Read Ebook: The County: The Dark Continent of American Politics by Gilbertson Henry S

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ief executive of the consolidated governments.

And what of the coroner? Every authority worthy of credence is agreed that this office, above all others in the county, has long outlived its usefulness. That one small head should contain the necessary skill of criminal investigator, medical expert and magistrate is far too much to expect of any ordinary mortal. A few states, following Massachusetts, which abolished the coronership in 1877, have created an office under various titles, such as "medical examiner," "county physician" , "medical referee" , etc. They have modernized the coronership by stripping it of its magisterial powers and taking it off the ballot. In most cases the new medical officer is an expert pathologist and his services are often of the greatest value in criminal and civil actions and to the cause of science. In New York City the coroners now in office in the five boroughs will go out of office on January 1, 1918, their powers of investigation will then be transferred to a chief medical examiner appointed by the mayor, and a corps of assistants who will be equipped with ample laboratory facilities. The judicial duties of the coroner will be turned over to the city magistrates.

As for the district attorney, his proper relations to a criminal trial and to the public seem to be generally misunderstood. He is the state's advocate as against the breaker of the law. But it is no part of his business to send every alleged offender to the penitentiary. The efficiency of the prosecutor is not to be determined by a high record of convictions. He is not, properly, a man-hunter. Nor is it his province to decide when he shall bear down hard upon offenders and when he shall soften justice. His functions, in short, are administrative and not political. And when that fact is admitted every reason why he should be popularly elected falls. In the ideal county, efficiency in the administration of justice will not be a perennial local campaign issue, for the prosecutor will be appointed by some responsible state authority, such as the governor or attorney general, not as a reward for political services but on the basis of merit and fitness. Or if, perchance, it shall be deemed unwise so to centralize authority, it would at least be logical to let the county authorities do the appointing.

There remains to be disposed of the clerk of court. His relation to the bench is rather a closer one than that of the sheriff, so close that in some jurisdictions it has not been thought a violation of the theory of the separation of powers to allow the judge or the whole court to appoint him. Such indeed would seem the proper course. But in many counties the business of court-clerking is hardly onerous enough to engage a separate officer and the duties have accordingly been transferred to the county clerk. This officer usually performs a variety of functions, among which are his services as clerk of the county board and as the local custodian or register of legal papers required to be filed under certain state laws. In counties where this "bunching" of functions has to be resorted to, the least that should be done by way of readjustment should be to help along the unification of the county government by vesting the appointment of the county clerk in the county board or a county executive to be established. In the larger counties where the volume of county business warrants a separation of functions, there seems to be no sound reason why such duties as the filing of papers should not be in the hands of an officer appointed by some state official, to represent him in the locality. In this way certain counties at least would be completely divested of responsibilities of which they appear never to have acquitted themselves too well. The county's ultimate place in the sun is being determined by a stripping process: the state is taking up its work.

Under these circumstances the only course is to transfer as many classes of prisoners as possible to the care of a larger unit of government that is able economically to segregate. This transfer actually began in some of the older states in the eighteenth century. Massachusetts led the movement by erecting a special prison on Castle Island for the most desperate type of convicts. In 1796, New York began the construction of two state prisons in New York and Albany. In 1816, Ohio built a state penitentiary at Columbus and in 1839, Michigan completed its first state prison at Jackson. Reform institutions in this country began to be established in Massachusetts in 1846 when juvenile offenders were removed from local jails and state prisons. Since then separate institutions for boys and girls have been established in nearly all of the eastern states. New York in 1877 erected the first reformatory to which adult convicts could be committed under an indeterminate sentence.

As for the care of the insane, this was the first department of public welfare administration that was taken over by the whole state, beginning with the establishment of the first hospital in Utica, New York, in 1843. From time to time other states have followed New York's example until nearly every state has one or more hospitals. With the increase in the number of institutions in a given state further segregation and classification of inmates has been possible. State institutions now furnish the means for appropriate education for the mentally defective who formerly were left to shift for themselves in mismanaged county almshouses. The deaf, dumb and blind have been taken care of in similar fashion. Indeed, the function of county poor relief would now seem to approach as its ideal, the complete transfer to the state of all charity functions except possibly a certain amount of temporary "out-door" relief. But even this rather narrow field has been invaded, for, in New England and New York, at least, a class of "state poor" is known to the statutes.

That the county has often sadly broken down in the guardianship of life and property is a fact which has come into prominence within very recent years. As the police force of the big cities become more and more efficient the field of operation for criminals is transferred to the suburbs, to the small towns and villages and to the open country and the police problem in the rural sections takes on a semi-metropolitan aspect. Good roads, the automobile and the telephone have facilitated the business of thugs and burglars as well as of honest citizens. Said the district attorney of Niagara County, New York, recently, "Nearly every post office safe in Western New York has been robbed, and I do not now recall anybody having been convicted for these crimes. The ordinary constable or deputy sheriff can serve subpoenas and make a levy under an execution providing he is feeling well, but as a general rule he is incapable of coping with even a third-class criminal." Numerous other equally forcible official statements of the same tenor have been collected by the New York Committee on State Police.

To cope with these crimes of violence and cunning the untrained, politically selected sheriff of the typical rural county is but sadly equipped. He is a temporary elected official to begin with, unschooled in the ways of criminals and unfamiliar with any of the vast paraphernalia of investigation that go to make up a modern police system. Certain parts of the country moreover have peculiar periodical disturbances on a larger scale than criminals operate--riots, lynching parties, flood disasters, strikes. These occasions demand the temporary mobilizing of a comparatively large, well-organized and disciplined force to handle the situation with firmness and fairness. It is no place for the crude old-fashioned sheriff's posse.

At the present time it is the frequent practice on such occasions to call out the state militia. But while this organization has often doubtless rendered effective service, police duty is not its proper occupation. Every year enlistments fall far below the adequate figure because young men in business and professional life deem it obnoxious to leave their appointed tasks to do a professional policeman's work. In the discussion of "preparedness" measures it has frequently been proposed that the militia be enlisted solely for national defense and that a special fighting force be developed for state police duty. If such a force were organized on a permanent basis it would practically relieve the sheriff and the constables from police duty.

A model for such a force is found in the Pennsylvania State Constabulary, which has been in existence since 1902. This is an organization of two hundred and twenty mounted policemen formed into four companies under a superintendent of police. Every year it patrols 660,000 miles of rural roads and not only keeps the rural sections singularly free from criminals but has performed numerous other distinctive services. It has prevented disastrous fires and mine explosions, quelled riots, stopped illegal hunting and maintained quarantine during epidemics of disease. It was this constabulary that handled the tremendous crowds at the Gettysburg Centennial in 1913. The force is made up of picked men who are taught the laws of the commonwealth and schooled to enforce them with absolute impartiality against offenders of all classes. It has been free from politics and has won the respect of all classes of the people.

In the domain of highways the county, under the pressure of the good-roads movement, has been rapidly yielding its control to the central government. The good-roads problem simply outgrew the county. It could not be handled efficiently through so small a unit. In the course of railway development everywhere the old lines of tributary traffic by wagon road from the farms to the shipping centers were greatly modified. Their objective point came to have no particular reference to the boundaries of the county or the location of the county seat. Traffic from one county destroyed the roads of another without supplying any compensatory advantages to the latter. Modern road construction, particularly since the advent of the automobile, created technical engineering problems far beyond the capacity of the local officials to solve. Without the aid of better equipped agencies than a unit so small as the county could afford most of the rural roads of the county must have gone to rack and ruin, to say nothing of their meeting the demands of present day traffic. But forty-two state governments, up to 1915, had come to the rescue, either by supplying financial aid, authorizing the employment of convict labor or by furnishing expert advice founded upon scientific research. Up to the year 1914 only Florida, Indiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas had made no provision whatever for state participation in road work.

But the significant point to be noted here is the strong tendency to take entirely out of the hands of the county the whole burden, financial and otherwise, of the great trunk lines and in many cases to impose standards and specifications for construction even where the county does its own road building. Thus, Massachusetts, up to January 1, 1914, had completed more than one thousand miles of state highway through the issuance of state bonds and the levying of automobile taxes, the counties being required to refund the state twenty-five per cent. of the cost of construction. New York established a highway department in 1898 and has authorized bond issues of 0,000,000 for a state system of roads which has already reached an advanced stage of construction. Virginia, Ohio, Maryland and California have made much progress toward a state road system, the California plan calling for two main highways running the length of the state and a system of laterals connecting the county seats with the trunk lines. The state of Iowa has gone so far as to place all road work in the state under the direction of its highway department.

And so, the dominion of the county is being invaded at sundry points. The unification of the judiciary , the gradual transfer of the charity and correctional work to the state government, the establishment of a state police and the more imminent abridgment of county control over highways--these movements unmistakably and definitely seem to point the ultimate displacement of the county as an important agent of public service in particular fields.

But that is but one side of the story. For while, on the one hand, the importance of the county is threatened in particular fields there seems to be before it in other directions a career of greater usefulness than ever before. This present observation, however, applies only to those states where the town or township has come in for particular emphasis, or where, as will be suggested later in the discussion, the principle of federation may be adopted by a number of contiguous municipalities as a step toward consolidation of local governments.

In a number of states where the New England influence has been strong the town is frequently the unit for the custodianship of certain records such as deeds and mortgages, for public health administration, for commitment of paupers, for road construction and maintenance or for tax assessment and collection.

The relation of the county to the town in these concerns is analogous to that of the state to county in such matters as the care of the insane and the control of trunk-line highways. It is a question of finding a unit large enough to fit the problem in hand. Public health, for example, is largely a matter of controlling sources of disease in milk and water supply, which under modern methods of living are usually much more widely distributed than the area which is served. Effective control in that case would simply mean control through a unit larger than the town, to wit: the county, unless control on a still wider scale should prove feasible. Similarly in the matter of police protection: the town constable is an anachronism in these days of rapid transit. The county is a more appropriate police unit than the town. Town custodianship of records means duplication, lack of standards and waste. Town commitment of paupers to the county almshouse or poor farm is a temptation on the part of the smaller locality to shift its burdens on to the shoulders of the whole county.

When it comes to highway construction, the high technical skill which needs to go into the work is a commodity which comes too high for a town and even, as we have pointed out, for the county.

But the most serious misfits of town government are the local agents of tax administration. Wherever the town is the smallest tax unit not only is the number of officials needlessly multiplied, but diverse standards of property valuation are set up and competition is resorted to between towns with a view to escaping their just share of taxation. Without a dissenting voice the recognized tax experts of the county are firmly of the opinion that the town as a unit of tax assessment and tax collection must give way to the county.

And so, the readjustments that are working out the ultimate destiny of the county are not wholly of a negative sort. It is not all a matter of trimming the county's wings.

Variously designated in different states as state's attorney, prosecutor of the pleas, county attorney and solicitor.

In Pennsylvania known as the "prothonotary."

This discussion of highway matters is based principally upon a monograph by J. E. Pennybacker, Chief of Road Economics, Office of Public Roads, Department of Agriculture. Y. B. Separate, 1914.

COUNTY HOME RULE

Some counties indeed are awakening to a sense of their identity and are asserting with much vigor their ability to organize and manage many concerns which have been conspicuously mishandled either by the state authorities or by the smaller local units.

Inasmuch, however, as counties have much more intimate relations with the state government it seemed impracticable to allow them quite so large discretion as the cities, in determining the powers they should enjoy. And so, the California amendment gives the people of the county freedom to determine the form and detail of the county organization, subject to the proviso that each of the necessary county officers such as sheriff, district attorney, etc., must be maintained to execute the state law within the county. Members of the county board of supervisors must be elected, but not necessarily by districts. All other county officers, except the superior court judges, may be either elective or appointive in a manner set forth in a county charter.

The procedure by which California counties may take advantage of the home-rule privilege is as follows: A board of fifteen freeholders is elected, either in pursuance of an ordinance adopted by three fifths of the members of the board of supervisors, or of a petition signed by fifteen per centum of the qualified electors of the county, computed upon the total number of votes cast therein for all candidates for governor at the last preceding gubernatorial election. Within one hundred and twenty days from the time their election is declared the board of freeholders must prepare and cause to be published a charter for the government of the county. Within sixty days after its first publication the charter is submitted to the voters of the county for adoption or rejection. It is then submitted to the legislature at its next session for approval or rejection but not for amendment. But since a California legislature in thirty-seven years has never been known to reject a charter or a charter amendment of a city, the outlook for a policy of county non-interference would seem to be good.

It may be, however, that the California plan is too radical a change for states which have not yet granted freedom to their cities. A less sweeping way of affording relief from iron-clad forms of government is found in the statutes of Illinois, New Jersey and other states, through which it is possible for any county to pass from one prescribed form to another by petition and popular election. Similar laws are in operation in a number of states permitting cities to adopt the commission plan, and in four states the cities may make a choice between three or four forms under an optional law.

Following the passage of such a city law in New York, the County Government Association and the official commissions on the reorganization of government in Nassau and Westchester counties memorialized the constitutional convention of 1915 for amendments which would authorize the counties to adopt a plan of organization suited to their local needs. These associations formulated the question of county adjustment for "up-state" New York counties in these words:

First: That the Legislature should be required by the Constitution to provide optional plans of county government, any one of which any county may adopt by a vote of the people.

Second: That the Legislature should in such plans confer upon the Board of Supervisors or other governing body in such county such powers of local legislation as the Legislature may deem expedient.

Third: That the Constitution should require that no such plan of government should be imposed on any county until approved by the electors thereof and that no amendment to any plan of government should affect any county which has previously adopted such plan, unless such amendment is accepted by such county, or unless such amendment relates to some state function.

Fourth: That the Constitution should require that all laws relating to the government of counties should be general both in terms and in effect, except that special or local laws relating to such government may be passed, but shall take effect only on approval of the county affected.

The California amendment has been put to use in the four counties of Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Tehama, and Butte, all of which have their special "home-rule" charters. Its early use is contemplated in Alameda, Napa and Santa Barbara counties. Since 1911 the scope of the amendment has been broadened so as to permit of considerable latitude in the consolidation of city and county governments.

This idea seems to be at the bottom of the local option policy of the organized anti-liquor forces throughout a great portion of the country. Shrewd tactics, of course, has a good deal to do with it, for county and other forms of local option are but the thin side of a wedge to state-wide and even nation-wide prohibition. But for the present at least, organizations like the Anti-Saloon League realize that counties are very handy and convenient units of public sentiment and have been instrumental in securing county option laws in many states, including Idaho, Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Texas. Incidentally, the county option plan makes the public policy district in liquor matters coincide with districts for enforcement, thus minimizing the danger of nullification.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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