CHAPTER XII
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.