The spotlight of public attention has been off municipal government for the past year. Even such a dramatic event as the taking over in June of the vast rapid transit system of New York City by the city government received only perfunctory notice in the press of the country. This system, representing an investment of over a billion dollars and covering 781 miles of subway and elevated tracks, 437 miles of street railways and 79 miles of bus routes, employing nearly 33,000 persons, and carrying annually about three times as many passengers as all the steam railroads in the United States, constitutes the largest commercial enterprise ever undertaken by any city. The negotiations for the unification of New York's transit system, which have taken years, have paralleled a strong movement toward municipal ownership and operation of electric light and power plants. The installed capacity of such plants, which at the beginning of 1930 was only 1,424,000 kilowatts, had reached 2,806,000 at the close of 1939.
There are now over 500 local housing authorities concerned with the provision of low cost housing, and in many other fields there is strong evidence of the growth of municipal activity in realms formerly relegated to private enterprise.
Worthy of note are the significant changes in the relation of local government to state and national government which have also been taking place. Approximately four-fifths of the cost of relief in all forms now comes from the Federal Government and less than one per cent from private charity. The form of local relief agencies (city or county) and their personal administration has been subjected to the control of the Social Security Board. In the fields of public health, public works, education, libraries and many others, significant changes of emphasis from local home rule to state and national regulation have been made or are in process of being made. It is impossible to treat these changes in detail within the limits of this article. It is, however, worth while to point out that under the shadow of depression and defense emergencies, fundamental alterations in the nature of municipal government may occur almost unobserved.
Few changes in the organization of city government have taken place in the past year. Providence, R. I., by its new charter did away with one of the few remaining two-chamber city councils. The group of city-manager cities, which now number well over 500, acquired important recruits during the year: Cambridge (with proportional representation) and Haverhill, Mass.; Superior, Wis.; and a number of small places adopted the plan by popular vote. Knoxville, Tenn., which by snap action of the legislature in 1937 had been deprived of its manager form of government, recovered it from the 1939 session and returned to the fold on Jan. 1, 1940. The overthrow of the Pendergast machine in Kansas City in 1939 was followed in 1940 by the adoption of a charter amendment shortening the term of the old city council, the election of a new one and the appointment of an able and experienced city manager from out of town, thus removing the blackest spot on the city manager record. The City Manager Study Commission created by the Indiana legislature in 1939 has submitted to the governor the draft of a proposed self-operating constitutional amendment permitting cities to frame through popularly elected charter conventions their own forms of government. If the proposal is acted upon favorably by the legislature in 1941 and by the people of the state, the door will be opened for modern municipal government in the Hoosier State, one of the few whose constitution now blocks advance in this direction. At its 1940 session the New York legislature extended home rule, along the lines hitherto enjoyed by cities, to the numerous villages of the state.
Two long-time mayors — Daniel W. Hoan of Milwaukee, after 24 years of service, and J. Fulmer Bright of Richmond, Va., after 16 years — were defeated in political upsets in the spring of 1940. In New York City the attempt of the Democratic organization to amend the city charter to do away with proportional representation in the election of the city council was defeated on Nov. 5 by a vote of 782,768 to 565,879.
For growth and population of cities, see also CENSUS OF UNITED STATES, 1940.
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