Municipal Self-Government: Council and Mayor

MUNICIPAL government in the United States is undemocratic. The city is the agent of the state. The people of the state arbitrarily govern the city. The mosaic which we call municipal government is the means by which the people of the state exercise arbitrary power over minor communities in matters purely local. The exercise of such power, by indirect and complex means, has resulted in bad municipal government. That it would so result was inevitable.

Democratic government is an expression, not a source, of authority. The people governed is the source of its powers. The government of the United States derives its powers from the people of the United States. The government of the state derives its powers from the people of the state. The government of the city should obtain its powers from the people of the city.

Our national and state governments were created by the people to serve them in different spheres. Neither derives authority from, nor acts as the agent of, the other. Both derive authority directly from the people, — that of the nation from the people of the nation, that of the state from the people of the state. The line between nation and state is clearly drawn. The government of the nation is confined to those matters which concern the entire people of the nation. The line between state and city should be as distinctly drawn. The government of the state should be confined to those matters which concern the entire people of the state. Thus the government of the city would be left free to deal with those matters which concern only the people of the city.

The supreme authority in our system is the people of the United States. They, as an aggregate sovereign, by means of the Constitution, created a national government, with certain welldefined general powers. Incidentally and to guard the exercise of the powers thus conferred, they imposed limitations on the states. By the Tenth Amendment they reserved to the states and to themselves the powers not delegated to the national government. The state has appropriated to itself these reserved powers. It should have left to the people those of local concern, to be by them conferred on the city. This would have carried out the democratic scheme of government devised by the fathers, and by them in part applied.

The work of the founders of the American commonwealth in framing our state and national governments has been much and justly admired. Theirs was indeed a splendid achievement of constructive statesmanship. That they omitted to add a simple and democratic plan of municipal government is doubtless due to the fact that large cities did not then exist. What have become the public necessities of city life were unknown. Such municipal administration as was required was simple and without important bearing on the larger matters of state and national government. Hence, in framing their scheme of government, the fathers of American democracy overlooked what is now the vast and widening field of municipal activities.

This omission in the organization of democratic government in America has never been remedied. As municipalities grew, the rapidly multiplying wants of urban populations were met by haphazard makeshifts. Institutions by means of which rural communities and small villages had realized local selfgovernment were retained, and extended to meet needs for which they were not devised and are not adapted. As the strain increased, the state added numerous officials, boards, and commissions.

Thus the government of every American city has become a huge conglomerate of warring officials and boards representing the state. Elective officers and elections have been so multiplied that it is a difficult task merely to keep the offices filled. What we call municipal government is too complex to be understood save by experts. The people, always busy with their own affairs, have more and more left the entire matter to the tender mercies of the political bosses and franchise grabbers. In this way municipal administration has been diverted from public to private ends.

The state, in attempting to govern the city, has unduly emphasized the executive view of municipal administration. Indeed, to the extent that city government is an agency to express the will of the state, its function is only executive. The power to legislate is the distinguishing mark of self-government. The mere right of the people of the city to choose between rival aspirants to local executive office, under state authority, involves only the power to determine whether state laws shall be strictly or loosely enforced. To be really self-governing, the people of the city must enjoy the right to create a body having power to legislate for them in all matters of local concern.

The policy which makes the city the agent of the state has led to anomalous results. In nation and state the legislature is the affirmative power. It speaks directly for the people. It expresses their will in continuing laws of general application. Its function is to determine public policies. The executive and the judiciary merely participate in the enforcement of the laws. They deal with individual matters as they arise. Their function is to administer. In a city, which exists mainly to enforce state legislation, these conditions are reversed. The play is an exotic. The mayor is the star performer. The council plays but a minor part. The mayor, when chosen, assumes to his constituency the rôle of temporary dictator. As a representative of the state, he is subject to its legislative authority. Nominally an officer of the city, he is beyond the control of its people.

The council of a city, which exists as a creature of the state, is at best an unnecessary, and at worst a contemptible thing. The mayor and his cabinet might perform its part; indeed, the tendency is to confer upon the mayor powers taken from the council. In most American cities it is thought that bad municipal government is directly chargeable to the council. To escape evils lightly assumed to pertain to the council, the mayor is given increased authority. The council, thus deprived of most of the poor powers which it once possessed, is left a derelict on the troubled sea of municipal misgovernment.

The evils which result from undemocratic municipal government extend far beyond the city. The legislature of the state, if empowered to deal with none but matters of general application, might be a responsible and efficient body. Charged as it is with the power, even duty, constantly to intermeddle in the affairs of every municipality in matters purely local, its sessions have become log-rolling bees. Local measures clog its calendar. Each member seeks to press such of these as affect his locality. A gang of members from a single city, acting as the chattels of public service corporations, often coerce their fellows into action prejudicial to the public welfare. A measure which sacrifices the rights of the people of but a single community can rarely be expected to arouse to effective opposition the people of a great state. The good of the locality, often of many localities, is sacrificed that the public business itself may proceed.

Thus the undemocratic attempt by the people of the state arbitrarily to govern the city results in making the government of both city and state irresponsible, inefficient, corrupt. Indeed, means better calculated to divert the powers of government from public to private ends could not be devised. No man or group of men can be trusted to exercise irresponsible power. The government of the city by the state violates the principle of self-government. It endangers the state in the vain effort to save the city. It relieves the people of the city of local responsibility. It corrupts and paralyzes both state and city administration.

The proposal to make the city as independent of the state as the state is independent of the nation does not involve the loss of proper state authority within the city. The nation exercises an authority within the state which extends even to its individual citizens. The state must continue to legislate generally for all its people in respect to such matters of common concern as crime, personal rights, the family, education, property, corporations, commerce, elections, and general taxation. These great duties are obscured, often imperiled, by continuous strife at the state capital over conflicting local interests.

The legislation of the state touching civic affairs will continue to be enforced in the city mainly by local officials. Indeed, the execution of state laws in each of its communities by officers locally chosen is what has made the state, despite an undue centralization of legislative power, the chief conservator of local self-government. It is of much greater importance to preserve this time-honored practice intact than it is to have all state laws well and uniformly enforced. The vital objections which lie to a state constabulary lie equally to the absorption by the state of those legislative powers which can be locally exercised.

What powers may be locally exercised ? In brief, all powers that do not concern the entire people of the nation or of the state. Among these are the power to frame a city government and define its authority, the police power so far as local, the power of taxation for local purposes including schools, the power to establish and administer streets and parks, the power to supply public necessities directly or by means of the public service corporation, and the power to establish and administer reformatory and charitable institutions. It is objected that the people of the city cannot safely exercise such powers; that they are incapable of self-government. It is urged that the government of the state must stand guard over the people of the city; that it must save them from themselves. The answer is obvious. The government of the state is not a storehouse of saving grace. It is at best but an expression of the will of the entire people of the state. It is too often the means by which incorporated greed uses the public authority for private ends. It is impossible for the entire people of a state to know the needs of its several local communities as well as their own people know them.

The people of the nation permit the people of the state to determine for themselves nearly all matters of state government. The people of the state may with like propriety permit the people of the city to determine for themselves practically all matters of city government. This by no means implies that the exercise of this permissive local authority shall be free from proper constitutional and statutory limitations. Municipal government may be made to conform to a general state policy without taking from each municipality liberty largely to determine for itself the limits and the means of its activities. The state, for example, should, by definite law, protect the right of all its citizens freely to compete for public employment. It should establish laws of uniform application, providing especially for such matters of common interest as popular education, the preservation of health, and the regulation of the liquor traffic. It may provide broad restrictions touching some matters of common interest, leaving the city free to add to them if its people so desire. It may prohibit city interference in matters of vital general concern. It is for the people of the state, in framing its constitution, to determine what matters shall be under state control without local interference, what matters shall be left to the city subject to certain restrictions, and what matters shall be under city control without state interference.

The city must act through agents. In this it is like the state. It need not rely on the state for protection from its agents. Restraints may be imposed on constituted authority as well by city charter as by state constitution. The people of the city should be permitted, under proper general limitations, to frame a city constitution or charter. They should be free to determine all questions of municipal public policy. They should possess power to legislate as well as power to administer. They should enjoy legislative as well as administrative freedom.

We at last realize that neither in state nor in city is it necessary to confer final authority on public servants. It is now clear that there should be ratification, express or implied, by the people, of the more important acts of their representatives. There are great possibilities in the growing desire of intelligent citizens to participate more directly than heretofore in legislation. The people may in time both choose and direct their agents. They may also reserve power to pass on all important legislative acts on petition of a certain percentage of the voters within a fixed time. That by such means the agents of the people may be made responsive to their will is believed by increasing numbers. Private principals often reserve the power to reject or ratify the acts of their agents. There are even weightier reasons why the people should reserve the power to reject or ratify the acts of public servants. It is not necessary to confer upon them unlimited power.

The local independence here advocated is required fully to carry out and make symmetrical our scheme of government. When this measure of local independence is secured, ours will really be a government by the people. The city must be governed by the people of the city, if it is to be an instrument of democratic government. The state must surrender arbitrary power, if it is to be merely an agency of a self-governing people. If government by the people is desirable, it should alike obtain in nation, state, and city.

This course would leave each of the three distinct governmental agencies of the people free to perform its functions without interference by the others. It would make each directly responsible to its special constituency. It would confer upon each practically exclusive control of a few great matters of common interest to its people. Nothing so conduces to make a representative government efficient as to limit its jurisdiction to a few important matters of common interest to those for whom it speaks. Efficiency rapidly decreases with the multiplication of the subjects with which a representative government deals.

Our government, to mere casual observers, seems complex in form and difficult to understand. Our national government is, in fact, simple. It deals only with those great concerns of general interest to the people of the United States. Our state governments would be equally simple if each were confined to the important matters which concern its entire people. To the attempt of the states to combine both general and local functions is due the apparently inextricable confusion which has so long characterized our state and municipal governments. Give to state and city separate and distinct powers; make each directly responsible to its special constituency; permit neither to exercise other than direct representative authority: the result will be simple, responsible, efficient government.

The state, to the extent that it has exercised arbitrary power over its cities, has ceased to be democratic. The result might have been foreseen. No despotism is so unrestrained as the despotism of a crowd. It may be safely asserted that nowhere else is municipal government so irresponsible as it is in the United States. When our national, state, and city governments shall severally and directly represent their respective constituencies, when none of them shall exercise other than representative powers, we may claim that ours is in fact as well as in name a democratic republic.

The extent to which the city is made the agent of the state differs greatly in the several states. In certain states, the legislature, by special acts, governs each city separately, even in matters of petty detail. In other states, the attempt is made to limit legislation to acts general in form and applicable to all cities of a given class. In Pennsylvania, it seems that the legislature, whenever the administration of any city becomes unsatisfactory to the state boss, may by special act remove its mayor, authorize the governor to name his successor, and directly despoil its public service. The city of New York has long been governed by the legislature of the state. Its people are merely permitted, from time to time, to determine whether its officials shall be common criminals, party tools, or public servants. These officials, when chosen, are subject, in the discharge of their duties, to constant intermeddling by the legislature. Some of them are responsible to the governor, and may be by him removed. To-day, a city of three and a half millions, whose people participate in the government of the nation, is not even permitted to determine for itself during what hours its saloons shall be closed. In Illinois, although the constitutional prohibition of special legislation is frequently evaded, the city of Chicago is greatly hampered in matters merely local, for want of permissive power to govern itself. All state interference in matters purely local, whatever its extent, is pernicious. Emancipation of the city from state intermeddling is everywhere a crying need.

Municipal government, if it is to act for the people of the city rather than as an executive agent of the state, must possess full legislative as well as large executive powers. The more independent of the state it becomes, the greater will be its legislative powers. A representative government must legislate as well as execute. Hence municipal self-government calls for a powerful council. This means public rather than secret, democratic rather than despotic city government. The vice of American municipal government lies in that it is mainly executive, and that it acts for the state. When it becomes representative of the people of the city, the council will voice and the mayor will execute their will. We shall then have responsible municipal government.

Much might be said in support of the proposal to make the mayor the administrative agent of the council. In many European cities he is chosen by the council, and thus acts. It is the American method to separate legislative and executive functions. Legislators and executives, elected by the people, directly and severally represent them. This division of powers among direct representatives of the people, justified by experience in nation and state, should be applied in the city. We understand and know how to work a government having distinct legislative and administrative departments. We know how to apportion responsibility between legislature and executive. The application of this method to the city will complete and make symmetrical our system of government.

Thus it appears that a municipal government directly representative of and responsible to the people of the city, and having distinct legislative and administrative departments, will strictly comply with American ideals, however it may depart from recent American practice. It is undeniable that it will not accord with such practice, especially that of recent years. The council, never what it should be, has been gradually abandoned, its powers being assumed by the state legislature. This usurper of arbitrary authority has made the mayor its local representative, vesting in him both executive and legislative powers. The distinction between legislation and administration in municipal government is all but lost. In lieu of municipal self-government we have despotic rule. In the absence of means through which its people might govern the city, the tendency has been to rely on the goodness and wisdom of the mayor. The resort has been to the dictator. Yet with this growth of despotism in our cities American municipal government has become more and more a “problem.”

There are those who hold that good municipal government cannot be expected of democracy. Some even say that our experience is conclusive of its failure in this field. However, as thus far we have not tried really democratic methods in city administration, our failures cannot be laid at the door of democracy. We have made full trial of municipal government by state legislature and autocratic mayor acting together. To this irresponsible combination our failures are chargeable. The remedy for evils thus produced does not lie in a further departure from democratic methods. The failures of the Constitution are due to the unwillingness of the fathers to rely on the people to choose the President and the members of the Senate. The irresistible tendency of our history has been to remove all barriers between the people and their government, to make all its agencies directly responsive to their will. This movement will finally compel the application of democratic methods to city administration. Its aim to make the American commonwealth a representative democracy is certain of accomplishment.

Government, with us, has but one possible source of authority. Having repudiated the absurd fiction of the divine right of a man or group of men to rule over others, we can draw no line of exclusion. Authority to govern must come from without or it inheres in the whole people. We have nowhere save in the people any reserve of authority or virtue upon which to draw. To say that the people of the city cannot be trusted to govern themselves is to admit once for all the failure of democracy. The people of the city form a rapidly increasing proportion of our population. If not fit to govern themselves, they are not fit to participate in the government of the state and nation. We are committed to democracy, and must work through it, however long the way, to good government.

No one who is at all acquainted with history and with the vast interests of our complex modern life expects government of whatever form to become an easy task. Those who really believe in democracy do not shrink from the application of democratic methods to city administration because of the difficulties involved. That their faith in the people of the city, even when largely of foreign birth, is not misplaced, a single illustration indicates. The council of the city of Chicago, though unwisely hampered by the state, possesses large powers. In 1895 it was absolutely owned by special interests. To-day the people of Chicago are represented in its council by over fifty of its seventy members. It is organized on non-partisan lines, the best members being in control of all important committees. No important measure to which there was popular objection has passed since the reform movement began. The Chicago council is to-day one of the best legislative bodies in the entire country. This result has been attained without waiting for organic reform.

The present hopeful movement for municipal reform takes democracy for granted. It for the first time seeks to apply democratic methods to city administration. It demands municipal selfgovernment, with council and mayor. In the words of Mr. Delos F. Wilcox, in advocacy of the excellent Municipal Programme recommended by the National Municipal League, “the hope of humanity seems to lie in the perfection of democracy rather than in any retrogressive step, in exalting rather than in lessening popular responsibility.”

Edwin Burritt Smith.