1938: Municipal Government

The year 1938, on the whole, has been an uneventful one for municipal government. Only one city election focused the attention of the country at large, that in Seattle, where on March 8 Councilman Arthur B. Langlie, businessman's candidate, decisively defeated Victor A. Meyers, colorful jazz-bandsman and then Lieutenant Governor. This victory was significant because it broke the long continued dominance of labor leader Dave Beck.

Widespread interest also attached to the attempt of the New York State Constitutional Convention to sabotage Proportional Representation in New York City by presenting to the voters of the state a constitutional amendment prohibiting that form of election. This amendment was, however, overwhelmingly defeated by a public which, divided in its belief in the efficacy of Proportional Representation, evidently objected to this summary method of disposing of it.

The most notable single trend of the year in municipal government has been the widespread activity displayed on behalf of the manager plan of government. That movement has now definitely entered the large city field. An official charter commission created by legislative act and appointed by the Governor in 1937, reported early in September a draft of charter for Philadelphia in which the basic features are a council elected by P. R. and a city manager appointed by the Council. The charter commission, at the 1939 session of the Pennsylvania legislature, will seek an act authorizing the submission of this charter to the voters of Philadelphia. An active campaign for its adoption is already under way.

In Chicago a City Manager Committee for the past three years has been conducting an educational program on behalf of a city manager and proportional representation. Under the Illinois law, however, only towns of under 5,000 population are free to adopt a council manager form of government. Governor Horner was induced to include in his call for the special session of the legislature, held early in the summer of 1938, the subject of the city manager plan. A carefully drawn bill adding a new alternative form of city government to the mayor and council and commission forms now open to Illinois cities, was introduced in the special session but made no progress due to the opposition of representatives of the dominant political party from Chicago. The fight will be renewed at the regular session of 1939.

Massachusetts, which for many years has had on the statute books an unsatisfactory form of the manager plan, known as Plan D, to which no city in the state now adheres, added to her list of optional forms of city government a new plan E, which provides the Cincinnati form of manager government with P. R. At the election of Nov. 8 three cities voted unfavorably on the question of adopting this new alternative.

Unsuccessful campaigns for the city manager plan were carried on during the year in Little Rock. Des Moines, Houston, and some smaller places. The following cities adopted the manager plan this year by charter: Dover-Foxcroft, Me.; Milo, Me.; Bendix, N. J.; Yonkers, N. Y.; and Verdun, Quebec.

The manager plan was adopted by ordinance in Tappahannock, Va.; Ephrata, Pa.; and Lexington, Va.

The number of manager plan cities is now as follows: 451 in the United States (also seven counties); 16 in Canada; 4 in Ireland; 1 in Puerto Rico (San Juan).

Considerable interest will attach to the survey of the results of city manager government carried on during 1938 by the Social Science Research Council.

International cooperation among city officials by way of conference and exchange of information has been long established in Europe and has been participated in to some extent by American cities. An interesting effort to bring about closer cooperation along similar lines in the western hemisphere was the Pan-American Congress of Municipalities which held its first session at Havana, Nov. 14-19, 1938. It was attended by many distinguished students of American municipal affairs as well as by representatives of the Latin-American countries.

A decision of the Supreme Court of the United States of considerable importance to cities was that of April 21, 1938, upholding the constitutionality of the Municipal Bankruptcy Act of 1937 (United States v. Bekins). The purpose of this act was to facilitate the settlement of the indebtedness of hopelessly bankrupt cities. The Court distinguished the new act from that of 1934 which it had held unconstitutional on the ground that the new act required the consent of the state to the composition of the debts of any of its municipalities.

Students of municipal government who have been following the course of the Princeton Local Government Survey with great interest were gratified to learn that the New Jersey Legislature of 1938 adopted the measures presented it by the survey commission. They appear as Chapters 127, 128, 158, and 159 of the pamphlet laws of 1938. These acts established a state department of local government which took over the powers hitherto exercised by the state auditor with relation to municipal accounts and received in addition wide powers of control over local budgets and other financial matters. In addition, the acts set up a state board of local government with power, among other things, to hear appeals from the orders of the commissioner who heads the department of local government.