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.