STATE MEDDLING
Now the other side of the story.
While the county nonchalantly and with seeming impunity has been
breaking all the inconvenient statutes, the state in its own peculiar
way has been working out a method of “taking it out” of the county
for the indignities of nullification. The state’s “big stick” (which
it does not always employ to a public purpose) is a policy of
meddlesomeness which expresses itself through special legislation. Of
which, more herewith.
In times gone by, when counties were almost universally located in
the open country, and before the rush for the cities had set apart
centers of population which developed their special mechanism of local
government, it was doubtless appropriate that constitutions should
impose upon legislature the duty to legislate “uniformly” for all
counties, even to the point of anticipating some of their more detailed
needs.
Practically every state legislature was given a considerable, if not
complete, power to bend the county to its will in every particular of
government. In the logic of the law, the county was a subdivision of
the state before it was an organ of strictly local government. The
legislature might erect new counties or change boundary lines at will,
with the one limitation in some states that its decision is subject to
a local referendum. It might also erect new county offices in addition
to those mentioned in the constitution and fix their powers and duties.
Long ago it became the accepted principle of law that local authorities
might exercise only such powers as were specifically conferred upon
them.
The theory was, apparently, that since counties exist to execute the
will of the whole state and have the same general duties to perform,
all counties can and must perform them in the same manner. It is a
plausible theory. If a county is to administer justice it needs a
judge, a sheriff, a prosecutor and a court clerk. And each of these
officers in the several counties should follow as closely as possible
an identical or similar procedure. Every county must have a fiscal
agency, a governing board, and be required to observe certain minimum
standards in the handling of the funds entrusted to its care.
Uniformity up to this point is doubtless not burdensome but helpful.
But by carrying a good idea too far the legislatures have often gone
beyond the point of setting up a general organization and procedure
and have descended into minor details which would usually best be
determined in the light of the more perfect knowledge of local
conditions which the people of the locality may be expected to possess.
The New York legislature, for instance, has accepted the inertia of
long-standing custom and permitted to stand on the statutes a county
law under which the boards of supervisors in all counties, except those
of New York City, are organized in precisely the same manner. No regard
for the far-reaching historic shifts of population; no thought as to
how deeply the social and political unity of a particular county may
have been shattered by the growth of great cities in the midst of apple
orchards or grain fields. The law has passively assumed that voters
are voters (just as “business is business” and “pigs is pigs”) whether
they reside in a crowded city or sparsely settled countryside where
everybody knows everybody else’s business and has plenty of time to
play politics.
And so it turns out that Erie County, containing the city of Buffalo,
with its half million inhabitants surrounded by a farming district,
is equipped with the same general form of government as the rough and
sparsely settled counties of Warren and Essex in the Adirondacks.
In other states, for Buffalo substitute Cleveland, or Chicago or
Milwaukee--great cities unequally yoked with an agricultural population
of divergent interests.
It is inevitable under the circumstances that the states through their
legislatures should do a good deal of polite nullifying on their own
account. The provisions of the constitutions relating to legislative
powers over counties, instead of being strictly construed have
ingeniously circumvented. What some legislatures could do in defiance
of good political science but yet without legal evasion the California,
New Jersey and other legislatures have accomplished by stretching the
meaning “general” or “uniform.”
Take the California practice. In the words of the constitution the
legislature is required to establish “a system of county government
which shall be uniform throughout the state.” But it happens that
these counties range in population from a few hundred to over half a
million, and in area from 755 to 23,000 square miles. Some are strictly
rural, while, at the other extreme, is one geographically identical
with the city of San Francisco. All sorts of combinations of urban
and rural conditions intervene. Some of the territory is traversed by
steam railroads and trolley lines and some of it is inaccessible to a
stage coach. But all of it is “uniformly” governed. Inasmuch as the
legislature never could bring itself to withhold its hand from the
minute details of county business, it had to find a way to “beat” the
constitution. It placed each of the fifty-six counties in a separate
class, and passed fifty-six “general” laws, each applying in fact to a
single county, but not mentioning the county by name!
In Illinois the habit of special legislation has led the Bureau of
Public Efficiency to remark that: “The General Assembly of Illinois
might with propriety be added to the list of nineteen local governing
bodies of Cook County, for it is continually interfering in an
arbitrary manner in matters of local administration.”
New Jersey has sinned quite as grievously and its courts have
consistently upheld the act even against a provision of the
constitution which expressly prohibits the legislature from “regulating
the internal affairs of towns and counties.”
But lest the full import of these statements should be lost, the
following titles of special county bills in a single session of a New
York legislature, are cited in evidence:
Authorizing conveyance of land on Holland Avenue.
Striking out the provision authorizing county treasurer to appoint an
attorney.
Regulating tax collection procedure.
Fixing compensation of unskilled laborers.
Correcting 1915 tax roll.
Creating a county auditor.
Increasing salary of sheriff, etc.
Levy of taxes to meet cost of sanitary trunk sewer.
Regulating management of penitentiary and workhouse.
Creating commissioner of charities.
Too often the motive of the legislators has not been to make the
county the state’s more obedient servant, but to “bleed” it to the
utmost for political purposes. Back of the real difficulties of
adjusting the state’s responsibilities to the idea of local control
over administrative details, is too evident the suspicion that the
political machine needs the county very much “in its business.”
For this reason, doubtless, special legislation affecting counties
is so often inseparably associated with the forcible opening of
the county treasury. New York City in recent years has suffered
grievously from mandatory salary increases, imposed in many cases by
a party of the opposite political faith from the one in control over
the local budget. Thus in 1915 out of a total budget allowance of
$7,003,716.82 for county purposes, the sum of $4,858,773.47 or 69.1
per cent. represented mandatory appropriations which could not be
increased or diminished by the local budget makers either because the
exact amount was fixed by law or because the power of fixation was
conferred upon other officers than the appropriating body of the city.
Many of the measures in question dealt with the salaries of clerks,
stenographers and messengers. Of the total allowance in the same year
for personal services (salaries, etc.) of $5,809,481.75, 78 per cent.
or $4,576,985.75 was beyond local control. While by far the greater
proportion of these sums were just and necessary, the margin of waste
which represented one hundred per cent. politics, was, without a
doubt, exceedingly large.
Nor have the legislatures been led to take this course for reasons of
public economy. In thus appropriating other people’s money according
to its professedly superior knowledge of the state’s needs, it does
not often appear to give heed to standards of experience or of service
rendered. Often it is but the old story of the influences back of the
bill with this title: “An Act, providing for the appointment by the
sheriff of ---- County, of an undersheriff, fireman and court officers,
and for their compensation and duties.” When the truth came out it
appeared that the sheriff and the board of supervisors were of opposite
parties. The sheriff (whether rightly or wrongly) was not to be put
aside. He simply appealed over the heads of his “superiors” to a higher
authority for what he wanted--and got it. The people had elected a
Board of Supervisors, to manage the county finances, but at the moment
when this body might have effected a just economy, it was forcibly
stripped of their powers.
Theoretically the legislature in the case cited intervened, but what
probably happened was that someone saw the representative in the
legislature from the county in question and he “fixed” it with the
proper committee. The speaker let the bill go through on the floor of
the legislature.
From the standpoint of the local politician or petty officeholder who
is looking for special privilege, via the back-door method, and of
the home legislator who does the “fixing,” special legislation is thus
doubtless a benevolent privilege which enables men to put various local
people in their debt for future purposes. For the “organization” of
the dominant party, the power to give to or withhold from the local
municipalities is often not the least important element of its power.
As for the county, for its sins of nullification it would seem to be
appropriately penalized, particularly if it belongs in the metropolitan
class. It has been placed under a sort of patriarchal discipline,
robbed of much of its individuality and initiative; its responsible
officers subjected to humiliation from subordinates; its resources
diverted to partisan uses.