The power to fix salaries and establish positions has been given to the Salary Classification Commission, and to locate new buildings to the Commission on Sites, Grounds, and Buildings.
The general dissatisfaction with the confused and conflicting authority, which had come with different legislative enactments, led to the appointment in 1916, of a commissioner to investigate State charities and to report to the Governor, with recommendations of changes he deemed advisable.
Among the changes recommended were:
(1) That instead of an unpaid board of twelve members, appointed from the judicial districts, there should be a board of nine, of whom one should be a woman; three members should be paid and should give all their time to the work, one of the three to be president of the board, one the chairman of a bureau for mental deficiency, and the third, chairman of a bureau for dependent children; the six unpaid members were to be specialists in the special classes of work which is supervised by the board.
The present State Board of Charities objects to this change on the ground that a board so organized would become political. They also feel that the appointments should continue to be made from the judicial districts, in order that every part of the State should have a resident member of the State Board.
The report further recommended: (2) Prompt provision for defective delinquents; (3) a careful revision of the State charities and poor law; (4) that power should be given the State Board to inspect private charitable institutions; (5) the creation of a new bureau for dependent children; (6) the abolition of the office of Fiscal Supervisor of Charities, in order that recommendations for appropriations should come directly from the State Board of Charities; (7) the abolition of other conflicting authorities, and restoring the authority of the State Board.
None of these recommendations have been acted upon as yet.
The State institutions that are under the State are the following: State Agricultural and Industrial School, Industry; Syracuse State Institution for Feeble-minded Children, Syracuse; New York State School for the Blind, Batavia; Thomas Indian School, Iroquois; State Custodial Asylum for Feeble-minded Women, Newark; New York State Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Home, Bath; New York State Training School for Girls, Hudson; Western House of Refuge for Women, Albion; New York State Reformatory for Women, Bedford Hills; Rome Custodial State Asylum, Rome; Craig Colony for Epileptics, Sonyea; New York State Woman’s Relief Corps Home, Oxford; New York State Hospital for the Care of Crippled and Deformed Children, West Haverstraw; New York State Hospital for the Treatment of Incipient Pulmonary Tuberculosis, Raybrook; New York State Training School for Boys, established by law in 1904, not yet ready to receive inmates; Letchworth Village for Feeble-minded, Rockland County; and authorized in 1911-12, but not yet open: The State Industrial Farm Colony, Green Haven; and the State Reformatory for Misdemeanants.
Private institutions supported mainly by State appropriations are: New York Institution for the Instruction of Deaf and Dumb; New York Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents in the City of New York; New York Institute for the Education of the Blind; Institutions for Deaf Mutes in New York City, Buffalo, Westchester, Rome, Rochester; Malone and Albany Home Schools for the Oral Instruction of the Deaf.
County and City Institutions: County and city almshouses are under the supervision of the State Board of Charities, and also the recently established county sanatoria for tuberculosis, of which there are about thirty. The small number of patients in these county hospitals for tuberculosis makes it impossible for some of them to give as expert and efficient care as a larger and better equipped hospital might offer.[7]