 1969, the day of Nixon's inauguration, and was sworn into office on January 22, with Nixon at his side. Romney resigned as Governor of Michigan that same day, and was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor William G. Milliken. Milliken continued Romney's model of downplaying party label and ideology, and Republicans held onto the governorship for three more terms until 1983, though Michigan was one of the nation's most blue-collar states. As secretary, Romney conducted the first reorganization of the department since its 1966 creation. The changes were intended to make the department more business-like with fewer independent bureaucracies. His November 1969, plan brought programs with similar functions together under unified, policy-based administration at the Washington level, and created two new assistant secretary positions. At the same time, he increased the number of regional and area offices and decentralized program operations and locality-based decisions to them, moves that were in keeping with Nixon's "New Federalism". In particular, the Federal Housing Administration underwent wholesale changes to make it less autonomous. During his tenure, Romney believed his reorganization made the department more efficient and able to withstand some, but not all, of the budget cuts that Nixon imposed on it. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 mandated a federal commitment towards housing desegregation, and required HUD to orient its programs in this direction. Romney, filled with moral passion, wanted to address the widening economic and geographic gulf between whites and blacks by moving blacks out of inner-city ghettos into suburbs. Romney proposed an open housing scheme to facilitate desegregation, dubbed "Open Communities"; HUD planned it for many months without keeping Nixon informed. When the open housing proposal became public, local reaction was often hostile. Such was the reaction of many residents in Warren, Michigan, a predominately white blue-collar suburb of Detroit. While it had no formal discriminatory laws, most blacks were excluded by zoning practices, refusals to sell to them, and intimidatory actions of white property owners, many of whom were ethnic Polish and Catholic and had moved to the suburb as part of white flight. By this time, Detroit was 40–50 percent black. HUD made Warren a prime target for Open Communities enforcement and threatened to halt all federal assistance to the town unless it took a series of actions to end racial discrimination there; town officials said progress