CHAPTER XIII
THE PRINCIPLE OF THE COMMISSION FORM OF GOVERNMENT APPLIED TO THE LARGER CITIES
If the city be a larger one, with 100,000 male voters and upward, and a population of 700,000 to 1,000,000 and upward, its government by a small commission, each member of which is elected from a wieldy district, or by a wieldy “quota” under the Hare plan, becomes impossible. When districts begin to have more than 6,000 male voters and a population of more than 50,000, or the “quotas” are over 6,000 male voters, they are probably no longer wieldy. Yet a commission of 16 and upward is no longer a body which can exercise legislative and executive power in a convenient manner, like a board of 5, or even 9. The problem of the application of the principles of the commission form of government to the larger cities is therefore this: How can districts or “quotas” be kept wieldy and the city at the same time be governed by a small commission having both legislative and executive powers?
One solution of the problem is as follows: The control of the entire executive and legislative power of the municipality should be vested in the municipal council. This should be composed of as many members as there are wieldy districts or wieldy “quotas” in the municipality. Taking 3,000 voters as making up a wieldy district or “quota,” this would give a city of 100,000 male voters a council of 33 and a city of 300,000 male voters a council of 100. This last might be reduced to 50 if the maximum of 6,000 male voters be taken as the measure of a wieldy district or “quota.” This council should then appoint the mayor and perhaps, with the mayor’s approval, the heads of the departments, all to hold office at the pleasure of the council.[14] The mayor and his heads of departments should then form a governing commission or board with such executive and legislative powers as might be conferred by ordinances passed by the council and subject at all times to the control of the council. Such a scheme would retain the system of electing representatives from wieldy districts. There would rest upon them full responsibility for the exercise of the legislative and executive power. Yet they would be left free to delegate executive power and some legislative power to a commission of administrators whose whole business it was to serve the municipal government. Such a commission might be composed of the leaders of the majority of the council or of expert municipal managers brought from any part of the world, or both. The council should be left free to choose what method it would adopt.
A plan of government for our larger cities frequently adopted is this: Single aldermen are elected from each wieldy district in the municipality. All the aldermen thus selected form a city council which exercises the legislative power. The mayor is elected at large. He presides over the city council and, with the heads of his executive departments who hold at his pleasure, wields the entire executive power. The new Cleveland charter gives the department heads seats in the council with the right to address that body. There is here a proximity of the executive and legislative power, rather than a real union of it. Whatever union there may be is largely on the side of giving the executive a position in the deliberations of the legislative body. The council has no function in the actual exercise of the executive power. The entire executive power is really concentrated in a single individual elected at large and holding office for two and often four years. This feature is in sharp contrast to the vesting of the executive power in the representatives of wieldy districts or “quotas,” who control and direct the exercise of that power by a single executive who holds at their pleasure.
The one plan that should not be attempted in our larger cities is that of providing for the union of the executive and legislative functions in a few commissioners elected at large, thereby violating the essential principle of electing representatives from wieldy geographical districts or by wieldy “quotas.”
FOOTNOTES:
[14] See Richard S. Childs, “The Theory of the New Controlled-Executive Plan,” National Municipal Review, II, 76 (January, 1913); C. G. Hoag, “The Representative Plan of Government,” The American City, April, 1913.
CHAPTER XIV
THE PRINCIPLES OF THE COMMISSION FORM OF GOVERNMENT APPLIED TO THE STATE
The principles at the basis of the commission form of government for cities may equally well be applied to a state government.
Our first care must be to eliminate the division of power which comes from having two legislative chambers, each equally representing the electorate. The legislative power as it comes from the electorate at large must be lodged in a single legislative chamber.