1. The general charter plan.
How are these charters framed and under what arrangements are they granted to cities? Three or four different plans are in vogue. In some states the legislature has passed a general law relating to cities, and their charters are all alike in accordance with the provisions of this law. The difficulty with this plan is that cities differ greatly in size and in the nature of their problems. The charter that suits one may not fit another. A seaport city, for example, needs a harbor commission with power to license pilots and regulate the anchoring-places of ships; but it is absurd to require, for the sake of uniformity, that inland cities shall also have harbor boards. To render this general charter system more flexible, therefore, some states have adopted the expedient of dividing cities, according to their size, into three or four classes and giving a uniform charter to all cities in the same class.[[70]]
2. The special charter plan.
A more common method is to deal with each city as a special case, giving it a charter by special act of the legislature, the result of this plan being that no two cities of the state are governed in exactly the same way. The special charter system has the merit of adapting the form of government to the immediate needs of each particular city; but it places a great burden upon the legislature, for whenever any city desires an amendment to its charter a special legislative act is necessary. The system also encourages the legislature to interfere in city affairs, making changes in city charters on its own initiative without any request from the citizens. This is particularly objectionable because so many members of the legislature come from rural districts and consequently have little or no knowledge of the city’s problems.
3. Home rule charters.
Municipal Home Rule.—In order to diminish this interference by the legislature many states have made provision for municipal home rule. This is a plan whereby cities make their own charters just as states frame their own constitutions. The methods by which they do this vary somewhat from state to state but everywhere the main idea is the same. The voters of the city elect a charter commission, or board of freeholders as it is sometimes called. This miniature constitutional convention, made up of perhaps fifteen or twenty members, proceeds to draw up the provisions of a new city charter. When their work is finished they submit it to the people of the city at an election and if the people approve it, the charter goes into effect. In some states there are certain formalities to be gone through after the people have voted, but the important thing is that each city obtains, sooner or later, whatever sort of charter its voters desire. In this way the city becomes supreme in the handling of its own local affairs.
Difficulties connected with the home rule system.
But the principle of municipal home rule is subject to some important practical limitations, most of which can be indicated by asking the question “What are local affairs?” Where is the line to be drawn between things which concern only the inhabitants of the city and those which affect the interests of the whole state. At first glance it might seem as though the care of streets, the maintenance of police, the provision of a water-supply system, and the control of education were matters of local concern, which each city ought to handle as its citizens deem best.
But are any of them strictly local in nature? The main streets of the city are arteries of traffic which link up with the state highways; were it not for the speed-limit signs, it would be difficult to tell where one class of streets ends and the other begins. The city police enforce the state laws and it is hardly plausible to urge that the state legislature shall have no control over the enforcement of its own statutes. The work of the city police is not, therefore, a matter of strictly local concern. So it is with health regulation, water supply, education, poor-relief, and many other municipal functions. The state cannot allow the children of any community to grow illiterate; it cannot afford to take the risk of an epidemic through the defective care of the public health in some negligent city; and it cannot fairly be expected to stand by idly when a city neglects the sick or the poor because its taxpayers wish to save money. Municipal home rule, if it were permitted to cover all these things, would be another name for local chaos. The relations between a city and the surrounding country are so intimate, and each depends so much upon the other, that no rigid line of separation between local and general interests can be drawn. To make every city a little sovereign republic, wrapped up in its own local affairs and subject to no control from outside, would not promote the common interests of the whole people.
Difference between the theory and the practice of home rule.