COUNTY GOVERNMENTS AT WORK
“Granted the truth of all you say; that every county officer stands on
his independent pedestal of authority, that the county is a headless
institution where responsibility is scattered in a thousand different
directions; that urban counties are the weakest brothers in the
political family--granted all that, but what of it?”
So cogitates the “average American”--or so it would seem. If he reads
his county paper consistently he has been held in his seat over and
over again by the hackneyed lines of Pope:
“For forms of government let fools contest;
What e’er is best administered is best.”
After a long course of mental stimulation along these lines, we are
quite prepared to hear him remark that after all what really counts
for government is MEN--an observation which is supposed to
silence all contradiction. Your “average” friend, if he has more than
an average political energy, then goes out and helps to see that the
“right sort” of man is elected coroner.
There is undoubtedly more than an element of truth and wisdom in all
these sentiments. The industrial world is coming more and more to
believe that the great essential in coöperative effort of any sort is
not plan of organization, not methods, but personnel--men. And even
government presents instances of men who have “made good” conspicuously
against a form of organization which favored insubordination, against
the interference of invisible powers, against the hundred and one
cunningly devised handicaps to good administration.
We might with good grace take kindly to a system that brought
distinguished, capable, honest, well-qualified men for the public
service. If we could get good men and good administration as the normal
output of the existing systems of county government, there would be
satisfaction all around.
But does the typical American government work that way? We shall
examine in this chapter the relationships between the system, the men
and the product.
To get the right angle on the subject, we should put ourselves in the
position of, let us say, the sheriff of Pike County. He is a likable,
popular fellow--that is how he happens to be sheriff. His likability,
his popularity, have made him a particularly valuable adjunct of the
Pike County Republican (or Democratic) organization. In the election
campaign he has proven himself a vote-getter, he has given the
organization a respectable tone. And now that he is in office his
congenital good nature has not been changed. His popularity has been
due to his unfailing loyalty to his friends and supporters. These good
people swarm about him on the first day of his term and he has it not
in his heart to refuse the only favor within his power to grant.
So much for one set of claimants upon his favor. But there is also the
whole body of his supporters, the general electorate and the tax-paying
contingent of the county; they have a claim upon him too and the new
sheriff enters upon his duties with a sincere desire to serve them by
running his office in the most efficient and economical manner. The
significant part of the whole business is that these two ambitions are
more than likely to prove inconsistent. Personal friendship dictates
that he should hand out deputyships to “the boys” of his own heart;
public service, that he should ignore the claims of friendship and
man his office with competent assistants, regardless of personal,
political or ecclesiastical connections. And so the new officer,
through a situation not of his own making, is caught in a dilemma.
Probably nine out of ten county officials either resolve the difficulty
on the grounds of friendship or strike a compromise between their
conflicting desires--and the efficiency of the office in either case
is impaired. Every man coming into an office with favors to dispense
has strings attached to his person. He cannot look his public duties
quite squarely in the eye, but has always to qualify every new plan,
every selection of a subordinate with “What will the county chairman
say?” And if he has ambitions to hold office for a second term, or to
go higher, he is naturally careful about irritating the goose that lays
the golden egg. For the county chairman is not apt to be keen about the
plans for economy or reducing the number of jobs for “the boys.” Such
plans do not fit in with his requirements.
The system hamstrings the man. Once a county officer in New Jersey
needed two additional clerks. Believing, however, that the board of
chosen freeholders was following a strict program of economy, he went
to them asking for four new men, with the thought that his requisition
would be cut in half. But not so. The official and the board were of
opposite parties. A member of the board came around and remarked that
“you need _eight_ new men.” The officer is said to have taken the
hint and jobs were accordingly provided for four deserving members of
each of the leading parties.
In such cases it is clearly not personality but the system that
dominates.
The enforced division of allegiance between party and people is but
a single source of personal inefficiency. Under the much lauded
“government of laws” that reaches the heights of absurdity in the
county, the chance of effective law enforcement is reduced to a
minimum. Take it for instance in the exact compliance with statutory
procedure. The sale of a piece of real estate for non-payment of taxes,
for instance, must be conducted in accord with a detailed series of
steps set forth in the law, or the title of the property is clouded.
Claims for payment for services rendered or material supplied, may
also be legally allowed only after the proper formalities have been
observed. And in countless other directions the efficiency of the
county officers and employees must be measured principally by a
meticulous obedience to the law.
But contrast the necessity with the performance: The former chief of
the Bureau of Municipal Accounts in the Comptroller’s office of an
eastern state, after examining the affairs of fifty-six counties,
was able in 1914 to say: “In not a single county examined has there
been found compliance with every provision of law. On the contrary,
in each of the counties examined serious irregularities in financial
transactions have been disclosed, and the taxpayers’ money illegally
expended, in some cases beyond recovery.”
The comptroller’s agents examined the affairs of county “A.” Of the
transactions for the year ending October 31, 1913, they said: “County
administration during that year was carried on, in many important
respects, illegally, and in many cases the officials completely ignored
the law, resulting in waste of public money, amounting to many
thousands of dollars.” The former treasurer of this county, according
to the official report, “had, it would seem, no proper conception of
the legal duties imposed upon him. He made payments of unauthorized
drafts of committees of the board.... His important statutory duty to
pay only on proper legal authority apparently constituted meaningless
words.” The same authority reported that:
“The board of supervisors ordered payments that were without authority
of law, to the extent of many thousands of dollars. The illegalities
in the audits of the board of supervisors were particularly
objectionable because of the fact that many of the subjects of
criticism were called to the board’s attention in the report of
a former examination. Illegal payments under such circumstances
became a defiance of legal restriction.... The administration of
the poor fund was not in accord with the law and through a failure
of the officials to understand the requirements of the law and the
necessities of the county, the lack of proper coöperation between the
county treasurer, the superintendent of the poor, and the board of
supervisors, confusion resulted in the poor fund finances and a large
deficit accumulated which was financed by illegal temporary loans....
The county has suffered to a material extent from inefficiency,
indifference to law and neglect.”
That discoveries were by no means local or unique is indicated by
periodical complaints that have come up from other parts of the
country.
Was it men, as such, or was it not also a system that gave rise to the
evidences of bad government in County “B.”? Did it simply _happen_
that the treasurer, the county judge, the district attorney, the
sheriff and the justices of the peace were all breaking the laws at
once? Is it to be supposed that law-breaking flourished naturally in
the atmosphere of that particular region? The performances of these
officers are both so instructive and picturesque that they will bear a
brief recounting here.
The examiners of the affairs of this county a few years ago turned up
this quaint little document:
“ELLENBERG CENTER, Nov. 21, 1900.
County of....................., Dr.,
to Wellington Hay.
1898, Sept. 22. To 7 days’ labor with deputy
sheriff looking up stolen horse $14.00
To paid all expenses
per above 15.60
------
$29.60
“Mr. Hay performed services in following up two horse thieves who had
stolen his horse at my request as sheriff, one of the men, George
Burnham, had several indictments against him in this county and all
who knew his doings were anxious for his capture, I certainly think
Mr. Hay should be paid.
“C. W. VAUGHAN,
“_Late Sheriff_.”
In this instance, Mr. Hay, a deputy sheriff, was charging the county
for chasing up _his own_ horse. The county treasurer who paid this
claim was the one who, in spite of very definite provisions of law, had
failed to designate the banks which should have custody of the county
funds, and deposited them with a favored institution which paid the
county no interest; who failed to keep any cash book or any account
with any bank even on the stubs of his check book; who allowed at least
one creditor of the county to collect an illegal claim four times.
This is the county in which the county judge was found to have his
own private law offices elaborately furnished with all the up-to-date
filing devices and blanks, all at the public expense; in which the
coroner reports that between the 13th and the 19th of May he had worked
_fifteen days_ and collected in full from the county. The records
of practically every other officer in the county revealed similar
irregularities and a similar lack of any fine sense of the interests of
the public.
Did it just _happen_ that the people of county “A” or county “B”
elected none but law-breakers to office? Was it the character of the
officers which alone was responsible for “inefficiency, indifference to
law and neglect?” Would the condition have been different with another
average set of men in office?
This is certain: that upon the officers of county “A” was imposed
the duty of enforcing laws which were both intricate and difficult
for a layman to find, and when found, to understand. But over and
above all this, there was no constant discipline of a responsible
organization and no certain and swift penalty for non-compliance with
or disobedience of the law.
So difficult is the case, in fact, that it would seem from reports
emanating from different parts of the country, that county officers
have long ceased to worry about the legality of most of their acts. A
common practice is not to investigate the law at all but to look back
over the work of predecessors and follow in their tracks--an easier and
more natural method for the untrained mind than to seek legal authority
for action at its fountainhead in the statutes. But it makes a joke of
the statutes! And when, in the absence of a powerful executive head,
these written laws, which constitute most important connecting link,
between the various county officers, are broken, the directing hand of
the state is perforce withdrawn.
The failures of government in these counties were due in no small
measure at least to the system, rather than to the individual men. No
mere “good” man would necessarily have been better qualified or more
inclined to look up the law and follow it implicitly. For it is not of
such qualities that political “goodness,” from the voters’ standpoint,
consists!
Nor are these minor delinquencies the sole products of the evil system.
In Hudson County, New Jersey, with a citizenry somewhat less alert
and with state officials a little less vigilant, the essential factors
present in the counties mentioned gave rise to positive conscienceless
and willful waste of public funds. The story is illuminating:
The building of the court house was begun under an act of the
legislature which authorized a committee of the board of chosen
freeholders to purchase such lands and erect such county buildings
as might be needed. The committee was empowered to appoint its own
counsel and architect to go ahead and build. The only limitation upon
its powers was that it should spend not to exceed four fifths of one
per cent. of the county ratables. This was a restriction which, under
the amount of ratables as of the time when the project was authorized,
would have permitted a maximum expenditure of about $1,580,000. But
before even the contracts had been let the growth in valuations had so
increased that the committee might legally spend $7,500,000.
The original figure for the cost of the court house had been $990,000,
but before the citizens of the county were aroused it reached
$3,328,016. Investigation revealed such extravagance and carelessness
with the county’s money in every detail, that the legislature in 1911
abolished the committee and created a court house commission, the
members of which were to be appointed by the Justice of the Supreme
Court.
The building of county court houses under just such auspices and
with a similar outcome is a characteristic bit of local history the
country over. But county shortcomings do not always stop at willful
extravagance. Sometimes it is a tale of grafting of the grossest sort,
of which typical conditions a story is related by Herbert Quick, who
had charge of an investigation into the affairs of Woodbury County,
Iowa, some twenty years ago. The county supervisors apparently had
traveled unobserved, unchecked, along the same road but further, as the
officers of county “A” and the court house committee of Hudson County.
Says Mr. Quick:
“A supervisor would draw thousands of dollars from the road and bridge
funds on his own warrant, put the money in his pocket, and account
for it by turning in receipts for road or bridge work. Some of this
work was done and some was not. Most of the receipts were signed by
political supporters of the supervisors. To some of them were signed
names of persons who never existed.
“Everything the county bought was extravagantly bought. Any dealer who
was willing to put in padded bills could get the chance to sell his
goods.
“There was a regular system of letting bills go unpaid so that the
persons furnishing the goods would put in the statements the second
time, after which they would be paid twice--once to the firm to which
they were really owing, and again to one or more of the county ring.
In most cases the merchant furnishing the goods never knew of the
double payment. They had a system of orders and receipts by which the
merchant was kept in ignorance.
“In some cases the approaches to bridges were built and charged twice,
once to the road fund and once to the bridge fund. The man who did the
work got one payment and the grafters got the other. The people paid
twice in these cases, and sometimes three times.
“A merchant sold some blankets to the county for the use of the
prisoners in the jail. He was allowed about a hundred dollars on the
county claim register, but refused to accept the payment and sued the
county. In court he recovered judgment for all he claimed, and was paid
out of the judgment fund. The general fund claim he had refused to
accept showed as unpaid. Somebody on the inside went to him and got an
order for ‘any sums due me from the county’ and drew the original bill
over again. So the county paid the original allowance, the amount of
the judgment, and the costs of the lawsuit. Rather dear blankets!
“Orders of this sort were drawn in the names of the people who had been
dead for years.
“This is a sample of the sort of work which prevailed in that county,
and which plunged the county into debt from which it will not recover,
the way things generally go, for generations.”
In Indiana the leaven of obscurity and irresponsibility had long been
working when the state board of accounts took up its work in 1909. The
records of that office since that time show that more than one million
six hundred thousand dollars had been charged against local officials
and partly recovered. The board states that in their belief fully
ninety per cent. of this was not due to deliberate wrongdoing but to an
indulgent indifference, resulting in an almost endless confusion and
incomplete accounts. Like the county officers in many another state,
the officials in the Indiana counties, according to a message of former
Governor Mount, “had been following precedents on an ascending scale.”
If the whole trouble lies in the personnel of government, there is
either no real county problem or else the problem is unsolved. If it
is merely a matter of men, the voters of the county need only, when
the next election falls due, to “turn the rascals out” and elect more
promising successors. But then that is what the voters have been doing
these many years, and county government has not materially improved!
But if when the “good man” theory has been tested to the limit and
found wanting, nothing else appears, may it not be suggested that the
system has much to do with the man first in his selection and then in
the influence that determines his conduct? The officers in the counties
cited were creatures of the flesh. They found themselves involved in
an organization which not only gave them little or no moral support,
but which actually surrounded them with temptation to loaf, to commit
errors and to steal. They were under no discipline to obey the law or
to treat the interests of the county with any due consideration.
In the realm of government, as in the department of horticulture, it
would appear that figs are not gathered from thistles.