The Municipal Problem and Greater New York

OUR American capacity for self-government has of late been subjected to more than one severe test. Last year the democracy of the United States gave itself up to the study of monetary science, and decided, by a fairly conclusive majority, in favor of a policy of prudence and conservatism. Regardless of the merits of the question, the result was reassuring, for it evinced a power of selfrestraint that gave the whole world a new respect for republican government in the United States. The American people can rise to an emergency, and they can solve their political and social problems. They will, therefore, let us be assured, work out some tolerable solution of that remaining and disquieting problem, how to govern their great cities. I could readily show, if that were my present task, a hundred evidences of hopeful progress toward the reform of American municipal government, even under our practically unchangeable condition of universal suffrage.

One of the greatest difficulties, obviously enough, lies in our apparent inability to reach any stable equilibrium in the matter of the framework of municipal organization. It is a most unhappy circumstance that we alone, of all people in the world, should be forever recasting and overhauling the mechanisms of municipal government. If our great American towns could only have a uniform charter provided for them, we should at least have some reason to hope for stability. Then we should be able to turn our attention away from the mere structure of the municipal government to those vital questions of municipal housekeeping and modern development and progress that ought chiefly to concern us in this decade of scientific advance and new social ideals.

The baffling diversity and frequent change in the forms of American municipal government are in some part the result of the great number of sovereign States. The one or two big towns in each State cannot easily be made to conform to any regular scheme of organization under terms of general law, and state legislatures are readily enough induced, from time to time, to deal radically with particular local matters. Because England, France, Prussia, and Italy are large countries, it has not been very difficult for them to systematize municipal government on a permanent plan. In Great Britain, London alone has been excepted from the scheme of general uniformity ; and in France, Paris has remained the only city under an exceptional régime. But in the United States we have almost as many sovereign lawmaking bodies as we have large cities ; and the legislative balance-wheels at the state capitals are not heavy enough to revolve steadily under variations of pressure from the great towns.

The people actually pertaining to the metropolitan centre about the harbor of New York constitute half the population of the State. Temporary exigencies in the great town assume, therefore, a large importance, and find ready recognition in the halls of legislation at Albany. It has been comparatively easy, in States like Iowa and Kansas, where the very large town does not exist, to bring municipal government under the terms of general legislation. In Minnesota and Wisconsin, on the other hand, it has not been easy, because St. Paul, Minneapolis, or Milwaukee, being relatively large, and hence occupying a specially influential position, must needs demand a peculiar charter of its own ; and this charter must furthermore be subject to constant overhauling at the behest of the party or faction enjoying its little day of brief authority. In Illinois, twenty - seven years ago, a new constitution was adopted, under which local and municipal administration was reduced to a uniform and lucid system, suggesting in some respects the local - government codes of France and Italy. But it was found that Chicago had to stand alone as a “city of the first class.”For cities and towns of the lower grades the framework of organization remains, for the most part, permanent and undisturbed ; but for Chicago new legislation is constantly pending, because first one element. then another, finds itself able to command the balance of power in the state legislature at Springfield. I need not multiply illustrations, for it is enough to remark that a somewhat similar situation will be found in San Francisco and New Orleans, in Philadelphia and Baltimore, and in Boston, as well as in New York and Brooklyn.

Evidently, the ease with which the legislature can be invoked by the municipal element or faction which for the time being finds itself influential with the legislative majority, must make it peculiarly difficult to reach permanence and stable equilibrium in the structural features of our American municipal government. This is so importantly true that I am certain we can never have a permanent basis until we have given to our municipal governments, in a very high degree, the qualities of simplicity and unity. Municipal home rule must be achieved in such a form that the people of a large town may feel that they have their own municipal weal or woe clearly and definitely in their own hands. Then a strong public opinion will assert itself for the protection of such municipal home rule ; and with or without constitutional safeguards, we shall find municipal government going on steadily, its main features remaining unaltered, just as the essential structure of our state governments is seldom disturbed.

St. Louis, of all the large cities in this country, furnishes us an object-lesson in this regard. Since 1876 it has enjoyed municipal home rule. For a part of the time the city has been well governed, and for a part of the time it has been governed badly. But the people consider that misgovernment is not the fault of the system, and that their remedy always lies in the election of better men for the assembly or the mayoralty. Their system, it appears to me, might be a little less complicated, but it is workable and can be readily understood ; and thus local public opinion protects its continuity.

The governmental structure of the existing city of New York, on the other hand, is a monumental instance of complexity. Its numerous parts do not seem to be vitally related to one another; and since the community at large does not in the least understand the system, public opinion does not assert itself against this change or that impairment which might be thought to destroy the harmony of a well balanced and well understood scheme. The government of the city cannot be comprehended by virtue of its logic or of its analogies, for it was not constructed as a logical whole, nor does it follow the analogy of any other form of government whatsoever. It can really be mastered only as one studies patiently the long course of political history which has gradually given the system its present arbitrary character.

The charter for the proposed Greater New York, furthermore, is even more complicated, if possible, than the arrangements it will supersede ; and it may be fairly said that to understand it wholly — an achievement of intellect to which few men can lay claim — one must have learned the peculiar political history of Brooklyn as well as that of the city of New York, and must also know enough about several other American cities to appreciate the manner in which their systems have influenced the work of the commissioners who have drafted the Greater New York charter. The mere bulk of the new charter (it comprises not far from a thousand octavo pages) would incidentally bear out the assertion that it is an elaborate and a complicated instrument. Its intricacies are greatly increased by the method, or rather lack of method, in the arrangement of its parts. An analysis of this remarkable scheme of government can hardly be understood, nor can it be very useful, unless one approaches it with some distinct point of view or some standard of comparison. I am not in any sense demanding that American city government in general — and much less the government of the Greater New York — should conform to European models. Nevertheless, because municipal government in Europe is very simple, it supplies a convenient norm or measure by which to test the variations and complexities of our American systems.

The fundamental machinery of municipal government anywhere outside of our own country is a perfectly simple matter. No one has difficulty in understanding it, if he cares to try. In England, for instance, the municipal voters elect a large committee of their own number, called the town council ; and that is the end of the whole affair. They watch that town council somewhat as the stockholders in a commercial corporation would endeavor to watch the board of directors. The council elects its own chairman, and calls him mayor. It designates its own standing committees, and these are the boards that give oversight to the different departments of administration. Each of these boards, or committees, selects the best man it can find for the salaried executive headship of the department it supervises. The municipal council levies the taxes, votes the appropriations, and is at once a legislative (or rather, ordinance-making), an administrative, and a financial body. It evolves the executive government out of its own authority, and keeps it under full control. In this council is reposed the power to exercise all the authority that belongs to the municipality.

In France, one starts with the same fact: the voters elect their municipal council. The council chooses a mayor, and sets apart a group of its own oldest and wisest members to serve with the mayor as an “ executive corps.” The members of the executive corps are the chairmen of important committees, are at the heads of administrative departments, and constitute an inner group, which assembles much more frequently than the whole council, and which carries on the practical work of administration; being responsible, however, to the full council.

In Germany, again, as in England or France or Italy, the single - chambered elective municipal council is the starting-point. But in Germany, where officialism is glorified, this council selects the mayor (burgomaster) quite as an American board of railroad directors might select a president. The German mayor is not to be regarded as a representative citizen, holding an honorary office for a short time, but rather as a highly expert and able administrator, exercising large executive functions, and holding office for a long term, or’even for life. The council appoints as his associates in the administrative work a number of efficient and well salaried specialists, who are known as city magistrates, and who also hold office for long terms. They take their places respectively at the head of the municipal corporation’s legal department, its fiscal affairs, its architectural and constructive work, its health administration, its schools, its great supply services of water or lighting, its park system, and so on. This group of high officials, sitting with the mayor and known as the council of magistrates, is charged with most of the ordinary and detailed business of running the city. But it is always responsible to the people’s elected representatives in the Germendesrath, or town council. There are many variations in the detailed structure of municipal government in the several European countries, but in them all one finds the same fundamental fact, namely, that the basis of municipal government is the single-chambered municipal council, out of which, or by authority of which, is evolved some system of executive administration.

Now, there was a time, in the earlier history of New York, when the framework of the municipal government was analogous to this European framework that I have described. The people elected the municipal council, and the council elected a mayor and set in motion the administrative organization. But one change followed another. In our national and state governments we had adopted the plan of the separation of the deliberative from the executive function ; and in order that the two branches might be really of coördinate rank, we had allowed each to take its mandate directly from the voters. There is much to be said in favor of such a system in national and state government, and manifestly there is much that can be said against it. However that may be, there was a period in American history when, by common consent, our national and state constitutions were regarded as embodying the finality of wisdom so far as their distribution of powers was concerned, and nothing could have been more natural than the tendency to carry the structure of the State into the organization of the municipality.

The changes that have succeeded one another in the essential frame of New York’s municipal government are so numerous that to recount them all would bewilder rather than instruct. To know its ins and outs is not so much like knowing the parts and the workings of a finely adjusted machine as it is like knowing the obscure topography of the great Dismal Swamp considered as a place of refuge for criminals. Thus, those political scientists and municipal statesmen who best know its ways and workings are members of the Tammany Wigwam in Fourteenth Street.

A few main facts, however, in the evolution of the present system, may be recalled. There came a time when the board of aldermen had degenerated and its deeds were found to be evil. Anywhere else in the world, the obvious remedy would have been for an awakened people to elect honest and capable aldermen ; but that is not our American way. Having already been relieved of direct responsibility for executive work by the popular election of the mayor, the board at last was deprived also of the power to confirm the mayor’s appointments. As its scope and authority became restricted, its dignity declined ; and with its loss of dignity came the opportunity of the smallest and worst ward politicians to secure election to it. The ward bosses in New York have generally been saloon-keepers; and thus the board of aldermen has at times been something like a grand committee of publicans, not to say sinners. Public confidence having been withdrawn, great works of improvement or important public services were no longer allowed to come under the board’s control. Education, public health, the water supply, the docks, and various other services were made over to separate administrative boards of commissioners. The city having fallen into the hands of political spoilsmen allied to the Democratic party, the Republican government of the State must needs deprive the municipality of control over elections ; and because the work of the police force might at any time have a direct bearing upon the methods and results of an election, the city must also be deprived of control over its own police. Thus there came to be a board of metropolitan police, who supervised elections, appointed at Albany. Gradually, almost every conspicuous municipal service was committed to a separate board of commissioners.

Normally, the primary attribute of a representative body like a town council or a board of aldermen is the budgetary function ; that is to say, its first duty everywhere in the world, and its principal reason for existence, is the voting of annual appropriations for the expenses of government and the prosecution of public works, and the levy of taxes to supply a revenue equal to the sums appropriated. But in New York the board of aldermen lost also the budgetary function, and that power was conferred upon a group of five high officials acting as a board of estimate and apportionment. This board consists of the mayor, the comptroller, the president of the tax department, the corporation counsel, and the president of the board of aldermen.

In Brooklyn, the course of municipal evolution, while different in detail, was somewhat analogous. But Brooklyn succeeded in obtaining a new charter, which concentrated executive authority in the hands of the mayor. It gave him the power of appointment and removal, and it swept away the old boards and placed a single executive head over each department, to be appointed by the mayor and subject to removal. The board of aldermen was permitted to survive, but the budgetary function was transferred to a board of estimate, consisting of five high officials, as in New York. Seth Low was the first mayor of Brooklyn, under the new régime. His powers were autocratic, and Brooklyn realized good city government in a trice. The example had a great influence upon the further course of municipal reform in New York ; and the plan of a strong mayor came — as I think, rightly — to be regarded as the only practicable one for the accomplishment of immediate reform. By one enactment and another, the authority of the mayor of New York was increased, and the administrative boards, while continuing to exist, were all made subject to the mayor’s power of appointment. The election of the present mayor of New York happened to be coincident with a Republican majority in the state government. For the benefit of Mayor Strong, therefore, a special act was passed by the legislature, giving him for a period of six months a sweeping power to dismiss heads of departments. This enabled him to remove Tammany commissioners, and to select for the various boards and commissionerships which control the working departments a set of men who, in his judgment, possessed “ integrity, ability, and conscientious desire to make the city’s interests the first object of their thought.” Thus, by virtue of this special enabling act, Mayor Strong entered upon his administration with almost as complete an autocratic authority as that of the mayor of Brooklyn.

There remained, however, a very essential difference in the theory and practice of municipal government in the two cities. In Brooklyn, the mayor’s executive authority somewhat resembles that of the President of the United States. The heads of departments form a sort of cabinet, for the mayor, following the analogy of the President’s cabinet at Washington. The cabinet members at Washington are the administrative chiefs of their departments ; but it is also clearly understood that they are carrying out the general policy of a superior. They are accountable to the President, and the President is accountable to the people. In a similar way, the heads of municipal departments in Brooklyn are responsible, not to the public, but to the mayor, and the mayor is responsible to the whole community. He is, therefore, to the full extent, the executive head of the municipal corporation, and in charge of all its activities.

It is otherwise with the mayor of New York. To quote Mayor Strong : “The actual administration of municipal affairs in this city is in the hands of commissioners, and not in the hands of the mayor. The duty of these commissioners and their authority are as clearly defined as are those of the mayor, and after their appointments the real responsibility of the mayor ceases. He is properly chargeable, however, — and for myself I accept the result of my own exercise of that power,—with appointing to these positions men of integrity, ability, and conscientious desire to make the city’s interests the first object of their thought.”

The Brooklyn system has always reminded me of a corporation fallen into the hands of a receiver. The normal methods of administration having become disordered, inefficient, distrusted, or corrupt, everything is superseded by one man to whom is entrusted the management of the corporation’s affairs. If the receiver be trustworthy and competent, an almost magical improvement results. Such a government, however, at the hands of a receiver — or a periodically elected dictator — would seem of necessity to be a temporary resort, for the simple reason that it makes no adequate provision for the exercise of the deliberative function. A railroad in the hands of a receiver may be kept from utter wreck, it may be economically managed, its resources may be carefully husbanded, and critical emergencies may be tided over. But it is always to be taken for granted that the receivership exists only pending a reorganization. For it is not supposed that a receivership can exercise any broad initiative, that it can create or carry out policies of development, or that it can do anything else except maintain the status quo in a decent and economical manner. Now, it happens that we live in a time of enormous social transitions, the largest factor in the movement of our day being the aggregation of population in the great towns, and the evolution of town life to meet the necessities of a population brought under totally new conditions. The splendid and intelligent transformation of municipal conditions in European cities has not been brought about through the mere application of those negative ideals of “ good government ” which so many of our American reformers cherish. Civil service reform, I admit, is a sine qua non, while honesty and economy in government are virtues that cannot be praised too highly. But just as a railroad receivership is not expected to consolidate and develop transportation systems, to create branch lines as feeders, to provide advantageous terminals, or to do anything that involves questions of creative policy, so the government of a city by the Brooklyn plan of an executive dictatorship does not make due allowance for the exercise of the deliberative function, to which must belong all important innovations of policy.

I do not make this criticism in a controversial spirit, and I can readily understand that exceptions may be taken to my view. I do not assert that the Brooklyn system renders large public improvements impossible, by any means, for there is always open the resort to the state legislature; that is to say, the appeal to an extraneous authority. But I must stoutly affirm that the Brooklyn system lacks equilibrium, and cannot be regarded as a permanently wise mode of municipal government, because it does not make provision for the normal exercise, within the municipal corporation itself, of those full and complete deliberative decisions and judgments without which a town may indeed be policed and administered, but without which it cannot develop and grow on the broad lines of policy that the modern municipal corporation ought to prescribe for itself.

It is not necessary that I should take up the arguments for or against the consolidation of New York and Brooklyn. The amalgamation of these two towns, with adjacent suburban territories, into a larger corporate entity is intended to correspond with the real fact of the existence of a metropolis having organic unity. Brooklyn is as much a part of the actual metropolitan community of New York as London south of the Thames or Paris south of the Seine is a part of its respective metropolitan area. I believe in the advantage of metropolitan union under some form of metropolitan municipal government; but I recognize the many difficulties involved in the actual accomplishment of consolidation, and I think that the process should be deliberate and well considered at every stage. It has been convincingly asserted that the union of New York and Brooklyn could not be suitably or safely consummated at a date earlier than the beginning of the year 1900 or 1901.

By the new constitution of the State of New York there was provided a rearrangement of electoral periods on a plan which brings municipal elections into the years between general elections, and thus makes possible the consideration of municipal questions upon their own merits, with comparative freedom from an admixture of state and national issues. This separation of elections was regarded by all municipal reformers in New York as the very first requisite for anything like permanent municipal reform, because it was only by such means that good citizens could hope to elect a mayor who would be in any wise independent of the rival political machines. Separate elections thus might bring disinterested and efficient administration.

But it still remained true, as the wiser and more discerning minds admitted, that the municipal progress of New York urgently required the creation of a body of citizens representing the community in the best sense, and charged with the exercise of what we may call the deliberative and budgetary functions. Some sort of municipal parliament, of full dignity and with authority to give the municipal corporation its policies, was declared to be requisite. These wiser and more discerning minds were of the opinion that this body of men should be of considerable size ; that its members should be elected entirely, or for the most part, at large on a general ticket; and that they should have long terms and should be divided into classes, preferably three, so that the body should have a high degree of continuity, with the English or German idea of partial renewal. In view of the character of the city of New York, it was also believed that the election of this single-chambered municipal council ought to include a plan of proportional or minority representation.

One reason why the municipal reformers were at first ready to acquiesce in the consolidation of New York and Brooklyn lay in their belief that an intelligent commission, charged with the task of preparing a charter for the Greater New York, could not fail, in the light of local facts and of universal experience, to create a municipal parliament possessing real authority, and therefore real dignity, in which the best men of the metropolis would be willing to hold seats. The example of the London county council, with its splendid array of men of distinction, ability, and zeal, had unquestionably made a great impression upon the minds of many leading citizens of New York. The evils of a reliance upon the state legislature at Albany for the exercise of deliberative judgment upon matters affecting New York city had become more and more intolerable. Everybody perceived not only the inadequacy, but the scandalous iniquity, of the relations between the legislature of the State and the corporate affairs of the cities of New York and Brooklyn.

The first task, therefore, which the Greater New York charter commission, appointed by Governor Morton, recognized as devolving upon it was the creation or revival of a representative body which should exercise, responsibly, in open session, from time to time, in the city hall at New York, those legislative powers respecting local and municipal matters that are now actually exercised, irresponsibly or at the dictation of bosses, by the state legislature at Albany. Municipal home rule was to be the foundation-stone upon which the new charter was to be constructed.

Whatever the details of the new system might be, it was understood on all sides that within the sphere of strictly municipal concerns the Greater New York was to be self-governing. It was evident that this must mean the transfer from Albany to New York of the scores, even hundreds, of measures of a purely local and special nature which are every year introduced as bills in the state legislature ; and it was also commonly thought that there could be no way to transfer the consideration of these matters from the state government to the municipal government except by the creation of some local body which should be analogous in its parliamentary methods to a state legislature.

The inquirer who dips casually into the bulky document which the charter commission has constructed will obtain the impression that there is created for the enlarged city of New York a local legislature almost exactly corresponding to the state legislature at Albany. At present, the state legislature has two different kinds of work laid upon it every winter : first, the proper work of general legislation, such as every law-making body has to deal with; and second, an enormous mass of concrete business relating to the separate affairs of the more than thirty municipal corporations of New York State, every one of which has its distinct and separate method of government. In the field of general legislation, the state legislature will continue to exercise its functions, as before, for all the people; but in the work of local and special legislation, the new charter for the Greater New York undertakes to relieve the state legislature of nearly or quite all of the bills relating to the municipalities of New York, Brooklyn. and Long Island City. For the transaction of this local legislative work the charter commissioners have provided what they call a municipal assembly, and have made it, in outward form, very nearly a reproduction of the Greater New York city half of the state legislature.

Thus the lower chamber of the municipal assembly, known as the board of aldermen, is to be made up of members elected, man for man, from the districts which send members to the assembly, or lower house of the state legislature. This board of aldermen will contain sixty members. If the analogy had been perfect, we should have had the upper branch of the municipal assembly, which is called the council, made up of men elected from the districts which send senators to the upper branch of the state legislature, but that plan has not been followed. Large council districts have been formed by the grouping of state senatorial districts, and from these large council districts members of the upper chamber are elected in groups of three on a general district ticket. The total membership of the upper chamber (the council) is twenty-nine. The president of this chamber is elected, like the mayor, at large, by the votes of the whole city. The members of the board of aldermen are to be chosen every two years, the entire body retiring together. The members of the council are to be elected for four-year terms, the entire body also going out together. The mayor has a four-year term, and is chosen at the same election with the members of the council, whose presiding officer is related to the mayor in about the same way that the lieutenant-governor of the State is related to the governor: he presides over the upper branch of the municipal legislature, and would become acting mayor in case of necessity.

The reformers were disappointed by the charter commission in their desire for a municipal parliament in a single chamber. They were disappointed in their request for long terms with partial renewal, in order to provide for continuity. And above all, they were disappointed in their expectation that the municipal assembly would be — in large part, at least — elected on a general ticket rather than from wards or districts. It is only fair to explain, however, that the districts into which the city is divided for the election of members of the upper branch are large, having an average population of nearly 350,000, while the small districts which choose aldermen have about 50,000 each.

As one reads the report made by the charter commissioners, accompanying the document itself, and even as one dips into the text of the charter, the impression is received that this municipal assembly possesses authority coördinate with that of the executive department; and it is natural to infer that we have here another instance of the familiar type of American government, that separates executive from deliberative functions, but gives full legislative and budgetary authority to the representative assembly.

A further study of the New York charter, however, reveals the fact that no such simple and familiar scheme of government has actually been created by the charter commissioners. It is true that the charter provides for the transfer of an immense range of deliberative and legislative business from Albany to New York ; and the new municipal assembly would seem, at the outset of our inquiry, to have fallen heir to all those transferred activities. But the real case is very different; for it is provided that the legislative authority of the new municipal assembly is to be limited by grants of authority conferred elsewhere in the new charter upon the administrative boards and heads of departments. One is obliged, therefore, to search the charter through in order to ascertain to what extent the appointive boards and heads of departments are given a power which impinges upon that which would otherwise be exercised by the municipal assembly.

Let us now examine the organization of the executive government of the Greater New York. First comes the mayor, who is entitled the chief executive. He is to be elected for four years and is not eligible for an immediate reëlection, and his salary is to be $15,000 a year. The business of city administration is divided into eighteen executive departments. These are the departments of finance, of law, of police, of water supply, of highways, of street-cleaning, of sewers, of public buildings, lighting, and supplies, of bridges, of parks, of building, of public charities, of correction, of fire, of docks and ferries, of taxes and assessments, of education, and of health. Some of these departments are to be administered by a single head or commissioner, and others are to be administered by groups of several commissioners. The charter-makers have considered that the work of certain departments involves a relatively large element of deliberation or discretion. Those departments have been placed under boards made up of several commissioners. The finance department has at its head the city comptroller, who is elected by the people. The law department has the corporation counsel at its head, and he is to be appointed by the mayor for a four-year term. The police department is in charge of four police commissioners, appointed for four years, one going out of office every year, his successor being appointed by the mayor, on the bi-partisan principle. Each of the six departments of water supply, highways, street-cleaning, sewers, public buildings, lighting, and supplies, and bridges has a single appointive commissioner at its head, holding office for a term of six years. These six commissioners together form a board of public improvements, with a seventh official (appointed by the mayor), known as the president of the board of public improvements, sitting as their chairman. I shall have occasion to speak further of the functions of this board. The park department, the building department, and the department of docks and ferries are each controlled by a board of three commissioners, holding office for six - year terms, one man retiring every two years. The charities department, the department of correction, the fire department, are each under charge of a single commissioner. The department of taxes and assessments comes under control of a board of five members, one of them designated as president of the hoard, and all of them appointed by the mayor. The president of this tax board is appointed for six years, and his four colleagues for fouryear terms, one of the four retiring every year. The department of health is under control of a board of six. presided over by the health commissioner, with the health officer of the port and the president of the police board included ex officio, and three other members appointed by the mayor. It remains to mention the department of education, at the head of which is a board of nineteen members, evolved out of the several large school boards for the different “boroughs” (that is to say, the main constituent parts) of the Greater New York. These borough school boards are made up of appointees of the mayor, and the general board of nineteen is made up of the delegates of the local boards.

An incoming mayor of the Greater New York will have the right to remove all commissioners and heads of departments by summary process, and to replace them with his own selections. But he will lose this power at the end of six months. After that, his power of removal will be so hedged about as to become practically non-existent. The mayor of the Greater New York is not to be, as is the present mayor of Brooklyn, in charge of the actual executive government. The system provided for in the new charter puts the executive government wholly into the hands of the eighteen departments, which are practically supreme in their respective eighteen spheres, except as they are limited by two important groups, or boards, namely, the board of estimate and apportionment and the board of public improvements. One discovers with some surprise that the ordinance-making power, which would normally belong exclusively to the municipal assembly, is, in the Greater New York charter, conferred upon all the executive departments. The park board, for example, has full authority to make all ordinances which have to do with the regulation and management of the park system. The dock board, in like fashion, makes all the rules and regulations which pertain to that very important department, including those that govern the ferries which connect the different parts of the Greater New York. Within the sphere of the six working departments which are grouped together to form the board of public improvements, the municipal chambers are especially restricted in their legislative or ordinance-making authority. In a general way, the new charter seems to intend not only that the executive departments shall make the rules and regulations that concern their spheres of municipal activity, but also that they shall have the initiative in matters that involve change or origination in their respective spheres.

Moreover, the new charter preserves the board of estimate and apportionment, and this board remains in the fullest sense the budgetary authority in the new scheme of government. Thus the eighteen executive departments take away from the municipal assembly the larger part of the ordinance-making power ; the board of public improvements in practice controls municipal plans and policies as regards the construction of works, and the board of estimate and apportionment intervenes to prepare the budget, both on the side of income and on that of disbursement.

It may perhaps be said with some measure of truth that the essential nature of any municipal government, or, for that matter, of any other government, will be revealed when one follows the concrete processes involved in the preparation and adoption of the annual budget. Let us see, then, what course the budget must pursue under the government provided for the Greater New York, and then let us follow the process of instituting some work of public improvement.

To begin with the budget. Each of the eighteen departments will work out its own estimates for the coming year. Those departments, it is to be remembered, are so devised as to cover the whole range of the city’s ordinary activities. In the case of the six departments which are affiliated to form the board of public improvements, the estimates of the individual departments will be sifted through the board before they are sent on to join the estimates furnished by the other twelve departments. Altogether, the eighteen departmental budgets will come into the hands of the board of estimate and apportionment, This board of live thereupon proceeds to deal with the estimates as it sees fit. It throws its sessions open for a few public hearings, and then completes its work. There is no limit whatever to its right to add to or subtract from departmental estimates. It is under no compulsion, except that it must provide for interest on the bonded debt, for the sinking fund, for the state school fund, and for a few similar items prescribed by the law of the State. The estimates are finally sent to the municipal assembly, which must abandon its two-chamber meetings, and come together as one body for the consideration of the budget. It must complete its action within a certain number of days. It may not add a penny to the estimates at any point whatsoever. It is permitted to throw out items or to make reductions, but it must not offset these by voting increased sums for any object. When it has completed its consideration, the budget goes to the mayor for his final action. The mayor has authority to veto any amendments that the municipal assembly may have made. That is to say, he may restore any amounts that have been subtracted. There are reasons for supposing that the mayor would exercise this veto power, especially in the first year or two of his term ; for in the first place, the estimates as prepared come from departments controlled by the mayor’s own appointees ; in the second place, the estimates are all passed upon and readjusted by the board of estimate and apportionment,of which the mayor himself is chairman, while two other members are his own appointees. It is to be presumed, then, that the budget as sent to the municipal assembly would represent the mayor’s views. If it should be cut down, it is to be expected that the mayor would interpose his veto power. The assembly can override the mayor’s veto of the budget only by a vote of five sixths of all the members elected to both chambers. Ordinarily, it would be impossible to pass any budgetary amendments over the mayor’s head ; and, as any one can see on a moment’s reflection, the consideration of the budget by the municipal assembly becomes merely a grand farce.

Since there is no power that amounts to anything in the carrying on of the municipal government, except the ordinancemaking power, the appointing power, and above all, the spending power; and since the ordinance-making power in this charter is for the most part reposed absolutely in the administrative departments, while the appointing power is reposed absolutely in the mayor, and the budgetary power is given beyond hope of modification to the board of estimate and apportionment, the members of the first municipal assembly elected under this voluminous charter may well ask, with some amazement, as the situation gradually dawns upon them, What are we here for ? And there can be only one answer : they are there to carry on a debating society, and to rage in vain at their own impotence. It is a Somewhat curious fact that this state of affairs is not even hinted at in the report of the commissioners to the legislature. The assignment of powers is so widely scattered through the thousand pages, more or less, of the bulky document, that it takes some study to arrive at the ultimate facts. It would seem likely that the commissioners, entertaining a profound distrust of the average American city council, do not believe that authority can safely be entrusted to the municipal assembly for the Greater New York. Nevertheless, recognizing the demand for a municipal legislature, they provided a showy and specious assembly, which apparently forms the basis of the whole structure, and they then proceeded ingeniously to weave into the scheme checks and balances which will make it impossible for the municipal parliament to do any positive harm.

Now, to show how the system would work in a matter of public improvement, let us suppose that an additional bridge is to be built between the two principal parts of the Greater New York. Presumably, the initiative would be taken by the bridge commissioner. The engineers and technical officials of his department would fix tentatively upon the location, and would work out the architectural and engineering details. For a second consideration, the matter must go to the board of public improvements, where approval or disapproval would be likely to turn upon questions of a technical or engineering character, although it is easy to see how the other members of the board of public improvements, each of them desiring the expenditure of public money in his own department, might, through jealousy, suppress or postpone the scheme of a new bridge, But if the plan at last runs the gauntlet of the board of public improvements, it must go, for a third consideration, to the board of estimate and apportionment. Here it is supposed to be examined in its financial aspects. Can the city, compatibly with its debt conditions and general financial state, afford the new public improvement, and are the proposed plans economical and advisable from the point of view of the municipal purse ? While these aspects of the scheme would in theory govern the action taken by the board of estimate and apportionment, it is easy to foresee that political and other motives might actually control the decision of the board. Then, if the scheme is approved, it goes for its fourth consideration to one of the chambers of the municipal assembly, and for a fifth consideration to the other chamber. If, as is likely enough, the two chambers differ as to the location of the bridge, or the materials from which it is to be built, or its cost, or some other essential thing, there ensues a legislative deadlock to be overcome ; and for a sixth consideration the matter must go to a conference committee representing the two chambers. Taking it for granted that an agreement is reached, we need not count the necessary ratification by the two chambers, but will follow the bridge scheme to the mayor, whose right of veto implies a seventh independent consideration. If he should approve, the bridge would probably be built, though there would still remain some possible obstacles.

If the mayor should veto the measure, the municipal assembly could carry it over his head, provided a large enough majority could be secured. And this leads me to say that no man will ever become intimate enough with the provisions of this charter — no matter how many years he may sit in the municipal assembly—to know for a certainty, without careful reference to the document, by what kind of a majority a particular piece of business must be carried to have validity. Some actions in the municipal assembly may be taken by a majority of those present and voting, provided there is a quorum. Other things may be done by a simple majority of all those elected ; still others require a two thirds majority of all those elected, others a three fourths majority, others a four fifths majority, others a five sixths majority, and others absolute unanimity. I suspect that there may be still other percentages or proportions requisite for certain actions; but the seven that I have mentioned have caught my attention, as I have endeavored to run through the document. I cite them as instances of the astounding complexity of the government that seems destined to go into operation at New York within a year.

If, under this charter, the mayor had absolute power to remove commissioners and heads of departments summarily throughout his term, and to appoint their successors, the city would have a municipal government more autocratic than any of which I have ever heard, for it would be the Brooklyn plan idealized. Apart from the shadowy municipal assembly, however, it would have the merit of unity and effectiveness for purposes of ordinary administration. But as the matter stands, let us suppose Tammany to be victorious, and to elect what we may term without euphemism a bad mayor. He has six months in which to turn out of office all the good department heads and commissioners, and to replace them with machine politicians, ward bosses,and subservient creatures of his own. It is true that these men may not continue to be his creatures after the end of the first six months, for then he loses his power to remove them ; but he will probably have made the government of the city thoroughly bad ; and, for good citizens, it may not matter much whether it is harmoniously bad or inharmoniously bad.

Now let us suppose, on the other hand, that the Citizens’ Union — which is taking its place in the field somewhat hopefully at the present moment—should succeed in electing, next November, a good and efficient mayor. Such a man will dislike to make sweeping and arbitrary removals. He will, however, to the best of his ability, in the course of the first six months, appoint good men for the boards and commissionerships. After that he will continue to hold office for three years and six months longer, with no power residing in him to make changes for the sake of efficiency and harmony. Most of the departments, doubtless, will go on fairly well, but some of them will be almost sure to get into trouble, which can be satisfactorily remedied only by a change in one or more commissionerships.

The ordinary administration of the great city will, then, after the first six months of every four years, be carried on by eighteen separate departments. The charter does not make these departments directly responsible or accountable to anybody. They do not derive authority directly from the people, and they certainly owe nothing to the municipal assembly. On the other hand, there is no power in the mayor to hold them accountable, for there is no practicable way to get rid of them unless they have committed some heinous crime. The mayor will have spent six months in winding up the machine, and he will have forty-two months in which to watch it gradually run down. This is government, not by the municipal parliament, not by an autocratic mayor, nor yet by the familiar American system of an executive and a legislature counterbalancing each other. But it is bureaucracy pure and simple. I am not ready to assert it positively, but I am of the impression, from some knowledge of the subject, that the very shadowy municipal assemblies provided some years ago for St. Petersburg and Moscow had a greater legislative and financial authority than the new municipal assembly of the Greater New York ; and I am inclined to believe that neither in the administration of those Russian cities nor in the administration of the Russian provincial governments will one find a bureaucratic system so complete and so indirect in its responsibilities to the public as the bureaucracy which the Greater New York charter creates.

The arguments advanced by the commissioners for a municipal assembly in two chambers seem altogether amusing when one considers how carefully they have guarded against any real exercise of power by the people’s representatives. Their provision, so they declare, of an assembly sitting in two chambers is to insure careful and deliberate action and to guard against the evils of legislative haste. But in view of the processes by which the budget is to be adopted, and by which other matters sift through the bureaus and boards before they can reach the municipal assembly, haste would seem to be the one thing most to be desired at the end. Moreover, the municipal assembly is in any case to sit as one chamber in consideration of the budget; and why it should not transact all of its other business as one body is not explained in the report.

President Seth Low, of Columbia University, and Mayor Strong, protested strenuously against the six months’ limit on the mayor’s power of removal, and the gravely objectionable scheme of a police commission of four members, to be appointed on the absurd and impossible bi-partisan plan. And it is well known, furthermore, that President Low, if he could have had his own way, would have merged the two chambers of the municipal assembly into one. He also greatly desired to secure the election of a part, at least, of the members of one or both houses of the municipal assembly on a general ticket. It should be said, too, that the commissioners as a body were decidedly friendly to the idea of proportional or minority representation, and that in their report they declare that the only reason for omitting that principle was their fear lest it should be found unconstitutional. They have therefore submitted the draft of a constitutional amendment, which they ask the legislature to adopt, clearly granting to municipalities the right to try some form of proportional representation in the choosing of boards of aldermen or municipal councils.

The chief difficulty this charter will meet in practice will be found to lie in that great law of nature by which water flows downhill, and everything else tends to follow the lines of least resistance. For it should be remembered that the Empire State express train will continue to fly from New York to Albany every day, and that the legislative power at the state Capitol which confers this elaborate charter upon the city of New York can at any time amend it or supersede it. A member of the state Senate remarked to me, in the mayor’s office, the other day, that this new charter was quite too complicated for his purposes, and that when his constituents wanted anything done (he represented a city district) he should make it his business to take the matter straight to the legislature and carry it through. With several scores of politicians from New York city districts sitting in the state legislature, there will be no public opinion strong enough to prevent the resumption of the present and long-continued practice of state intervention. If the city falls into bad hands under the new charter, the municipal reformers and good citizens will assuredly not wait for the next municipal election, but will hurry to Albany with a movement for getting the bad commissioners legislated out of office. If good men hold the reins of authority in the metropolis, while the tools of the boss fill the halls of legislation at Albany, the boss will undoubtedly conclude to alter the charter, and incidentally to legislate the good men out of office.

The very complications in the charter, the very system of bolts and combination time-locks which form so amazingly ingenious a scheme, are what make it certain that everybody in turn will take the short cut to Albany. The only kind of municipal government which can make municipal home rule for New York a tolerably assured fact must be one possessing the utmost simplicity, responding readily and obviously to the will of the community. Public opinion would then ordain that New York should attend to its own affairs. As I have shown, St. Louis has attained real home rule because its organization is sufficiently responsive to meet local demands, and public opinion would condemn frequency of resort to the state legislature.

This prediction that the Albany short cut will inevitably be used has striking confirmation already ; for no sooner had the new charter been approved by both houses of the legislature, in the latter days of March, than there were taken up for consideration great public improvements for New York city, and also for Brooklyn, involving expenditures in the aggregate of probably $50,000,000. One of these special measures attempted to create a board of commissioners to have full control of a proposed boulevard system for the upper part of New York city. Several practical politicians were named in the bill as commissioners, and were given authority to spend a vast amount of money every year for an indefinite number of years, each commissioner to draw a large salary from the date of the passage of the act. There was no urgency about this matter, and no one could deny that it was intended to take a critically important public enterprise out of the hands of the street department and board of public improvements, as provided for in the new charter. Meanwhile, another bill called for the creation of a great trunk sewer in the valley of the Bronx, also in the upper part of the Greater New York area. This public work, too. according to the bill, was to be entrusted to a separate commission, the commissioners being named in the act ; and the sole urgency lay in the desire to take the proposed improvement away from the sewer department and the board of public improvements, which, under the new charter, should have full control of all such matters.

It is sufficient to name these two illustrations. Both bills seemed likely to pass. It may be mentioned that the rapid transit scheme, which has been pending for a long time, is also in charge of a special board of commissioners, who will presumably have the oversight of the expenditure of a sum of public money that will not fall below $50,000,000. What will be left for the board of public improvements ? If the very legislature which has enacted the Greater New York charter (with the avowed object of transferring legislative work of a local character from Albany to New York) proceeds in the order of its calendar to make the charter unavailing by setting up special commissions to do the business that properly belongs to the municipal authorities, what can be expected of future legislatures ? Assuredly, they will not hesitate for a moment to override the charter and set it aside, whenever an inducement offers.

The real hope, of course, for good government in New York, as everywhere else, lies in the development of a sound and true civic spirit. The mechanism of municipal government is a secondary matter. Nevertheless, it is of high importance that the mechanism should have simplicity and unity, and that it should be obviously responsive to the public will. In New York, as in many cities, the crying demand at the present moment is for nomination reform. Until the party organizations give us a radically improved nominating system, it will, in the opinion of many experienced men, be the duty of municipal reformers to assume the aggressive, and to put into the field independent citizens’ tickets on a nonpartisan platform. There has been good government in New York city (except for a few weak spots) for more than two years. But this fact is wholly due to the action of the Committee of Seventy, formed by the business men of New York and the municipal reform elements, led by the Chamber of Commerce. The Committee of Seventy selected Mayor Strong, and secured the power of removal act. Incidentally Mayor Strong is a Republican, but primarily he is a business man of high character, whose sole motive is the true welfare of the municipality. New York will have fairly good government, probably, for several years to come, if all the disinterested elements that are working for that end unite and succeed, next November, in electing their ticket. But as for an ideal municipal charter, or any equilibrium or stability in the structure of the municipal system as such, there are no bright prospects in the neighborhood of New York. The country must look elsewhere if it seeks instruction in the framing of charters.

In justice to the work of the framers of the New York charter, it must be said that their great document is very much more than a municipal constitution. It is also a municipal code ; and in the framing of particular chapters of this code very admirable work has been accomplished. Those chapters, however, form a distinct subject, or series of subjects ; and it would be impossible for me even to allude to them here. An intelligent regard for municipal rights and municipal progress has been shown in such matters as the treatment of franchises, of docks and ferries, and of public assets in general. Moreover, at many points of detail in the chapters regulating the various departments, positive improvements have been made over existing arrangements. Nevertheless, the chapters have been so framed as to continue, with incidental improvements, such administrative arrangements as now exist in the Greater New York. The signs of real progress are to be found in the improved quality of much of the departmental work. Public opinion will never again tolerate filthy streets, for example ; and the average standard of municipal housekeeping in New York is advancing hopefully, regardless of charter-building controversies.

Albert Shaw.