CONSOLIDATION
The battle cry of local freedom comes up loudest from urban centers.
The simple reason is that the counties were devised originally for
communities in a state of nature--a few people, widely scattered, all
but oblivious to the existence or need of government. City communities
on the other hand are highly complex, individualized, differentiated
units. Accordingly, their governmental garments must be custom-made.
City governments indeed were instituted partly to escape the
strait-jacket inflexibility of the counties. Gradually, as we have
seen, they elbowed the county governments into a dark corner, to the
infinite debasement of the sheriff, the coroner, the poor master and
the tax collector and other typical accessories of the county.
But almost everywhere, at some point short of full county annihilation,
the pressure of the city stopped. Perhaps it was the politicians who
intervened, to save “the boys” at the court house; or perhaps it
was the feeling that seems to have settled down upon our political
thinking, that counties, like death and taxes, have to be.
Within very recent years, bold spirits in some of the metropolitan
centers have begun to feel that the county, in their particular
communities, was a public nuisance and have been “going” for it.
Thus the New York _Times_, when the New York Constitutional
Convention was in session in 1915, delivered not a few strokes for a
proposition to abolish existing boundaries of the sixty-one counties
and substitute therefor eight administrative districts. Cleveland,
Ohio, reformers would like to have that city divorce itself from the
rural part of Cuyahoga County. In Rochester, a recent survey has
suggested a similar course with reference to Monroe County. Studies
have also been made recently (1916) by the City Club of Milwaukee.
A member of the city commission in Jersey City has recently caused
to be passed in the legislature a bill providing for a vote on
consolidation of municipalities in Hudson County on a sort of borough
plan. In Cincinnati the question of consolidation of the city with
Hamilton County was recently opened, apparently for the first time,
in newspaper discussions. In the 1916 New York legislature there was
under discussion a bill extending control of the board of estimate
and apportionment in New York City over the employees of the five
counties within the city. This was in line with a recent report by the
chamberlain and the commissioner of accounts of New York City submitted
to the Constitutional Convention, which pointed out the advantages
of the abolition of counties in New York City and the transfer of
their functions to the control of the city authorities. St. Louis City
actually accomplished the fact in 1876 when it separated from St.
Louis County. Baltimore and a number of Virginia cities have long been
separated (for historical rather than reformatory reasons, however,)
from the surrounding rural or suburban territory.
In practice, the process of relocation of county boundary lines is very
much like the reversing of a long series of court decisions. Local
tradition and the gradual crystallizing of the interests of local
politicians militate powerfully to maintain the _status quo_. And,
yet, for all that, the shifting of boundary lines must inevitably come,
if local governments are to meet their obligations.
Just where and by what criteria the new lines are to be laid is no
easy question to decide; our metropolitan centers are of such various
origins and in such differing degrees of development. The committee
on City-County Consolidation of the National Municipal League in
a preliminary report rendered in 1916 seeks to classify the urban
communities in this fashion:
“The simplest type of urban county is that in which the geographical
limits of the two local units are identical and the population has
grown up out of a single well-defined historical nucleus. Among other
communities there would fall within this classification the cities of
Philadelphia, Denver, San Francisco and Baltimore and eighteen cities
in Virginia.
“A second type is that in which a single city furnishes an
overwhelming proportion of the population, but occupies a relatively
small part of an otherwise rural territory. Among the cities which
fall in this classification are Buffalo, Milwaukee and Cleveland.
“The third type is that in which a city of predominating size
and importance is surrounded by a number of smaller but vigorous
municipalities which have grown up not as suburbs of the main city,
but out of independent historical beginnings. Cases in point are the
two largest counties of New Jersey, Hudson and Essex.
“A fourth type is one which contains several strong municipalities,
no one of which has achieved a position of undisputed leadership.
Alameda County, Cal., which contains the cities of Oakland, Alameda
and Berkeley will serve to illustrate.
“The most advanced type of the city-county problem involves the
adjustment of the political to the physical and social unity of a
great urban area, regardless of established boundaries of either
cities or counties. The metropolitan districts of New York and
Massachusetts are the most conspicuous illustrations of this problem.”
The key to reconstruction is the same in every case: simplification.
Eliminate duplication of civil divisions; substitute one government for
two or many (in the case of Chicago, twenty-two!). There is a good deal
of _logic_ in a separate local government to serve as a state
agency. But everywhere the people have waived the right or privilege of
a logical government when they have illogically insisted upon selecting
their officers locally. When the district attorney, for instance, is
chosen by the electors of the county he may be legally the state’s
representative but he is _practically_ a local officer in very
much the same sense as the mayor. Then why, for legal fiction’s sake,
distinguish between the city and the county?
One American city-county has not only seen the inefficiency and
hypocrisy of the dual system but has actually wiped out the last
semblance of distinction between the two divisions. The story is told
in legal form in Article XX of the Colorado constitution:
“The municipal corporation known as the city of Denver, and all
municipal corporations and that part of the quasi-municipal
corporation known as the County of Arapahoe, in the state of Colorado,
included into the exterior boundaries of the said city of Denver, as
the same shall be bounded when this amendment takes effect, are hereby
consolidated and are hereby declared to be a single body politic and
corporate, by the name of the city and county of Denver.”
By this same amendment the city and county were declared to be a single
judicial district of the state, and county officers were disposed of by
prescribing that
“the then mayor, auditor, engineer, council (which shall perform the
duties of a board of county commissioners), police magistrate, chief
of police and boards, of the city of Denver shall become respectively,
said officers of the city and county of Denver, and said engineer
shall be _ex-officio_ surveyor and said chief of police shall be
_ex-officio_ sheriff of the city and county of Denver; and the
then clerk and _ex-officio_ recorder, treasurer, assessor and
coroner of the county of Arapahoe and the justices of the peace and
constables holding office within the city of Denver, shall become,
respectively, said officers of the city and county of Denver, and the
district attorney shall be _ex-officio_ attorney of the city and
county of Denver.”
In 1913 an amendment to the Denver charter, adopted by popular vote,
provided for the commission form of government with the usual divisions
of administration into five departments respectively of Property,
Finance, Safety, Improvements and Social Welfare. To some one of these
commissionerships was assigned jurisdiction over each of the several
county officers, as appropriately as the conditions would permit.
The process of amalgamation was made complete when in May, 1916, Denver
abandoned the commission plan and made the mayor chief executive of the
county as well as of the city, with appropriate appointing power.
In New York, consolidation has extended to most of the fiscal
functions, tending to leave intact only so much of the original
county structure as is incidental to the administration of justice,
including the courts themselves, the sheriff in his capacity of court
executive and the court clerks. The functions of the county treasurer
have been transferred to the city chamberlain and the comptroller,
and the department of taxes and assessments has been attached to the
city organization. The separate governing bodies of the five counties
have been swept away and their powers transferred to the city Board
of Estimate and Apportionment and Board of Aldermen. New York City
also has not only taken over the function of public charities, but
its Department of Corrections has been steadily encroaching upon the
prerogatives of the sheriffs. The future issue of city consolidation
there is accordingly reduced to a matter of abolishing the five
counties and transferring their functions to officers under city
control and making the independent elective officers such as the
sheriff, district attorney, clerk and register appointive by either
city or state authorities.
[19]In spite of much that remains to be done, consolidation has
proceeded to an advanced stage also in Boston, though hardly in a
direct line towards greater simplicity. Before it became a city in 1820
a conflict had arisen as to the jurisdiction of the town, and of the
court of sessions for Suffolk County, respecting highways and taxation.
The legislature thereupon abolished the court and transferred its
administrative functions to the mayor and council of Boston. Boston,
however, is not geographically identical with Suffolk County, since
the latter for the purposes of the administration of justice, includes
the city of Chelsea and the towns of Revere and Winthrop. Boston has
the title to all the real and personal property of Suffolk County but
also pays the entire expense of its administration. The treasurer and
auditor of accounts of the city act in similar capacities for the
county of Suffolk. But there are seven elective county officials and
several, virtually independent of each other, who are chosen by the
governor or the justice of the Superior Court.
This situation as to the actual political Boston is confusing
enough. Metropolitan Boston on the other hand, comprises thirty-nine
municipalities situated in five counties, which make up a compact
community of a million five hundred thousand inhabitants. These centers
have every facility for communication and transportation. And the state
has indeed recognized the unity of the district by establishing such
agencies of administration as the metropolitan park commission and the
metropolitan water and sewer board.
San Francisco has proceeded so far as to have a single governing body
and a single set of fiscal officers for city and county.
With this, the recital of actual accomplishments toward formal
consolidation is about complete. The advantages of consolidation as
they appear to a disinterested observer are obvious. But the process
is usually difficult in the extreme, especially as it relates to the
equitable distribution of assets and liabilities of the parts to be
consolidated. New York City only accomplished this by assuming the
debts of the outlying counties and municipalities. But in the course of
nineteen years not even that generous concession has sufficed to the
vigorous local spirit of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Queens and Richmond.
FEDERATION
Where immediate consolidation at a single stroke is out of the
question, as is apparently almost always the case, a more easy
transition is suggested by the recommendations of the City and County
Government Association of Alameda County, California. Realizing
that a powerful local sentiment in the outlying territory militated
irresistibly against annexation to the city of Oakland or, in fact, any
form of complete organic union of the municipalities in the county,
this Association has proposed as the logical first step to a more
economically organized county, a plan of federation.
[Illustration: ORGANIZATION CHART For the City and County of Alameda
and its Boroughs as Proposed in the Tentative Charter Submitted by the
City and County Government Association]
[Illustration: SKETCH of PROPOSED CITY and COUNTY of ALAMEDA
SHOWING PROPOSED BOROUGHS]
Under the proposed plan the governing body would consist of one
councillor from each of twenty-one districts. Unlike the present
board of supervisors in Alameda County, the new body would have only
legislative functions. The functions of the county, as a public
corporation, would be broadened to include a number of interests
which the municipalities are conceived to have in common. Police
protection, for instance, would revert from the cities back to the
county, where it was originally lodged, on the theory that crime
thrives in a certain social and physical environment and knows nothing
and cares less for corporate limits. And inasmuch also as the ravages
of fire and disease are the interests of a territory rather than the
corporate boundaries of a city, the control of these perils would
also be transferred to the county. The installation of the plan would
also result in the abolishment of the dual system of tax assessment
and tax collection. To the smaller units would be left jurisdiction
over their more distinctively local affairs such as public works. The
identity of the individual cities, which would be known as “boroughs,”
would thus remain intact, for they would retain their local governing
bodies to frame strictly local policies. At the same time the general
organization of the local government would provide for the common
interests of the constituent members.
Some such plan of federation, as a transition step toward unity, would
seem to commend itself to several important counties which are made
up of communities like those which compose Alameda County. How these
communities in the face of increased cost of government and the greater
demands for public service are much longer to resist some measures
toward greater organic unity it is difficult to conceive.
Even in the domain of public works the desirability of unified control
is often of much importance. Thus in Essex County, N. J., it was
discovered as early as 1894 that no adequate provision for a public
park system could be worked out by the separate municipalities in
that distinctly urban county. In the case of certain thorough-fares
which ran through two or more of these cities, it was highly desirable
to effect some sort of a continuous, uniform improvement. Certain
lowlands, also, were found to lie partly in one municipality and partly
in another, so that neither city could act to advantage independently.
Some of the cities had no available space for park purposes, while
others had the space, without the resources or the need for developing
it. From every point of view the obvious course to pursue led to
a general consolidation of park interests, and a comprehensive
well-balanced park plan, county-wide in its scope. And so there was
created a county park commission which has exclusive jurisdiction over
park developments and maintenance. It is noteworthy however that this
commission, as we have already indicated, was not made an integral
part of the existing county government but a separate corporation; the
heads of this new department of government were made appointive by the
judges of the Supreme Court in order that politics might be eliminated
from its control. Had the metropolitan area been under a single
municipal control, no such complication would have been necessary. The
county government was deemed unfit to represent the unity of interest
throughout the several communities when an important new undertaking
was under consideration.
Of the realization of the idea of the metropolitan unification under
county control the London County Council[20] is the world’s most
striking and instructive example. London, through the centuries, as
some of our American cities have done in a lifetime, had grown from
a multitude of small independent local communities into a single,
continuous metropolitan district. However, the constituent units, of
which the ancient city of London is but one, retained their historic
identities and clung to their historic institutions. In this peculiar
way London perhaps resembles the metropolitan district of New York or
Boston or Essex County in New Jersey. From time to time new units of
administration were laid down to correspond to modern needs, until the
system of local government was complexity itself. In 1855, Parliament
took the first step toward adjusting this situation, creating the
Metropolitan Board of Works which, in the thirty-three years of its
life, was responsible for much of the city’s physical improvement.
But corruption and scandal entered its ranks and it was legislated
out of existence. The London County Council was then established
with a membership composed of one hundred and eighteen councillors,
two members being chosen from each of the fifty-seven “parliamentary
boroughs” or election districts and four from the city of London. From
within or without its own membership the councillors select nineteen
aldermen who serve for a six-year term. Through its committees the
Council gets into touch with its various problems of the county, while
engineering, medical, financial and other experts are held responsible
for actual administration. A “clerk” who is chosen by the Council is in
fact the coördinator of the whole system, somewhat in the manner of a
city manager in the United States. A comptroller serves as the fiscal
agent of the Council.
Upon the county of London thus organized are imposed many of the
functions which in America are almost universally entrusted to cities:
extensive authority over public health, all matters relating to
fire protection, all metropolitan street improvement projects, the
construction and maintenance of bridges that cross the Thames, the
administration of the building laws and the maintenance of tenement
houses. The Council has also limited powers over what we in this
country term “public utilities”; it has power to establish technical
schools and to build and maintain parks and recreation centers. Its
financial powers, while subject in their exercise to the control of the
Home Office, are comprehensive.
Nor is the county of London but a city by another name. The
metropolitan boroughs have their separate identity and a very real
authority, including a certain control over public health and public
lighting. In any conflict between the boroughs and the county the Home
Office acts as the final arbiter.
London county has a record of which it has good reason to be proud. To
its credit it has a long list of mighty public works, conceived and
executed in a spirit of public service. Apparently neither graft nor
the spoils system have obtained a foothold. Here is a county which
has become so conspicuous and interesting to its citizens that they
form themselves into local political parties, founded upon genuine
differences of opinion and policy to make their citizenship felt in its
government. In the seats of the governing body sit, not the typical
office seeker to which we are accustomed in America, but men of the
influence and ability of Lord Rosebery, afterwards the prime minister
of England, and Sir John Lubbock.
All of which would seem to go to prove that even at this late date,
the county is capable of a very honorable service, if it is taken
seriously.
The whole problem is of utmost importance to the future of American
cities. Aside from the obvious economies of a single local government
as opposed to two or more, it seems essential that the future
development of large centers of population should not be hampered
by conflicting policies of a double or multiple system of local
governments. It is obvious, moreover, that perils which continually
threaten the population of urban communities, such as fire, crime and
contagious diseases, constitute unified problems which are co-extensive
with congested areas. It would seem essential that the control of these
perils should be a unified one and that too much reliance should not be
placed upon a spirit of coöperation between different units.
[19] See Hormell, O. C. “Boston’s County Problems,” _Annals American
Academy of Political and Social Science_, May, 1913, pp. 134 _et
seq._
[20] See Munro, _Government of European Cities_, pp. 345 _et.
seq._