THE “JUNGLE”
The long “bed-quilt” ballot of county officers, as a Chicago
newspaperman called it, at first innocently, and then maliciously,
deceived, misled and disfranchised the “average citizen.” As to the
manner in which this result was brought about, more hereafter.
But aside from all that, the long ballot principle turned out to
be the father of irresponsible organization. Each elective officer
received his commission straight from the people; his accountability
was solely and directly to them. No officer was to be entrusted with
much power for the fear that he might emulate King George and enslave
the county. Government generally was regarded as a natural but more or
less necessary enemy of the people to be tied with a short rope lest it
break loose and do incalculable damage.
To the devotees of this theory, the idea that the county should have
a directing executive head, if indeed it ever received consideration,
was apparently too suggestive of Hanoverian monarchy to be seriously
entertained. This was to be a “government of laws, not of men”--the
people would see that all went well.
It was such a spirit, no doubt, that guided the development of
the county system in an eastern state, which the writer studied a
few years ago. In the course of this effort the interrelations of
officers in a typical unit were diagrammed--with the result shown in
frontispiece. It was found, for instance, that the county clerk who
was “directly responsible to the people” was given duties to perform
under some twenty different laws, the enforcement of which under the
constitution was charged upon the governor as the chief executive of
the state. In fulfillment of these obligations he was found to be
under the direction, among others, of the superintendent of banking,
the superintendent of insurance, the commissioner of excise and the
secretary of state. For the routine of his office he was answerable
to the local board of supervisors. The sheriff, who “took his orders
from the people,” was found to be answerable to the supervisors, the
surrogate and the county judge. The district attorney was put down as
subject to at least three minor state officers besides the governor
and the board of supervisors. The county treasurer looked up (or was
supposed to) to the state commissioner of excise, the state board of
tax commissioners, the commissioner of education, the comptroller and
the state treasurer.
And in all this wilderness of conflicting responsibility there was, be
it reiterated, no single officer who could be called the executive.
The governor, it is true, had power to remove and fill vacancies, but
even this negative control was conditioned by the fact that there
were sixty-one counties in the state, that some of them were hundreds
of miles from the capital and that the governor was charged with a
thousand other responsibilities besides looking after the counties. It
was true that the state comptroller was given power to examine into
the fiscal affairs of the various counties, but this safeguard was of
limited value in practice, owing to the small number of examiners which
the legislature provides.
No, the ingenious Anglo-Saxon mind had discovered a substitute for
efficient personal supervision! If a given officer were to go wrong or
neglect his duties, then the supervisors were authorized to go to the
district attorney and persuade him, if possible, to take action on the
officer’s bond or to institute a criminal prosecution. If the district
attorney was negligent in the matter, the supervisors might go to the
governor with charges of neglect of duty. But if the original officer
in question was just lazy, slow or inefficient, then everybody simply
could wait “till he got round” to doing his duty.
To this day this circumambulation in the name of democracy actually
fulfills the conception of popular rule for no inconsiderable body
of political leaders. Where the system goes wrong, they inject a
little more confusion, a little more irresponsibility into the plan
of government. Take, for instance, the Indiana system. In 1898 the
county government became the subject of a state-wide scandal and was
made the political issue of the year. The governor in his biennial
message followed the good old American custom: more complications, more
division of responsibility. He recommended a system of “safeguards”
which had the effect of taking away power (and responsibility) from
the county board (commissioners) and vesting it in a brand-new body
known as the council, composed of seven members, three elected from the
county at large, and one from each of the four councilmanic districts.
This council was made the tax-levying and money-appropriating body
for the county and no money could henceforth be drawn from the county
treasury except upon their appropriation. It also was given the
sole authority to issue bonds and borrow money. And so the county
governments in Indiana were blocked at just one more point and the
county commissioners were made just one shade less accountable than
they were before the enactment of this ingenious piece of “reform”
legislation.
Two of the New England states developed equally clever methods of
breaking down financial responsibility. New Hampshire, with its boards
of commissioners elected by the people of the counties would seem to be
well-equipped with fiscal agencies. But not so! The commissioners may
only recommend appropriations for county expenses--and a “convention,”
consisting of the members of the House of Representatives of the
various towns then allows, or disallows, them. Such an institution was
created many years ago. Connecticut goes New Hampshire one better by
constituting the convention of the local members of _both_ houses
of the legislature. The convention may not only vote the amount of the
general county appropriation, but the appropriation for any specific
items of county expenditures for the two fiscal years following, or for
the repairs and alterations of county buildings.
Democracy via complication was applied also in the state of New Jersey,
when the legislature of 1898 took from the board of chosen freeholders
(supervisors) of Hudson County the control over the Hudson County
Boulevard. An act passed in that year created a separate new commission
of three members to be elected by the people, upon which was conferred
powers comparable to those of a separate municipality. The commission
was even given the right to maintain a separate police force, to own
and operate a separate electric lighting plant, to employ its own
cleaning and repairing force and to act in other ways entirely separate
from the county road and highway system and independent of the street
departments of those municipalities through which the road lies. This
independent body was authorized to fix its own appropriations and
make them mandatory upon the board of chosen freeholders, to let all
contracts for the construction of the roads under its charge and to
employ a separate engineer.
When Hudson County began to lay out its park system, the disintegration
of the county system was carried a step further. Another wing was added
to the amorphous county structure, a Park Commission to be composed
of four members. These were not to be elected like the Boulevard
commissioners, or appointed by an executive, as is done in most cities,
or chosen by the board of chosen freeholders, but appointed by the
Judge of the Court of Common Pleas! This commission also became a
separate corporation, like the Boulevard Commission, and now has power
to requisition appropriations on the board of chosen freeholders.
But the end of the tale is not yet. In 1912, Hudson County undertook
the extermination of mosquitoes. Another independent board! More
independent mandatory powers of appropriation! And the appointment
of six members in this instance was vested in the Judge of the
Supreme Court. Add to this layout a board of elections, appointed by
the governor, on the nomination of the chairmen of the two leading
political parties, and you have the county jungle in all its primeval
grandeur.
The people of New Jersey were thoroughly consistent in 1900 when
their legislature broke with precedent and undertook to supply their
counties of the first class with some sort of a head by creating
the office of county supervisor. The governing boards of these
counties were at that time composed of representatives from various
municipalities. So it was decided, in order to give the whole people a
voice in the government, to have the new officer elected at large. The
legislature had no notion of giving anyone any new power. They proposed
to further subdivide existing power. True, the law under which this new
office was created, designates the supervisor as the chief executive.
But, as has so often been the case in city charters, this designation
proved to be only a fiction. The law gave the supervisor the right to
remove subordinates, but no instrumentality with which to investigate
the conduct of hundreds of county officers and employees and thus to
make his authority effective. Moreover, he was crippled by the fact
that the board of freeholders might reverse his decisions and reinstate
the officers or employees suspended. But what is of more importance,
the supervisor was given no power of original appointment.
Similarly, Cook County, Ill., acquired a president of the board of
county commissioners, who is elected by the people. Kings County, N. Y.,
before consolidation with New York City, had a supervisor-at-large.
But neither of these dignitaries has or had any powers of appointment
comparable to, let us say, those of the mayor of Cleveland or of New
York. In the general run of counties, the executive is not a single
officer but the governing board itself. Where the “town plan” is in
vogue, as in certain Illinois counties, and throughout New York State,
this body may be very large and unwieldy and is wholly incapable of
supervising administrative detail, except through small committees,
with the added division of responsibility which that implies.
And so, county government everywhere was conceived in a spirit of
negation. The people elect their boards of supervisors or county
commissioners, hoping thereby to keep their fingers on the public purse
through direct agents. The supervisors, in their turn, undertake to
regulate the finances of the sheriff, the district attorney, the county
clerk and the rest. But, lo, these officers are no subordinates of
theirs; they are the people’s humble servants. The supervisors may set
out upon a program of economy and efficiency, including, let us say,
the standardization of supplies. But the county clerk may not recognize
their superior authority, preferring to run his office, to suit his
personal convenience; and if the supervisors undertake to check him he
may find some way of appealing to the people. The superintendent of the
poor, the treasurer and the auditor may likewise go their respective
paces in defiance of all superior authority. If in the course of their
official routine these officers collect sundry fees, they may account
for them or not, as they please, so far as the governing body is
concerned. They may be reached by some slow process of litigation, but
never in the direct summary way that is employed in private business.
It is a fatally ineffectual procedure. And when a dozen or nineteen
officers, chosen by popular election, are thrown together, it is
clear that every one of them is the legal peer of every other, since
everyone acknowledges a common superior. And since the people are a
rather too unwieldy body to look after the details of county business,
each officer must be a law unto himself. And it is perhaps just as
well that none of them has been designated as an official chief, since
the _facts_ of organization would refute and nullify any such
arrangement.
It is as though a board of directors were charged with the control of
a private enterprise, but were expressly denied the power to select
the manager and heads of departments to whom they might delegate their
authority over details.