At this point the indictment of the county ceases. It is not an altogether hopeless situation. The very thoroughness of the county’s failure is the chief promise of ultimate redemption.

Not because the county is constructed on an unsound political theory, not because it has shocked the sense of humanity, but because of its riotous misuse of public funds, it has begun to attract the attention of higher authorities.

Where does the county’s money go? It has been strongly intimated in previous chapters that the citizens of the county and sometimes even the county officers know little and care less. Is it economically run? No one can easily tell, without knowing what other county governments are costing, service for service and unit for unit. And no one can make such a comparison between counties unless they have some common basis of understanding. To establish standards in the use of terms, to make in other words, each county tell its financial story in a language understood throughout the state, to bring the information from the various counties together for comparison, to insist upon a sufficiently detailed description of financial activities, is the object of uniform reporting.

And who can force such a coming together for a common understanding other than the state itself?

Among the states where county government is of appreciable importance, Ohio was the pioneer in the direction indicated by this suggestion. The law enacted in that state in 1902 approached the county problem with the conviction that what was needed above all else was more light—in an administrative sense; that when the shortcomings of county government could be reduced to statistics and comparisons (invidious if necessary) could be made between various units, then some real improvements might be reasonably expected. Provision was made in the enactment for a state Bureau of Inspection and Supervision of Public Offices which should install a uniform system of public accounting, auditing and reporting in every office in the state. A corps of field agents known as state examiners were employed on a civil service basis to make personal examinations in each of the taxing districts. The findings of the examiners are published, and if money is due the county the enforcement of the law is left first to the county prosecuting attorney and then to the attorney general.

New York followed the lead of Ohio by passing in 1905 a law which requires counties, villages and cities, to report annually to the comptroller on forms prescribed by him.

“Indiana and Ohio,” says Professor John A. Boyle,[14] “has gone into the science and art of uniform accounting very seriously and very effectively. The Indiana law (1909, ch. 55, amended March 3, 1911), creates a Department of Inspection and Supervision of Public Offices having jurisdiction over every public office in the state. The administration of the law was entrusted at the outset to one state examiner, two deputies, one clerk, and fifty-two field agents working on a civil service basis. Uniform accounting is prescribed and installed. Comparative statistics are compiled by the state examiner and published annually, so that the fruits of this department are available to the public.”

Wyoming has a fair system of audit.

The North Dakota law, while it requires the state examiner “to prescribe and enforce correct methods,” does not call for a uniform system. Massachusetts, Kansas, Georgia, Iowa, Nevada, Florida, Tennessee, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Washington, Minnesota, West Virginia, Louisiana, California and Michigan have more or less complete systems of state financial supervision. The “black sheep” among the states in this respect are Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.

Now for the results of this supervision.

Professor Boyle has summed up the sort of assistance that the state bureaus of accounting have been able to give. One instance of such help is that where county officers had been accustomed in the past to take long and expensive junkets to inspect public buildings, expert advice under the new system has been rendered to them in much cheaper form through the investigators of the state. Examiners have also been able to point out to county officers many deviations from the letter of the law, the strict compliance with which is of the most vital importance in the performance of certain county functions, such as taxation. In a similar way they have checked up illegal charges against the county, inadequate audit (or no audit at all), instances of additional compensation (under various guises) for personal service, illegal temporary loans and misapplication of funds.

It will at once be seen that the mere possibility of a state examiner’s visit will have an admonitory effect which in itself will often be sufficient to keep an official in the straight and narrow path. The county, in conforming to the reporting requirements, derives a local benefit wholly apart from any obligation to the state. Upon the basis of a sound and permanent system of accounting the local officers are in a position accurately to inform the county of their doings and make comparison of a financial transaction of one year with those of previous years. Herein is one foundation stone of a scientific budget.

Under a complete system of state regulation not only are the forms and standards of uniform accounting established, but a staff of expert examiners is created to determine by periodical investigation, whether or not these standards are lived up to.

The remarkable conditions preceding the establishment of the Ohio Bureau and the important services which it has rendered the state, are revealed in the following summary[15] of its findings in counties during the first ten years of its existence.

STATEMENT OF FINDINGS TO NOVEMBER 15, 1912

COUNTIES

TAX ADMINISTRATION

A branch of local fiscal administration which is in far less satisfactory shape is that of taxation. In no department is “nullification,” as has been already shown, more constant and serious. The situation is complicated. In seventeen of the states, including every one north of the Ohio and Potomac rivers, and east of the Mississippi, except Illinois, Indiana and Maryland, the county as a whole has very little to do with assessments for the general property tax, the unit for assessment in that section being the town or township. That in nearly all these states the general property tax may be said to have broken down, would seem to be indicated by the establishment of a permanent state tax commission or commissioner in all of them except Pennsylvania. In thirty-one states in the South and West, the county is the unit of assessment, and in its favor it may be said that in this rôle it has proven a far more satisfactory performer than the town. The county is small enough to serve as a convenient unit for assessment operations and assessment records and furnishes the basis of a system of fewer units than if the town were the basis. Under the county plan, moreover, there are fewer opportunities for communities to compete against each other in their effort to escape their just share of the general burden of government. It is significant that most of the western states have seen the advantages of the county as the local unit of administration.

But the county, for all that, appears to be incapable of standing on its own feet in tax matters. Even under the most favorable circumstances there remains an important duty for a state commission to supervise the work of the county assessor or board of assessors to the end that the letter of the law may be obeyed with the utmost uniformity throughout the state. Such a commission must see that the county does injustice to neither individuals nor the state through inequal assessment and that the tax sales are in accordance with the law.

The county, in short, has a useful place in the general scheme of tax administration, but it must be a supervised unit.

CIVIL SERVICE

In the administration of the civil service law the county also does well to lean upon the state. The same considerations that apply in accounting and tax matters apply with equal force in the selection of the employees. Most of the counties are too small to serve as units in which to install facilities for conducting examinations and publishing useful records. The superior powers of the state commission over the localities in these respects are emphatically not a destructive check upon the county’s officers. They do not detract from local responsibility. They simply enable them to apply to their work the most effective means available.

In New York the state civil service commission regulates the service in eighteen counties. In New Jersey the adoption of the civil service law involving state control rests with the people of each county. Hudson, Essex, Mercer, Passaic and Union counties have taken advantage of the law.

Administration apart from fiscal supervision in other departments, such as charities, prisons and public health, has advanced much more slowly than reform in the fields which have been mentioned. But every indication for the future is toward greater control through accounting and supervision. The county acts locally in the enforcement of state obligations. The real trouble comes when one undertakes, arbitrarily, to place any given county activity in the local or state category. The catching of a thief, for example, is a very essential part of the state’s most fundamental duty to protect property, but the locality where the crime is committed is very keenly interested in having the machinery of the county set to work to punish the deed. The locality pays the sheriff his salary or his fees, but the state, in protecting the property of its citizens, is probably justified in guarding against extravagant or dishonest use by the people of the county even of their own money.

And so it is impracticable and not by any means necessary to give the county quite unbridled liberty to control all its officers. Central supervision is a middle course that protects the state and instead of impairing, really conserves the county’s interests. The state, without instructing the county as to what it may do with its purely local powers, may lay a firm hand upon it in telling how to use those powers effectively. Such a course is conceived in quite a different spirit from the destructive sort of state meddling which was described in the preceding chapter, which proceeds from the legislative branch of the central government. What the state government actually does when it regulates or supervises is to hold up the county official to standards of performance. This is the proper work of officers or boards in the administrative branch. It relates not to what the county shall do as a matter of broad policy, but how the county shall redeem its obligation in matters of routine, detail and technique. The state agency may have only the power to “visit and inspect,” like the New York State Board of Charities, or it may, like the Comptroller of the same state, actually impose forms of procedure. In either case, local officers otherwise unstimulated to efficient work, as they must be under the present system of government, are thus given moral support from a responsible quarter. They are subjected to a cold, unescapable comparison with other officers in other localities and they are given the benefit of expert advice on many obscure and complex phases of public administration.

[14] See Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May 1913. pp. 199-213.

[15] Prof. John H. Boyle, op. cit., p. 203.