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.

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

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

SKETCH of PROPOSED CITY and COUNTY of ALAMEDA SHOWING PROPOSED BOROUGHS

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.