Municipal politics

“ The Reform of Municipal Governments.—Having reviewed the principal causes for the evils of municipal government, let us now consider some of the conditions that are necessary for bringing about reforms.
(1) National politics should be entirely separated from city affairs. It may be impossible to prevent the nomination of candidates by the regular political parties; but within each party local issues, not national, should determine the selection of candidates. At the polls the voter should cast his ballot independently of party considerations. ”

“ The Good Government club understands that if the moral tone of our politics, national or local, is to be lifted up, the demoralizing element of party spoil must be done away with. The Municipal League understands that if our large municipalities are to be no longer cesspools of corruption, if our municipal governments are to be made honest and businesslike, if our police forces are to be kept clear of thugs and thieves, the appointments to places in the municipal service must be withdrawn from the influence of party bosses and ward ruffians, and must be strictly governed by the merit system. ”

“ We are told that municipal government should be divorced from politics, and this is doubtless true. A municipality is primarily a business or engineering corporation. Its main concern is with streets, sewers, parks and docks ”

“ This is the most extraordinary campaign I ever witnessed; a struggle for good municipal government, in which we have to choose between two candidates for the Mayoralty who, both honorable men, profess to aim at the same ideals of municipal administration. ”

“ The city is organized, like the state government, on the plan of distributed powers and diffused responsibility. It contains, as a rule, an elaborate system of checks which affords little opportunity for the prompt and effective expression of local public opinion in the administration of municipal affairs. At the same time, it gives the municipal authorities power to inaugurate and carry out policies to which local public sentiment may be strongly opposed. This is seen in the control which the mayor and council quite generally exercise over the matter of municipal franchises. ”

“ Why do you suppose men went into the town council? To represent the taxpayers, the townspeople? No, but to look after their own interests; to safeguard themselves; to get what they could out of it. The whole policy of the old councils was one of—there's only one word for it, Mr. Brent, and that's only just becoming Anglicized—graft! A municipal government is supposed to exist for the good, the welfare, the protection of a town, but the whole idea of these Hathelsborough men, in the past, has been to use their powers and privileges for their own ends. ”

“ City officials have confined their efforts to the routine affairs of their office, and have so often spent their spare time and the city's money freely for the satisfaction of their personal interests that municipal government has gained the reputation of being notoriously corrupt, and has been left to ward politicians by the better class of citizens. Nevertheless, municipal government represents the principle of control and stands in the background as the preserver of the interests of all the people. ”

“ I shall not attempt in these pages a treatise on municipal government, for if the task were rightly executed, it would be a history of civilization. Non-partizanship in municipal elections, municipal ownership, home rule for cities,—who is interested in these? I have discussed them in interviews— (“Is there to be a statement for us this morning, Mr. Mayor?”) —and speeches numerous as autumn leaves, and like them, lost now in the winds to which they were given.
After all, it is life in which we are all interested. ”

“ But to a burgher of the middle ages the care and protection of the State were dim and shadowy compared with the duties and responsibilities thrown on the townspeople themselves. For in the beginnings of municipal life the affairs of the borough great and small, its prosperity, its safety, its freedom from crime, the gaiety and variety of its life, the regulation of its trade, were the business of the citizens alone. ”

“ Restore to the city its proper legislative powers, confine the work of the council to legislation instead of allowing it to go into details of administration, reduce the number of councilmen, if necessary, adjust the method of representation, introduce needed electoral and primary reform, establish responsibility by means of uniform municipal accounting and publicity of proceedings, and we ask the gentlemen in all earnestness why American city councils will not take on new life just as the city councils of every other country have done in the past. ”

“ All political action was drawn into the mill which turns out Presidents, Congresses, Tariffs, Bank Acts, etc., and the mere by-product of Mayors, Aldermen, and City Ordinances which it drops incidentally into the cities, receives almost no stamp of quality or design from the local mind. Until the wheels of local government are loosened in some way from the clutch of the great party machines, and can work independently, under motive forces of their own, to produce the satisfaction of local needs, interests, and aims, there will be little success in undertakings of municipal reform. ”

“ Because municipal government is closer to the people and affects them in more ways than the government of any other political subdivision, and also because our citizens are now taking a keener interest than ever before in community work, it is to-day almost useless for a public official to attempt to escape responsibility or to excuse his shortcomings. He must be efficient and constantly apply his efficiency. ”

“ The trend of the decade here, too, is obviously toward system,—toward a municipalization of lower courts, an expansion of the health service, an association of charities, a city system as against a vestry system of schools, a civic improvement commission that will focalize public sentiment in all movements for municipal improvement. ”

“ The aim of all organized business is to secure a profit, but the purpose of city administration is to promote the well-being of the citizens. It must be conducted in compliance with the desires of the voters, whatever these desires may be, and must give them what they want. Business can sometimes be managed without any heed to public opinion, but municipal administration cannot. The science of municipal government is, to a considerable extent, that of keeping the people satisfied. ”

“ If we wish to destroy the life of the city, make it impotent to discharge the functions for which it was organized, then, and then only, it might be feasible to place over it a commission.
But, Honorable Judges, authorities are agreed that cities must be allowed greater freedom of action in local affairs, that municipal home rule is indispensable. The governments of our large cities have been dominated to such an extent by the state legislatures, usually partisan and irresponsible to the locality concerned, that in many cases self-government has become a term, hollow and without meaning. ”

“ If there is a corrupt council, the remedy is not its supersession by an independent executive. Such an executive is the abrogation of popular government. “Good and efficient government is possible under almost any form of organization. More depends upon men than devices.... But ... if we believe that the functions of deliberation or determination of municipal policy and of administration [Pg 63] or the execution or carrying out of that policy should be kept distinct, we cannot avoid the conclusion that a city council is a necessary part of the municipal organization.” ”

“ Needless to say, they take good care to choose a man who is in thorough sympathy with their own ideas. Now the late mayor was convinced that this system led to nothing but—well, to put it mildly, to nothing but highly undesirable results. He claimed that the municipal government had the right to deprive the existing town trustees of their power, and to take into its own hands the full administration of the borough finances. ”

“ Wherever it has been put into the constitution of a state a larger municipal vision has been created and a new brand of municipal administration has appeared. Thus it is a significant fact that many of the most advanced forms of city government have grown up in the cities which have enjoyed constitutional home rule. Given the right to determine its own destiny, the city becomes the hope, instead of the despair, of democracy. And the test which democracy receives will be a fair one. ”

“ How many municipalities in the countryside are not at the mercy of the lords, or of the priests, or of some notables! How many, in the small towns, are not dominated by the credit of the principal townspeople! Let us expect nothing from these administrations that are too weak to remain independent; the only way to emancipate municipal authority is to distribute it in larger masses, and to make the bodies that will be its depositories more enlightened and more powerful, by making them less numerous. ”

“ Whether the board of public works is also a part of and an agency of the municipal corporation is the question before us.
1. The authorities state, and our own knowledge is to the effect, that the care and superintendence of streets, alleys, and highways, the regulation of grades, and the opening of new and closing of old streets, are peculiarly municipal duties. No other power can so wisely and judiciously control this subject as the authority of the immediate locality where the work is to be done. ”

“ Members of the legislature are largely from the rural districts and can not in reason be expected to understand the perplexing problems of municipal government. Yet, to these men, untrained in the intricacies of municipal administration, unfamiliar with actual city conditions and busy with many problems of state policy, has been intrusted the tremendous task of controlling the city's administrative development. It is no reflection upon the ability or intelligence of our legislators to say that they are ill-fitted for this task of absentee law-making. ”

“ The city alone has anything really important to gain or to lose from their proper or improper treatment; and its legal responsibility should be as complete as its economic localization is real.
There is no need of discussing in any detail the way in which a municipal government which does enjoy the advantage of home rule and an efficient organization can contribute to the work of national economic and social reconstruction. Public opinion is tending to accept much more advanced ideas in this field of municipal reform than it is in any other part of the political battle-field. ”

“ Of equal significance is the unquestionable fact that in our present city administration, which was to illustrate non-partisan municipal government, that part of the municipal service in which the non-partisan principle was most strictly adhered to has been conspicuously by far the most successful, while the failures that have occurred in others can be measured almost exactly by the degree in which the non-partisan principle has been disregarded. ”

“ It has already been discovered that one of the chief sanctions, one of the main objects for municipal direction of such work is being a municipal enterprise, a part of the city administration, a wing of its manifold governmental functions, it challenges most effectively the co-operation of all public authorities. ”

“ Nothing could be more obvious, theoretically, than that if the officers charged with the conduct of a municipal government are regularly elected or appointed for reasons and purposes other than the honest and efficient management of municipal affairs, that municipal government must, in the course of time, drift into inefficiency and corruption. ”

“ Yet the municipal machinery of the average American state permits anything but a fair trial of the democratic principle. For, every student of contemporaneous municipal conditions knows that, barring those progressive communities that have adopted some form of commission government, city government is still cursed with the curse of divided responsibility, is still in the hands of men who can not apply the rules of municipal efficiency because they are bound by the rules of the partisan game. ”

“ And underneath all these associations and organizations it is easy to discover the growth of a distinctly civic spirit, also manifest in special movements and conditions. The endeavor to build in one group buildings so important as a county court-house, a city hall, a public library and others reveals the willingness to surrender individual advantages to the public weal. The attempt to deal largely and justly with all municipal franchises proves the presence of a desire to serve all as well as each. ”

“ But we have advocated numerous reforms and have pointed out countless instances of municipal success under various forms, yet all based upon the same fundamental principle, that there be separately constituted departments of government. One of the fatal objections to the gentlemen's proposition is that they are attempting to blanket the whole country with one arbitrary form, regardless of differing conditions. They have completely ignored our cases of successful city government. We demand that they explain them. ”

“ These are some of the tasks which cannot safely be intrusted to a municipality unless its government is above suspicion, unless men of probity and capacity are placed in power, unless the whole community extends its sympathy to the work and keeps a vigilant eye upon all the officials. Municipal governments cannot be encouraged to own public utilities so long as there is a risk that somebody may own municipal governments. ”

“ With about four hundred municipal councils to lead, one may imagine what he will do with them: nothing except to drive them like a flock of sheep into a pen of printed regulations, or urge them on mechanically, in lots, according to his instructions, he himself being as automatic and as much in a rut as they are. ”