FEDERATION
Where immediate consolidation at a single stroke is out of the question, as is apparently almost always the case, a more easy transition is suggested by the recommendations of the City and County Government Association of Alameda County, California. Realizing that a powerful local sentiment in the outlying territory militated irresistibly against annexation to the city of Oakland or, in fact, any form of complete organic union of the municipalities in the county, this Association has proposed as the logical first step to a more economically organized county, a plan of federation.
ORGANIZATION CHART
For the City and County of Alameda and its Boroughs as Proposed in the Tentative Charter Submitted by the City and County Government Association
SKETCH of PROPOSED CITY and COUNTY of ALAMEDA SHOWING PROPOSED BOROUGHS
Under the proposed plan the governing body would consist of one councillor from each of twenty-one districts. Unlike the present board of supervisors in Alameda County, the new body would have only legislative functions. The functions of the county, as a public corporation, would be broadened to include a number of interests which the municipalities are conceived to have in common. Police protection, for instance, would revert from the cities back to the county, where it was originally lodged, on the theory that crime thrives in a certain social and physical environment and knows nothing and cares less for corporate limits. And inasmuch also as the ravages of fire and disease are the interests of a territory rather than the corporate boundaries of a city, the control of these perils would also be transferred to the county. The installation of the plan would also result in the abolishment of the dual system of tax assessment and tax collection. To the smaller units would be left jurisdiction over their more distinctively local affairs such as public works. The identity of the individual cities, which would be known as “boroughs,” would thus remain intact, for they would retain their local governing bodies to frame strictly local policies. At the same time the general organization of the local government would provide for the common interests of the constituent members.
Some such plan of federation, as a transition step toward unity, would seem to commend itself to several important counties which are made up of communities like those which compose Alameda County. How these communities in the face of increased cost of government and the greater demands for public service are much longer to resist some measures toward greater organic unity it is difficult to conceive.
Even in the domain of public works the desirability of unified control is often of much importance. Thus in Essex County, N. J., it was discovered as early as 1894 that no adequate provision for a public park system could be worked out by the separate municipalities in that distinctly urban county. In the case of certain thorough-fares which ran through two or more of these cities, it was highly desirable to effect some sort of a continuous, uniform improvement. Certain lowlands, also, were found to lie partly in one municipality and partly in another, so that neither city could act to advantage independently. Some of the cities had no available space for park purposes, while others had the space, without the resources or the need for developing it. From every point of view the obvious course to pursue led to a general consolidation of park interests, and a comprehensive well-balanced park plan, county-wide in its scope. And so there was created a county park commission which has exclusive jurisdiction over park developments and maintenance. It is noteworthy however that this commission, as we have already indicated, was not made an integral part of the existing county government but a separate corporation; the heads of this new department of government were made appointive by the judges of the Supreme Court in order that politics might be eliminated from its control. Had the metropolitan area been under a single municipal control, no such complication would have been necessary. The county government was deemed unfit to represent the unity of interest throughout the several communities when an important new undertaking was under consideration.
Of the realization of the idea of the metropolitan unification under county control the London County Council[20] is the world’s most striking and instructive example. London, through the centuries, as some of our American cities have done in a lifetime, had grown from a multitude of small independent local communities into a single, continuous metropolitan district. However, the constituent units, of which the ancient city of London is but one, retained their historic identities and clung to their historic institutions. In this peculiar way London perhaps resembles the metropolitan district of New York or Boston or Essex County in New Jersey. From time to time new units of administration were laid down to correspond to modern needs, until the system of local government was complexity itself. In 1855, Parliament took the first step toward adjusting this situation, creating the Metropolitan Board of Works which, in the thirty-three years of its life, was responsible for much of the city’s physical improvement. But corruption and scandal entered its ranks and it was legislated out of existence. The London County Council was then established with a membership composed of one hundred and eighteen councillors, two members being chosen from each of the fifty-seven “parliamentary boroughs” or election districts and four from the city of London. From within or without its own membership the councillors select nineteen aldermen who serve for a six-year term. Through its committees the Council gets into touch with its various problems of the county, while engineering, medical, financial and other experts are held responsible for actual administration. A “clerk” who is chosen by the Council is in fact the coördinator of the whole system, somewhat in the manner of a city manager in the United States. A comptroller serves as the fiscal agent of the Council.
Upon the county of London thus organized are imposed many of the functions which in America are almost universally entrusted to cities: extensive authority over public health, all matters relating to fire protection, all metropolitan street improvement projects, the construction and maintenance of bridges that cross the Thames, the administration of the building laws and the maintenance of tenement houses. The Council has also limited powers over what we in this country term “public utilities”; it has power to establish technical schools and to build and maintain parks and recreation centers. Its financial powers, while subject in their exercise to the control of the Home Office, are comprehensive.
Nor is the county of London but a city by another name. The metropolitan boroughs have their separate identity and a very real authority, including a certain control over public health and public lighting. In any conflict between the boroughs and the county the Home Office acts as the final arbiter.
London county has a record of which it has good reason to be proud. To its credit it has a long list of mighty public works, conceived and executed in a spirit of public service. Apparently neither graft nor the spoils system have obtained a foothold. Here is a county which has become so conspicuous and interesting to its citizens that they form themselves into local political parties, founded upon genuine differences of opinion and policy to make their citizenship felt in its government. In the seats of the governing body sit, not the typical office seeker to which we are accustomed in America, but men of the influence and ability of Lord Rosebery, afterwards the prime minister of England, and Sir John Lubbock.
All of which would seem to go to prove that even at this late date, the county is capable of a very honorable service, if it is taken seriously.
The whole problem is of utmost importance to the future of American cities. Aside from the obvious economies of a single local government as opposed to two or more, it seems essential that the future development of large centers of population should not be hampered by conflicting policies of a double or multiple system of local governments. It is obvious, moreover, that perils which continually threaten the population of urban communities, such as fire, crime and contagious diseases, constitute unified problems which are co-extensive with congested areas. It would seem essential that the control of these perils should be a unified one and that too much reliance should not be placed upon a spirit of coöperation between different units.
[19] See Hormell, O. C. “Boston’s County Problems,” Annals American Academy of Political and Social Science, May, 1913, pp. 134 et seq.
[20] See Munro, Government of European Cities, pp. 345 et. seq.
CHAPTER XVII
RECONSTRUCTION: PRINCIPLES, PRECEDENTS AND PROPOSALS
We have been at some pains to put the county into right relationships. Ideally, it is to be a supervised local division of the state administration (such supervision to insure strict accountability but to be unobstructive); it is to be relieved by the state of not a few incompatible, back-breaking burdens; it is to have (with some necessary limitations) a free hand in making over its internal organization for whatever obligations of public service may be laid upon it in the future. In some respects its greatest service is to consist in receding entirely from public service, while in other respects its importance should be greatly enhanced.
Practically, these external adjusting movements will proceed concurrently, with varying speed, according as the need for the one or the other may exist or be recognized. Their full fruition will still leave the county, within its restricted sphere, with a very distinct and honorable body of functions to perform. And for this, the county, now so largely an unfit instrument of a self-governing, self-respecting community, must be made over from within.
The basic formula of reconstruction is not far to seek. In every state the forward looking part of the citizenry which interests itself in better government for long toyed with the theory of “checks and balances,” which might be denominated for popular purposes as “safety via complication.” Past generations put a premium on ingenious political devices. Just as to some people medicine which is not bitter is not efficacious, so to the old school of political reformers, government was dangerous if it could be seen through and understood. But ingenuity and complexity in city government “came high.” The cost of them was “conspicuous failure.” In the end the people rebelled and the end of the old way of thinking about government was in sight. Witness: the movements of those cities which since 1901 have so cheerfully though so thoughtfully “scrapped” the historic dogma by the act of adopting the “commission” plan. Ingenious, complicated, inefficient, corrupt, city governments have given way literally by the hundreds to a new system, the corner-stone principle of which is simplicity: one set of officials to elect and watch; one place to go to get things done; one source to which to direct criticism when things go wrong.
In a word, the Short Ballot, in its fullest implication. It is not simply that there should be few officers to elect. County candidates are not especially obscure to rural voters and the ballots in the country districts are not often absurdly long. The farmer probably makes a better job of it when it comes to making up his ticket than any other class of citizen. It is also necessary that “those officers should be elective which are important enough to attract and deserve examination,” that is, officers who stand at the sources of public policy—not sheriffs or coroners or county clerks; not officers who simply follow out a statutory routine, but those who are supposed to lay out programs of county action.
And then, the Short Ballot connotes unification of powers. For what does it avail to watch, to criticize a single set of officers if all the while the really important work of the county is performed and the really important damage is committed by the officials who are obscure and therefore unwatched?
County government, as it stands, is the very personification of non-conformity to these approved principles of political organization. Starting, therefore, at the base of an ideal structure, let us proceed to the task of reconstruction.
Under ideal home-rule conditions the county will have been brought face to face with the obligation to stand on its own feet. It will look about for appropriate means to redeem that obligation. The electorate will be made responsible for its collective conduct by virtue of accurate representation in the county’s council. Responsibility will first be secured in the very make-up of the governing body, which is the source of power in any popular government. No stereotyped uniform plan of organization will do; no slavish copying of the “New England” type, or the “southern” type: counties differ too widely for that. But natural and legitimate cleavages of public opinion will be recognized and represented. Minor geographical divisions which have a distinct identity may be given a separate voice in the county board, but if the county is a geographical and social unit, the form of the governing body will reflect the fact. And if the county is co-extensive with a city, that circumstance will be given due weight.
But the county board will be something more than an epitomized electorate. It will be clothed, as such bodies rarely are, with the power not only to discover what the people want, but to translate their wishes into deeds of administration. Instead of working as now through alien instruments in the person of independent officials, it will control the operating mechanism of the county, which will be of its own selection. Shall we take away from the people the power to choose the sheriffs, the county clerk, the surveyor, the superintendent of the poor? Yes, take away the selection, but reinforce their control. Abandon the separation of powers? Yes, do away with the three-ring (or perhaps twelve- or twenty-ring) circus, and get down to the serious business of government. For business never was successfully organized except on the principle that the head controls the tail and all that intervenes. In terms of law, the county board, subject of course to state legislative and administrative supervision, will exercise all the powers of the corporation, including those of appointment, of revenue raising and of appropriation.
A long step toward the fulfillment of these principles in actual life has been taken in the county of Los Angeles, Cal., one of those communities in which the doctrine of complexity was once carried to absurd extremes. But the new charter of this county, which was the first to be adopted[21] under the home-rule provisions of the constitution, proceeded in great measure in the light of the theory exemplified by the commission plan in the cities. The supervisors are retained on the elective list as the constitution requires, but the county superintendent of schools, coroner, public administrator, county clerk, treasurer, tax collector, recorder and surveyor, all of whom were formerly elected by the voters, are now appointed by and are responsible to the county governing body, which is the board of supervisors. The sheriff, the auditor, the assessor and the district attorney are still elective. In thus extending the power of the board of supervisors, the charter framers require that, with a few exceptions, the officers shall be chosen from competitive lists on the basis of merit and fitness. The fee system is abolished. The Los Angeles achievement, while it falls far short of the measure of unity which is present in many counties governed by the commissioner system, is important as a recent conscious step toward greater simplicity.
And now that we have perfected a mechanism for expressing the general will of the people of the county, it remains to arm the governing body more effectively with the means for translating mere wishes into concrete acts of administration. To put it otherwise, we must mobilize the operating departments under effective leadership.
Recall, first, our statement in an earlier chapter that the county in the United States is almost universally devoid of a definite executive head. One exception is the two first-class counties of New Jersey (Hudson and Essex) where until recent years the so-called board of chosen freeholders were elected from districts. Under these circumstances the need was felt for some agency to represent the unity of interest among the several localities, in the government of the county. Accordingly, the office of supervisor was conceived. The incumbent is elected by the people of the county and has powers not unlike those of the mayor in many cities. He is required “to be vigilant and active in causing the laws and ordinances of the county to be executed and enforced.” Subject to the civil service law he has power to suspend and remove but not to appoint subordinates. He may propose legislation and veto resolutions.
Fifteen years of experience have not commended this institution to wider adoption. With one or two exceptions the supervisors, like most mayors of cities, have not been men of force or imagination and they have been controlled, apparently, by the same political elements as the board of freeholders upon which they were supposed to have served as a check.
As these pages are being written, a single county in the West, almost unconsciously it would seem and under influences that upon the surface seem reactionary, has taken one of the longest progressive steps toward administrative unity ever taken by an American county. The county in mind is Denver, Colorado. Ever since the constitution was amended in 1902 the city and county have been geographically identical. Article XX, Section 2, stipulates that “the officers of the city and county of Denver shall be such as by appointment or election may be provided for by the charter.” On May 9, 1916, Denver abandoned the commission plan of government and vested the appointment of city and county officials in the mayor.
The New Jersey and Denver experiments point in the general direction of administrative unity; they do not come within hailing distance of the expectations which seem to be justified by recent developments in American cities. For after all, the practical problem is the same in every civil division: to dispose effectively and economically of the visible supply of work to be accomplished or service to be rendered. And this, some of the more aggressive of our cities, such as Dayton and Springfield, 0., Niagara Falls, N. Y., and some forty others have essayed to do through a form of organization which is unity and simplicity reduced to its lowest terms: the plan of the typical business corporation. A board of directors to represent the people; a city manager to appoint and direct the heads of departments—that is all there is to it. And it works!
In similar fashion the people of our counties will surely consent to a reorganization of their public affairs. The members of the county boards will not follow the example of some of our present county commissioners and personally descend to the management of the details of administration. They will learn the art of delegating authority without losing control. And just as the people will have simplified their problem of citizenship by concentrating their attention on the governing group, so the representative body will focus administrative responsibility in a chief subordinate. To be specific, the county of the future will employ a manager chosen appropriately with sole reference to his fitness to manage public affairs and without regard to residence, religion or views on the Mexican situation, who will pick up the authority of the county where the board of directors leaves it off.
With the installation of the manager with adequate powers, the county will have supplied the largest single essential in any collective effort: leadership. Without that directing, driving force it is hardly strange that counties, up to the present, have headed for nowhere in particular.
And leadership in county affairs signifies specifically what?
To begin with, it will now be possible to build up the correct sort of subsidiary organization. For instance, with such leadership it should not have been necessary, for the lack of a proper executive responsibility, for Hudson County in New Jersey to impose upon the local judges the odd function of selecting a mosquito commission, and to dispose the rest of the appointing power as the fancy of the moment might dictate.
A county manager who has the power to appoint and discharge will of course be in a position to issue orders with a reasonable assurance that they will be obeyed without a writ of mandamus or some other form of judicial intervention. Public business will be speeded up accordingly.
And then, the presence of a responsible executive will supply an indispensable condition of a scientific budget. The finance committee of the governing board is no proper substitute, for, as Mr. Cartwright[22] says: “Such a committee cannot have either the understanding of the full meaning of the budget, or the personal interest in properly performing the work of preparation that an executive head should have who is personally responsible in very large degree for the success or failure of the entire county administration. The man who is officially responsible ought personally to lay the plans, summoning to his aid such advisers as he deems best suited to give him counsel.” The budget is the financial plan or program in a given year. It must see the needs of the county in their unity. It is the proper occupation of a single directing mind which is continuously and intimately in touch through his subordinates, with every need of the county. Not that the county manager will have the “power of the purse” and dictate the financial policy of the county. On the contrary, he will simply formulate the financial program for his employers to accept or reject, in whole or in part as they see fit.
The county manager will also act as a balance against any undue pressure from any geographical division in the county or any division of the public service. He will discover possible new services or better methods of performing old services. In short, he will be the specially accredited agent of the county board in carrying out its policies and the initiating force of public opinion. Through the governing board and the county manager there will be a clear and direct succession of authority from the people to the scullion at the almshouse and the assistant turnkey at the county jail.
A proposal that practically squares with this formula was put forth some years ago by a group of Oregon citizens under the leadership of W. S. U’Ren, in a proposed amendment to the state constitution. Under the projected scheme the county business would be in the hands of a board of three directors to be elected by the voters of the county for terms of six years. This board would have power to “make all expedient rules and regulations for the successful, efficient and economic management of all county business and property.” It would be necessary, however, to employ a business manager who would be the “chief executive of the county”; the choice of this officer not to be limited to the state of Oregon; his salary to be determined by the board. With him would rest the appointment of the subordinate county officers. The board of directors would be empowered to audit bills, either directly or through an auditor.
A more complete and detailed plan of county government, following the same general principles, was embodied in a bill introduced in the New York legislature in 1916.[23] It provided that any county, except those comprising New York City, might adopt the statute by petition and referendum. The county would therefore be governed by a board of five county supervisors who would act through a manager, whose duties would be:
(a) To attend all meetings of the board of supervisors;
(b) To see that the resolutions and other orders of the board of supervisors and the laws of the state required to be enforced by such board, are faithfully carried out by the county, including all officers chosen by the electors;
(c) To recommend to the board of supervisors such measures as he may deem necessary or expedient for the proper administration of the affairs of the county and its several offices;
(d) To appoint all county officers whose selection by the electors is not required by the constitution, except county supervisors and the county auditor or comptroller, for such terms of office as are provided by law.
Subject to resolutions of the board of supervisors, he shall:
(e) Purchase all supplies and materials required by every county officer, including the superintendent of the poor;
(f) Execute contracts on behalf of the board of supervisors when the consideration therein shall not exceed five hundred dollars;
(g) Obtain from the several county officers reports of their various activities in such form and at such times as the board of supervisors may require;
(h) Obtain from the several county officers itemized estimates of the probable expense of conducting their offices for the ensuing year, and transmit the same to the board of supervisors with his approval or disapproval of each and all items therein, in the form of a tentative budget.
(i) Perform such other duties as the board of supervisors may require.
In the exercise of these duties the county manager would have power to examine witnesses, take testimony under oath and make examination of the affairs of any office.
Inasmuch as the constitution of New York State requires the election by the people of the sheriff, district attorney, county clerk and register, the method of choosing these officers could not be affected by statute.
The Alameda County plan referred to in the preceding chapter provides for a city-and-county manager who would have charge not only of county administration but of the execution of the policies of the several constituent boroughs.
Such are a few definite proposals for fundamental political reconstruction of the county. Recalling, again, the low estate of our city governments, a decade since, the hope for an early and thoroughgoing betterment of the county system, in the department of fundamental structure, would seem to be not altogether vain.
[21] November, 1912.
[22] Otho G. Cartwright, Director of Westchester County Research Bureau.
[23] For text see Appendix, pp. 251-256.
CHAPTER XVIII
SCIENTIFIC ADMINISTRATION
Better county government, however, involves a good deal more than a mere skeleton of organization. It is not enough to provide the means for fixing responsibility in a general though fundamental sense, in officers who are conspicuous and powerful. That is the beginning of efficiency. And yet “responsibility” in its greater refinements, in its more intimate applications, is precisely the key to what all the various prophets of better government and public administration are preaching. Turn on the light! That is what the Short Ballot movement proposes by the more sweeping fundamental changes in the structure. Turning on the light is also essence of the doctrine of better accounting, better auditing, better budget making, better purchasing and the whole tendency to greater publicity in the conduct of public affairs.
Those county commissioners out in Kansas and Iowa who paid too much for their bridges—what was the real trouble with them? A writer in the agricultural journal which exposed these scandals wound up his article with an exhortation to the people to “elect good honest men.” Such advice was at least a shade or two more constructive than the political preaching of a century ago (which still has its adherents) that public officials tend inevitably to become thieves and crooks; that the best that we can do is to tie their hands by ingenious “checking” and “balancing” devices until it is almost impossible for them to move. To-day one group of political reconstructionists says: “Give these officers plenty of power, and then watch them,” and another group, supplementing the former, says: “Give officers the means of knowing exactly what they are doing; give also the public the means of watching intelligently and minutely; and if their public servants go wrong it is ‘up to the people,’” actually as well as formally. One is quite safe in assuming, for instance, that the offices of those middle western county officials were terribly “shy” on reliable data on bridge construction with which to meet the wiles of the combined contractors.
To begin with, what kind of a bridge was most needed? Did they have records as to the volume and weight of traffic which was likely to come over the structure? Did they seek light from an engineer of untarnished reputation or did they just trust to their “horse sense” and the fact that they “had lived there all their lives and they ought to know, if anybody did”? What did the records in the county engineer’s office show as to the relative durability and maintenance expense of steel bridges as against wooden bridges, under the peculiar local conditions?
Then as to the bids on the proposed structure: how did these compare with the cost of bridges of equal tonnage in other states and counties? How about the current state of the steel market—would it be better to buy now or wait a few months until business at the mills was likely to be slack?
How about financing the bridge project? Should the cost be borne out of the current year’s revenues, should it be covered by a ten-year bond issue or should the next generation of taxpayers be saddled with payments long after the bridge had outlived its usefulness?
A board of supervisors or a county manager or a county engineer armed with an answer to this series of extremely pertinent questions and a modicum of common honesty would be proof against ninety-nine per cent. of the “slick” deals which are so often “put over” on an unsuspecting public and their easy-going servants.
The science of public administration consists principally in knowing exactly where you are and what you are doing—knowledge gained through experimentation, investigation and comparison and by consultation of authoritative standards and with authorities themselves.
We will illustrate this principle in a few of its applications: