The County: The "Dark Continent" of American Politics

by Henry S. Gilbertson

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.