CHAPTER V
THE “JUNGLE”
The long “bed-quilt” ballot of county officers, as a Chicago newspaperman called it, at first innocently, and then maliciously, deceived, misled and disfranchised the “average citizen.” As to the manner in which this result was brought about, more hereafter.
But aside from all that, the long ballot principle turned out to be the father of irresponsible organization. Each elective officer received his commission straight from the people; his accountability was solely and directly to them. No officer was to be entrusted with much power for the fear that he might emulate King George and enslave the county. Government generally was regarded as a natural but more or less necessary enemy of the people to be tied with a short rope lest it break loose and do incalculable damage.
To the devotees of this theory, the idea that the county should have a directing executive head, if indeed it ever received consideration, was apparently too suggestive of Hanoverian monarchy to be seriously entertained. This was to be a “government of laws, not of men”—the people would see that all went well.
It was such a spirit, no doubt, that guided the development of the county system in an eastern state, which the writer studied a few years ago. In the course of this effort the interrelations of officers in a typical unit were diagrammed—with the result shown in frontispiece. It was found, for instance, that the county clerk who was “directly responsible to the people” was given duties to perform under some twenty different laws, the enforcement of which under the constitution was charged upon the governor as the chief executive of the state. In fulfillment of these obligations he was found to be under the direction, among others, of the superintendent of banking, the superintendent of insurance, the commissioner of excise and the secretary of state. For the routine of his office he was answerable to the local board of supervisors. The sheriff, who “took his orders from the people,” was found to be answerable to the supervisors, the surrogate and the county judge. The district attorney was put down as subject to at least three minor state officers besides the governor and the board of supervisors. The county treasurer looked up (or was supposed to) to the state commissioner of excise, the state board of tax commissioners, the commissioner of education, the comptroller and the state treasurer.
And in all this wilderness of conflicting responsibility there was, be it reiterated, no single officer who could be called the executive. The governor, it is true, had power to remove and fill vacancies, but even this negative control was conditioned by the fact that there were sixty-one counties in the state, that some of them were hundreds of miles from the capital and that the governor was charged with a thousand other responsibilities besides looking after the counties. It was true that the state comptroller was given power to examine into the fiscal affairs of the various counties, but this safeguard was of limited value in practice, owing to the small number of examiners which the legislature provides.
No, the ingenious Anglo-Saxon mind had discovered a substitute for efficient personal supervision! If a given officer were to go wrong or neglect his duties, then the supervisors were authorized to go to the district attorney and persuade him, if possible, to take action on the officer’s bond or to institute a criminal prosecution. If the district attorney was negligent in the matter, the supervisors might go to the governor with charges of neglect of duty. But if the original officer in question was just lazy, slow or inefficient, then everybody simply could wait “till he got round” to doing his duty.
To this day this circumambulation in the name of democracy actually fulfills the conception of popular rule for no inconsiderable body of political leaders. Where the system goes wrong, they inject a little more confusion, a little more irresponsibility into the plan of government. Take, for instance, the Indiana system. In 1898 the county government became the subject of a state-wide scandal and was made the political issue of the year. The governor in his biennial message followed the good old American custom: more complications, more division of responsibility. He recommended a system of “safeguards” which had the effect of taking away power (and responsibility) from the county board (commissioners) and vesting it in a brand-new body known as the council, composed of seven members, three elected from the county at large, and one from each of the four councilmanic districts. This council was made the tax-levying and money-appropriating body for the county and no money could henceforth be drawn from the county treasury except upon their appropriation. It also was given the sole authority to issue bonds and borrow money. And so the county governments in Indiana were blocked at just one more point and the county commissioners were made just one shade less accountable than they were before the enactment of this ingenious piece of “reform” legislation.
Two of the New England states developed equally clever methods of breaking down financial responsibility. New Hampshire, with its boards of commissioners elected by the people of the counties would seem to be well-equipped with fiscal agencies. But not so! The commissioners may only recommend appropriations for county expenses—and a “convention,” consisting of the members of the House of Representatives of the various towns then allows, or disallows, them. Such an institution was created many years ago. Connecticut goes New Hampshire one better by constituting the convention of the local members of both houses of the legislature. The convention may not only vote the amount of the general county appropriation, but the appropriation for any specific items of county expenditures for the two fiscal years following, or for the repairs and alterations of county buildings.