In behalf of the board system it is sometimes argued that it gives political parties a chance to be represented, whereas a single official represents the controlling party only. But there is no good reason why departments which have purely business functions to perform should be influenced by party considerations at all. The board system has some distinct advantages when applied to such departments as schools, public libraries, poor-relief, or city planning, where discussion and deliberation are desirable; but it does not work well in such departments as police, fire protection, and streets, for these are branches of work which demand quick decisions and firm action. There is no more reason for placing a board in charge of the city’s police than for putting a board of generals in command of an army.
How organized.
The City Council.—The city council a generation ago was usually made up of two branches; today it is almost everywhere composed of one chamber only. A single chamber is quite enough for all that the council now has to do. |Election by wards and election at large.| Its members are elected, sometimes by wards, sometimes at large. The objection to the ward system is that it[it] encourages the election of inferior men and inspires them, when elected, to strive for the interests of their own particular wards rather than for the welfare of the city as a whole. When councilmen are elected at large, on the other hand, the dominant political party is likely to elect its entire slate and control the whole council, thus allowing the minority no representation at all. In some cities an endeavor has been made to meet these objections by having the council chosen in part under each plan, some councilmen from wards and some at large.[[73]]
Its powers.
The council enacts the local laws or ordinances and appropriates whatever money is needed to carry on the city’s affairs. No expenditures can be made without its approval and its consent is almost always needed before municipal debts can be incurred. Its authority was large in earlier days when it controlled through its committees the management of the various city departments; but with the steady growth of the mayor’s authority the powers of the council have been diminished. It is a legislative body, and in city government there is relatively little legislative work to be done. The state laws cover almost everything of importance.
Defects of the mayor-and-council plan.
The chief defect of the mayor-and-council plan is its unwieldiness. There are too many separate authorities. Power and responsibility are scattered into too many hands. When things go wrong the council blames the mayor; the mayor blames the council; the voters do not know who is at fault. Time is wasted and money is misspent because independent authorities fail to agree. The political bosses take advantage of this situation to gain their own ends by helping one side or the other. The citizen who tries to find out the real facts has a hard time of it. It is like threading his way through a jungle. When he has a complaint to make he is often referred from one official to another until he loses patience. In the largest cities the mayor-and-council plan does not operate so badly, because the methods of conducting business are more definitely prescribed and the mayor is given so much power that he cannot well evade the responsibility. It is in the smaller communities that this plan of government obtains the least satisfactory results.
How commission government began.
The Commission Plan.—Twenty-five years ago it seemed impossible to secure any substantial improvement in the administration of American cities. Foreign observers spoke of city government as a “conspicuous failure”, and there was a good deal of basis for that statement. People realized that city government had become cumbrous and top-heavy. They saw that the system of checks and balances, whatever its merits in state and national government, was not working well in the cities. Yet they had grown so accustomed to the complicated network of officials, boards, and councils that they hesitated to sweep the whole thing away in order to put some simple form of government in its place. So things drifted along until 1901, when the city of Galveston, driven to heroic measures as the result of a catastrophe, installed an entirely new scheme of government known as the commission plan.[[74]] The success of this experiment was so marked that other cities became interested and followed Galveston’s example, until today the commission plan has been established in nearly four hundred municipalities, scattered all over the country.[[75]]