1942: Municipal Government

In spite of the overshadowing importance of the war and the prodigious activities of the national government, rising citizen-interest in local affairs has characterized 1942. This is to be accounted for, in part at least, by the fact that the war has put local government on the spot.

Financial Problems.

In only very rare instances has the war made local government problems easier. Many communities have enjoyed boom-like prosperity, reflected in greater municipal revenues. Philadelphia, which has for years been struggling with budget deficits, has had a surplus in 1942 from which she has been paying off accumulated obligations. Her earned-income tax has become the envy of other cities. Most cities, however, which have experienced war booms have got with them a complex of rising prices and wages, new service requirements, and demands for costly public works, which have more than made up for enlarged income. Federal aid for war-necessitated works has fallen far short of meeting the situation. Other cities, of which New York is a striking example, by-passed by war industry, have lost population and suffered from declining revenues.

It is safe to say that for one reason or another the finances of most cities have been in a near-critical condition in 1942. Most cities have found their local tax revenues increasingly inadequate. Before the war they had come to depend on state and national grants for 25 per cent of their income. As the year progressed, the cutting off of WPA on which many cities — the letter of the law to the contrary — had relied for help to meet ordinary running expenses such as the operation of playgrounds and street repairs, caused new financial troubles. At the same time, the shrinking of state gas-tax revenues threatened a shortage of road funds.

The result has been endless studies and debates on the poignant subject of Federal-state-local fiscal relations by the Federal treasury, the Municipal Finance Officers Association, and many state and local agencies. It is apparent that local self-government cannot exist without a satisfactory self-controlled revenue basis. The fact that this subject has been brought out into the open by the war is a sign of hope. Of even more significance are the multiplied indications of citizen activity in local affairs. More revenue is not the only solution for the financial perplexities of local government. Better organized and more efficient government can help, and there has never been a time when citizen groups have been more active than this first year of war. This has gone along pari passu with extraordinary citizen participation in the various aspects of civilian defense and rationing, the enumeration of which is unnecessary here.

Municipal Elections.

The year 1942 has not been, generally speaking, a municipal election year. Very significant elections, however, were held, in Seattle and Kansas City in March. Seattle politics had for some time been dominated by the powerful teamsters' union headed by Dave Beck. The incumbent mayor, Earl Millikin, and a teamsters' union colleague on the city commission, however, were overwhelmingly defeated, after a bitter fight, by a ticket headed by Judge William F. Devin. In Kansas City the reform administration which came into power in 1940 was handsomely endorsed in the reelection of Mayor Gage and a council ticket pledged to carry on the work of reform. This seems to indicate the permanent conversion of Kansas City from the one conspicuous blot on the reputation of manager-plan cities. Already charter amendments to stabilize and remove from politics the civil service and to improve financial procedure are on the way to adoption.

Changes in City Charters.

Charter changes have been under discussion in many places throughout the country. The manager plan made conspicuous progress during 1942. It was adopted in 21 cities, including not only Bennington (7,628) and Brattleboro (9,622), Vermont, and several small New England towns, but such widely separated places as Lowell (101,389), Massachusetts, Lower Merion Township (39,566), Pennsylvania, Laramie (10,627), Wyoming, Houston (384,514), Texas, and Mill Valley (4,834), California. There were at the end of the year 561 cities and 7 counties under the manager plan.

Lowell, embarked on a campaign of economic recovery, adopted the so-called 'Plan E' manager plan with proportional representation which was adopted by Cambridge in 1941 and is now being agitated in several other Bay State cities. Houston's turn to the manager plan has peculiar significance as she had been the second city in the country to adopt the commission plan of government in 1905. Newark, New Jersey, the country's second largest commission-governed city rejected the manager plan in May, not so much on its merits as because of political involvements.

Municipal Bonds and Tax Exemptions.

A battle of giants was waged during the year over the exemption from federal taxation of income derived from interest on municipal bonds. The removal of the exemption was advocated by the United States Treasury as a means of preventing tax avoidance by wealthy investors and as a means of increasing revenue. It was opposed by state and local governments on the grounds that it would increase the cost of their operation by raising interest rates, and that it was a further invasion of the rights of local self government supposedly protected under our constitutional system. The battle before the House and Senate Committees evoked more heat and caused the expenditure of more oratory and printer's ink than its mere fiscal importance warranted. In the end the well-organized opposition succeeded in keeping the proposal out of the 1942 tax bill. The Treasury, however, apparently has not yet given up hope of completing its victory begun when the Supreme Court sanctioned Federal taxation of municipal salaries.

Wage Ceilings and City Employees.

Another issue as to the extent of Federal jurisdiction over local government arose in connection with the wage-ceiling order of the President. For some time its application to municipalities was left in doubt, to the manifest confusion of many local authorities. The national administration, however, finally decided against its own power to enforce ceilings on the wages paid to city employees, and the War Labor Board declined jurisdiction of labor disputes between municipalities and their employees. As local government payrolls aggregate between four and five billion dollars annually this left a considerable gap in the structure of wage control. On the other hand, it is clear as a pikestaff that if Federal authorities could fix the wages to be paid by local government there would be a great hole in the fabric of local self-government.

1941: Municipal Government

The events which most distinguished 1941 from other years in the history of American municipalities were those related to defense. The development of defense production mushroomed, with boom-time velocity, the population and responsibilities of many cities, at the same time that defense activities were claiming large numbers of their skilled employees and that price and wage increases dislocated their budgets. Vast sums, part of which have come from the national treasury, have had to be expended on streets, sewers, schools, housing, and other facilities for war work and workers. Airports, strategic highway links, and other facilities of a military order have had to be constructed. Early in 1942, the cities, especially those on the Atlantic and Pacific seaboards, were wrestling with the wholly new problems of precautions to minimize the effect of possible air raids. These precautions involved the organization and training of vast numbers of civilians under the general direction of Mayor LaGuardia of New York who was appointed National Director of the Office of Civilian Defense. It is, of course, too early to say what effect war and preparation for war may have on American cities.

Although problems of defense have in certain cities resulted in large capital expenditures, cities in general have been forced to curtail their normal construction programs by reason of unfavorable priorities and a desire for retrenchment in view of the magnitude of Federal expenditures. Since the beginning of the depression the net debts of all local units, leaving out special districts and authorities operating self-liquidating projects, have steadily but moderately declined in the amount of $1,023,000,000, or about 7.4 per cent. It is to be expected that under the pressure of war conditions this tendency will now be accentuated.

The world's largest city contributed the most striking political event of the municipal year by reelecting on Nov. 3 for an unprecedented third four-year term energetic, independent Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia by a majority of 133,841 over O'Dwyer. With him were returned Comptroller McGoldrick and Council President Morris, ensuring non-partisan control of the Board of Estimate. To the city council the Democratic machine elected by proportional representation 17 out of 36 members (slightly smaller proportion than in 1939) against a disorganized opposition. Among the 9 'independents' elected was 1 Communist.

New York voters further distinguished themselves by adopting a charter amendment initiated by petition, substituting a city-wide sheriff and register appointed by the mayor for sheriffs and registers previously elected in each of the five counties of the city, and extending the city civil service system to employees in the two offices. This action was the more notable because the voters at the same time turned down two measures put on the ballot by the machine majority in the council, which would have made the sheriff and register elective and left the door open for spoils in their offices.

Probably the greatest achievement of the year, at least the one most likely to produce permanent improvement in the conditions of urban living was the demonstration of the effectiveness of St. Louis's 1940 smoke prevention ordinance. Hitherto attempts at smoke prevention had been by way of penalties for allowing 'dense' smoke to issue from a chimney for more than a specified time. They had proved unenforceable. 'Smog-ridden' St. Louis took advantage of technical improvements in automatic stoking devices to require that unless smokeless fuel was burned an approved automatic stoker must be installed. From September 1940 to February 1941, there were 182 hours and 8 minutes of 'smoke' and 15 hours and 20 minutes of thick smoke as against 642 hours and 22 minutes and 113 hours and 45 minutes respectively in the same period a year earlier, reductions of 71 and 86 per cent. Pittsburgh, another 'smog' victim, in October 1941, put such an ordinance into effect for industrial establishments, office buildings, and apartments and will gradually extend it to railway locomotives and private homes. Thus, at last, the evil which has afflicted the 'Coke towns' of the world since the industrial revolution is in actual process of elimination.

It is worthy of passing mention that the Cincinnati City Council, elected by proportional representation, which since 1925 has had a majority of 'Citizens Charter Committee' and independent members, on Nov. 3 elected 5 Republicans and 4 charter committee candidates.

A significant permanent change in the nature of the problems confronting American City government is apparent in the returns of the 1940 Census now available. After 140 years in which cities grew with continuous rapidity and at a pace always far in excess of the country as a whole, the 1930-1940 growth of urban population (7.9 per cent) has slowed to a point almost identical with a retarded national average (7.2 per cent) while cities of 100,000 population or more sank to a mere 4.6 per cent, and five of the ten largest cities showed an actual decrease. Almost the only rapid growing cities were those in the metropolitan areas of large cities. War stimulus has added greatly to the size of some cities in the last few months. The causes which produced the slowing up indicated by the census, however, are permanent, while the incidents of defense production are temporary influences. The movement outward of city population has afflicted the older residential section with blight. To aid in the rehabilitation of blighted areas the New York and Illinois legislatures of 1941 passed similar acts giving to redevelopment corporations under municipal supervision the right of eminent domain to round out their holdings. The New York act limits the dividends of the corporations but exempts them for ten years from taxation on any value they add to the property acquired. These features are absent from the Illinois law. In another direction the outward movement of population has aroused fresh interest in plans for the governmental integration of metropolitan areas. A substantial achievement was made in this direction when the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia affirmed the order of a lower court annexing a considerable portion of Henrico County to the City of Richmond. Later in the year Richmond completed its plan of recapturing its fugitive population by an unopposed proceeding against its other neighbor, Chesterfield County. See also articles on the various States involved.

1940: Municipal Government

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.

1939: Municipal Government

While the year 1939 has been not without activity and without events of interest in the field of municipal government, it has added little to the total of constructive achievement for better government. No city of importance has taken action to change its form of government. Agitation for change, however, has been more widespread than in many recent years.

Vigorous agitation in Illinois for enabling legislation which would permit Chicago and other cities to adopt the city manager plan with proportional representation failed of its immediate object when the lower house of the legislature defeated the city manager bill by a vote of 69 to 66. A manager-proportional representation charter for Philadelphia, prepared by an official charter commission and endorsed by practically all the civic reform forces in that city was passed in the Senate of Pennsylvania but defeated in the House. Resentment against the apparently arbitrary action of the legislature in not even permitting the people of Philadelphia to vote on the question of adopting this charter is said to have been evidenced in the extremely narrow majority by which the Republican candidate for mayor was elected in November. The same session of the Pennsylvania legislature refused to authorize a similar charter for Pittsburgh which was strongly advocated by the press and civic bodies there.

A manager-proportional representation charter was defeated in a referendum in Waterbury, Conn., and attempts to set up proportional representation for the election of city councils failed in Schenectady, White Plains and New Rochelle, N. Y.; and a similar proposition with regard to the Board of Education in Minneapolis was defeated by a close vote. Indiana, which, like Illinois, does not permit her cities to adopt the city manager plan, has appointed a commission consisting of two university professors, two business men, two members of the legislature and a public official, to draft and submit to the 1941 session of the legislature a statute for the adoption of the city manager plan on an optional basis by Indiana cities.

Several city elections of some significance occurred in 1939. On April 4, the people of Chicago, in a vote of record proportions, elected Mayor Edward J. Kelly (D.) over Dwight H. Green (R.), former Federal prosecutor, who had vigorously assailed the policies of the Kelly-Nash machine. Mr. Green polled a larger vote than any Republican candidate for mayor of Chicago ever has received. The New York off-year election showed only a slight degree of citizen interest, the total vote being only 79 per cent of that cast in the mayoralty election two years ago. Tammany took advantage of this situation to get control of the city council. Had it not been for the system of proportional representation Tammany would have made a clean sweep of council seats. As it was, however, Tammany obtained only fourteen places in the new council while the opposition has seven. Of this opposition, two are Republicans, two belong to the American Labor Party, two were nominated by the City Fusion Party, and one — Alfred E. Smith, Jr. — is an insurgent Democrat. Five of the successful opposition candidates were endorsed by the Citizens Non-Partisan Committee.

Cincinnati held her ninth proportional representation election, with the result that the new council, like its predecessor, will consist of four Citizen Charter Committee members, four Republicans and one Independent. The Independent is the Reverend Herbert S. Bigelow who fathered the Ohio Old-Age-Pension Plan defeated in the recent election.

Toledo, Ohio, held its third proportional representation election and chose four City Manager League candidates and five miscellaneous independents. The first proportional representation election in Yonkers, N. Y., resulted in the choice of two City Manager League candidates, two organization Democrats, and one Republican.

Perhaps the most significant event in the municipal field this year occurred in Tennessee when twenty-one cities, acting in concert with the Tennessee Valley Authority, purchased their electricity distributing systems from the Tennessee Electric Power Company, issuing a total of $46,148,000 of bonds for the purpose. No such wholesale movement toward municipal ownership and operation of any public utility has ever occurred before in this country.

The most dramatic happenings of the year were the conviction of Tammany Boss Hines in New York by District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey and the successful prosecution of Boss Pendergast in Kansas City. This latter event promises to have a decisive effect in promoting good government in Kansas City. For many years, Pendergast remained the absolute dictator of Kansas City politics. The change to the manager form of government did not affect his control in the least. Advocates of the manager plan have had to apologize frequently for the failure of the plan in Kansas City. Now the boss is gone, the power of the machine is broken, and public-spirited men and women in Kansas City are actively taking advantage of this opportunity.

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.