Agenda - Charter Commission - 01/08/2002 - Memorandum

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Some of the advantages of this plan have already been stated. The mayor's office becomes what peo- ple expect it to'l~e~ an important.' one. Admin!srra- tion is centralized, LegislatNe and administrative functions are to some extent separated. As a matter of fact, however, this separation is not as complete as is usually said. The mayor retains his power to recommend and to veto legislation. Through his great power of control over administration and over the public business, he may practically domi- hate the legislative body. It is true also that if the council attracts any men of ability there are likely to be serious clashes between the mayor and the council. The public business may be obstructed while the council and the mayor are squabbling over their relative powers, in the iong run, however, since the council does not control administration, and since the ordinance-making function is not a very important one, the council wili not attract the ablest and best men in the city under this plan. The mayor's office has been made stronger really at the expense of the council. There is also another disad- vantage and that is that problems of administration instead of general municipal policies will become the issues in the campaign. The mayor ~vitl run for re-election on the ground that he has given a good administration. Someone will run against him who charges that the administration, has been poor..If this second party wins, as he is lilceiy to do in more than half of the cases, he will feel it his duty to dis- miss some or all of the department heads appointed by his recent opponent. A new set of city officials will then start to learn at the expense of the city, how to run their departments, and they will no sooner have begun to learn than they may be re- moved because a new person has been elected mayor. In other words the administration is kept in politics instead of being removed from politics, and in the long run political administration is inefficient administration. This tendency.will not be so notice- able in small cities as in large, and it may be over- come by a long process of public education to tl~e need of expert administration, but the danger is al- ways there. 107. The commission plan. The commission plan of government really had its beginning in 1901 at Galveston, Texas] 0 About 1910 it was the most- talked-of form of city government in the country, and it achieved considerable popularity before its popularity waned and many cities abandoned the plan. There are now only 220 commission plan cities in the United States. It was used for many years in St. Paul and Duluth but now is found in Minnesota only in Faribault, Hutchinson, and Pipe- stone. No Minnesota city has adopted the plan since 1914. 10See the diagram of this plan in the League mem- orandum "Four General Types of Government Structure in Use in American Cities," 390e.7. - The essential idea of the commission plan is that executive and legislative responsibilities are fused in a single body usually called the city commission. The-commission plan is founded upon the short ballot idea. It elimi-nates the ward system entirely. The people elect three, five, or seven persons on a non-partisan ticket from the city at large. These men are the council, or commission of the city. As one body they enact the ordinances,levy the taxes, pass the annual budget, and determine all the poll-' cies of the city. As individuals they each take charge of one of the three or five or seven departments in- to which the city administration is divided. Some- times, however, one member who is designated/~he- mayor does not have control over any particular department but has a general pov~er of supervision over all the others. There is thus no separation of powers in this scheme of government; the same. group of men raise the mQney and spend it, and make all the ordinances for the clty. The advantages of the commission plan are as follows: (1) It greatly simplifies the work of' the voter, for he is called bpon to elect only the mere-. bets of the council or commission. (2) Responsibit- ity is concentrated somewhat better under this plan than under more complicated and older forms. There is a "higher visibility" for seeing all the working parts of the government. (3) There is some. increase in administrative efficiency due to reducing the number of city departments to three, five or seven. (4) Election at large serves to bring somewhat better men into office than are obtained under the ward system of electing the council. But. there are serious disadvantages to the plan, too. (1) Men- elected because of thei'r popularity or because of the policies for which they stand may prove entire- ly unfit to administer a great department. (2) As adm{nistrators their careers are short, which results in-making the city departments a constant train- ing school for city administrators. (3) The city's administration is not sufficie.ntly centralized; there is still some division of responsibility. There is likely to be pu!ling and hauling between the departments for appropriations, and since three men can domi- note a commission of five, one or two departments are very likely to be slighted in the making of appropriations. (4) In general, poiirics and adminis- tration are. not separated but fused into one. The same men who make the policies administer the departments. The men who levy the taxes also spend the money; But when all the advantages and disadvantages have been stated, it is still safe to say that the commission form was a great improvement over the weak mayor-council governments it com- monly replaced.