Delphi Complete Works of Stephen Leacock, page 448
The most important of all questions in connection with city government is not its construction but the scope of its operation, the kind of public services which it is to undertake, whether or not it shall operate its own lighting plant, car service, etc. But the consideration of this topic will fall under a later chapter.
4. England. The distinctive feature of American local government has been seen to be the great extent to which autonomy, or self-government, prevails. The same feature is to be observed in the local government of England, as recently reconstructed; but previous to the reconstruction acts of the last half of the nineteenth century, this was not the case. The greater part of local jurisdiction had been placed, not all at once but bit by bit, in the hands of the justices of the peace. The functions of these officials had become so numerous as to defy anything but a purely alphabetical enumeration; they included such important matters as the levy of the county rate, the issuing of liquor licenses, the conduct of asylums, and the supervision of prisons. In their judicial capacity these officials tried criminal cases. The justice of the peace, appointed by the crown, on the advice of the lord lieutenant of the county, did not represent the principle of local self-government. He was the nominee of the central government, and in many cases was acting as the agent of one of its departments, of the local government board, the board of trade, etc. In addition to the justices, various special bodies had been created in the course of the nineteenth century, occupying some of the conflicting areas already mentioned. The board of guardians (by the poor law amendment act of 1834) had control of the care of the poor in a “union” of parishes, the board being composed of the local justices together with elected members. The burial acts (1852 and others) constituted burial boards, elective bodies operative over a parish or larger districts. Finally there were added, in 1870, school districts, with elective school boards. The parish itself remained as an ecclesiastical area, but exercised also through its officials, or through its general vestry meeting, minor civil functions. These and other bodies made up a medley of authorities, whose areas of jurisdiction were inextricably confused, and whose composition gave but little scope to local self-governance. The government of cities and towns which had grown up under special charters, and was often in the hands of a small portion of the inhabitants (sometimes of a close corporation), was also hopelessly confused and hopelessly at variance with any principle of popular government.
Though much of the older confusion, at least as viewed by an American, remains, a great deal has been done to place local government in England upon a more reputable footing. Two main objects have been kept in view, — the rectification of areas and the introduction of local self-government. With this object, a series of reforming acts has been passed: the municipal corporation acts of 1835 and 1882, the local government act of 1888 (referring mainly to county government), the local government act of 1894 (for parishes and districts), the London government act of 1899, and the education act of 1902. The general effect of the reform is as follows. The justice of the peace is relegated to his judicial sphere, retaining but few of his administrative functions. The old Saxon system of three ascending areas with elective self-government (township, hundred, and county) reappears in the present parish, district, and county. To the county is given an elected council, with wide range of local power. The elected district council has authority over sanitation, allotments, certain licenses, and other things. The parishes inside the area of towns are not affected by the reform, but the rural parishes have now elective self-government. If the parish has less than three hundred inhabitants, it exercises its government by means of a general “parish meeting,” on the lines of the American town meeting, but with much less authority, for the sphere of parish operations is small. In the larger parishes councils are elected. The school district under the act of 1902 disappears, and the control of schools is vested in a committee of the county council, having as a subordinate authority a body of managers for each school. The reforms also introduce elective self-government into the cities and towns, in the shape of mayor, aldermen, and councilors; but the relation of the cities to the counties in which they lie is not always the same. Some are administrative counties (Southampton, etc.), or are “county boroughs” (Liverpool, Manchester, and about sixty others), and stand quite apart from the county government. Below these are graded classes, which fall to an increasing extent within the regulation of the county authorities. London stands by itself. It contains within it the small central portion (about one mile square) known as the city of London, and governed as before by the lord mayor and the “courts” of which he is president, the court of common council (composed of aldermen and councilors) being the chief. Outside of this lies the vast “county of London” (with a population of 4,433,000 in the census of 1896), under the control of an elected county council. This whole area (except the city) is subdivided into twenty-eight “metropolitan boroughs,” each with an elected council. The result of these various reforms is that throughout the whole system the central government has withdrawn from its former control, in favor of the autonomy of elected local authorities. Such management as it still retains is in the hands of the local government board, a body consisting of a president (who is a member of the cabinet, and who is the acting power) and other cabinet officers, nominally associated with him. But the duties of the board consist merely in supervision; it does not appoint local officials, and its chief function of importance is to sanction financial measures of the subordinate authorities.
5. France. In France local government assumes an entirely different character from that found in America and England. The distinguishing feature is its highly centralized form, and the great degree of dependence in which all local authorities are placed in regard to the central national government. Take for instance the administration of a French department, the largest of the local areas. At its head is the prefect, an official appointed by the president of the republic, on the recommendation of the minister of the interior. He has associated with him, it is true, an elected body known as the general council of the department. But the power of the latter is reduced to the smallest compass. It is allowed by law only two regular annual sessions, the one of fifteen days, the other of a month. It has no true taxing power, for the amount of money which it may use and the manner of raising it are both regulated by the French parliament. In the spending of the money thus accruing to it, it does not act on its own initiative, for it is the prefect who draws up the budget which is annually submitted to it. Even then the expenditure as finally voted requires the assent of the president of the republic. The latter has also the power to dissolve the council, a power which may be exercised even by the prefect if the council outsits its statutory term. If it exceeds the scope of its legal competence, its acts can be declared void by the president. Its members are unpaid, their attendance is compulsory, they are forbidden to adopt any resolutions, etc., bearing upon general politics, nor can a council enter into any political correspondence or relations with that of any other department. In contrast to this the power of the prefect is very great. At times, indeed, he merely acts as the agent of the general government, with no discretion of his own, as when enacting the ordinances of the president. But in addition to this, and to the duties in connection with the council already explained, the prefect has a wide sphere of authority. He appoints and dismisses the teachers in the government schools, is at the head of the police, is recruiting officer, etc. The same system on a smaller scale is adopted in the arrondissement, the first subdivision of the department. At its head is a sub-prefect, appointed by the president; the functions of its council amount to little more than the division of apportioned taxes among the communes. The primary unit, the commune, is in a slightly less dependent position. Being organic and historic, and not merely “geometrical,” as are the superior units, it tends to develop a greater vitality. Its mayor (since 1882) is an elected officer. But its municipal council, like that of the department, has restricted powers and very limited sessions. It is subject to dissolution by the president, and can be suspended for a month by the prefect. All French towns and cities except Paris and Lyons, which have a special form of government, are organized as communes on the same plan.
The peculiar form which local government has thus assumed in France has grown out of the troubled history of the country since the Revolution. At the making of the first constitution of that era (the monarchical constitution adopted in 1791) the reformers were fully inspired with the idea of local autonomy. The departments were erected into what were described as “little republics,” and the power centred in their “councils general” was very considerable. Such an arrangement made at such a time served only to weaken the authority of the central executive at Paris to an alarming degree. Under the revolutionary government of the Terrorists, therefore, in 1793-94, local power was put into the hands of “national agents,” appointed from Paris, and of special “representatives on mission,” who exercised a dictatorial power. The intense centralization thus effected rendered it possible for the executive government to avail themselves of the whole resources of the nation with wonderful effect. The same plan was deliberately adopted and perfected by Bonaparte under the constitution of the year VIII (law of Feb. 17, 1800), in which the prefects and sub-prefects appear, and which has since remained as the basis of local government in France. The struggle between different dynasties and parties for the control of the national government, and the successive revolutions (1830, 1848, 1851, 1870) in which the struggle has culminated, have made each party willing to adopt the centralized system as a means of consolidating its own power. This has contributed largely to give to Paris a political preëminence not enjoyed by any other capital. For the purposes of revolution, Paris during the nineteenth century meant France, and the successful seizure of the central control carried with it the mastery of the entire government. The efficiency of this concentration of power in time of war or invasion is very great; it insures a prompt coöperation from all parts of the country. But as against this must be set the enervating influence on local affairs of government from above, and the temptation of the central government to use its agents for political purposes.
6. Prussia. The system of local government in Prussia is far too complex to allow of any adequate description in brief compass. The areas are numerous (provinces, districts, circles, communes, and organized towns). It contains, however, one interesting feature, which may be noticed in passing. As a compromise between state control and local self-government, there is in use in the Prussian provinces a double set of officials, a president and council appointed by the crown, and a provincial diet elected by the representative bodies in the circles and choosing its own executive head (Landeshauptmann) and executive committee. The spheres of state authorities and provincial elective authorities are kept separate, the former being mainly concerned with supplying information to, and acting as the agent of, the royal government at Berlin. The functionaries of the Prussian district are all nominated by the central government; of those of the circle, the executive chief is appointed by the president of the province, the diet is elective. In rural communes there are elective assemblies, but there remain still communes, if one may use the term to translate the word Rittergut, that are under the jurisdiction of a manorial lord. The towns and cities are variously organized on the elective plan. But it must be recalled that the elective system in Prussia is always arranged on the division of classes described in an earlier chapter. The central government retains a supervising power over financial measures. The Prussian system of combining local authority with central control would prove quite impossible in America, owing to the conflict of jurisdiction it would occasion; in Prussia such conflict is less to be feared, because it is a matter controlled, as already explained in reference to France, by the administrative officers themselves.
7. Local Taxation; the Property Tax of the United States. We come now finally to the difficult question of local taxation and finance. In the United States local taxation has proved one of the most serious of the practical problems of administration. The peculiar difficulty which has arisen to a greater or less degree all over the Union is of the following character. The state, county, and township authorities draw a very large proportion, in the case of the two latter practically all, of their financial support from the proceeds of a direct tax laid on all forms of property. The tax applies both to real and personal property, — land, houses, buildings, horses, carriages, furniture, stock and shares, mortgages, bonds, etc. At its origination it seemed eminently reasonable. The states were forbidden to levy import and export duties, and to levy excise duties would tend to drive out manufactures to a more favored locality; they therefore of necessity fell back on direct taxes. And of all such, a single tax, laid on all forms of property alike, seemed to commend itself as the most uniform and the most equitable. In practice it has shown itself to be distressingly inequitable. This is due in part to the manner of its assessment, which is made as follows. The state authorities compute the amount of the direct tax needed for their purposes, and divide it up among the counties in the proportion of the value of assessed property in each. To the sum thus called for each county adds the amount needed for its own use and then distributes it in like manner among its townships, again according to the proportional value of the assessed property in each. To this sum the township adds what is needed for its own purposes, usually the largest amount of all. The total thus reached is distributed among all the property-holders of the township according to their proportion of assessed property; in other words the total of the assessed property is divided by the total tax to be collected, and a tax rate is thus obtained which is levied on all the property. If, for example, the total of the property was worth $5,000,000, and the total tax to be collected was $100,000, then the tax rate would be put at one fiftieth or two per cent. Under such a system, then, everything turns on the assessment. If one county has been assessed for very much less property than it actually has, then the amount of the tax assigned to it by the state will be very much less than it should be, but at the expense of the other counties, for the rate all round will need to be higher in order to supply the fixed quantity of money asked for. Or again let us suppose that in one of the townships the property is assessed for very much less than it is worth. Then the township in which the assessment is too low is given less than its share of the county tax, but always at the expense of the other townships, on account of the rate being of necessity higher than would be needed if the assessment were larger. Finally, within the township itself precisely the same thing happens among individuals. Any one whose property is put at too low a valuation, or not valued at all, escapes at the expense of his neighbors; and the more the property in general escapes assessment and remains invisible, the higher becomes the tax rate. Hence has arisen what is called competitive under-assessment, the counties and townships vying with one another in attempting to make their findable property as small as possible. The assessors, moreover, being elective officers, elected in most cases for a very short term, are personally interested in not making the total property of their area stand at too high a figure.
The upshot has been that while the system was originally devised as the most equitable form of universal taxation possible, in its actual operation nothing could be more vicious and inequitable. For it is to be observed that it in reality discriminates most unfairly between different kinds of property. Real estate, for example (lands and buildings), is much less easy to conceal than such forms of property as shares in bank stock, bonds, debentures, etc. In illustration of this it may be mentioned that in the assessment of property in Brooklyn in 1895, real estate constituted over ninety-eight per cent of the total values. Some years ago (1884) a tax commission in West Virginia reported in reference to personal property, “Things have come to such a condition in West Virginia, that as regards paying taxes on this class of property, it is almost as voluntary, and is considered pretty much in the same light, as donations to the neighboring church or Sunday school.” In addition to this, a premium is put upon dishonesty, since people o£ a pliable conscience will find it easier to dodge the assessment than those of a more uncompromising morality. Even some of the measures intended to prevent this, as, for example, the adoption of a schedule of property made out and sworn to by the owner, and the penalties (legal and spiritual) for perjury, etc., accentuate the evil rather than lighten it. The worst feature of all is that when under-assessment once sets in, it moves forward at an accelerated pace. For the higher the rate rises, the more imperative does it become for each individual to understate his property. But the more the property is understated, the higher the rate rises, and thus the worse the situation is, the worse it tends to become. In some cases the rate becomes so high that to tell the literal truth, and pay the full tax rate, would mean absolute ruin. Thus in some of the “towns” of Chicago, previous to the reform of the assessment system a few years ago, the rate stood as high as eight and nine per cent. Now it must be remembered that this means, not the contribution of eight per cent of one’s income, but eight per cent of one’s capital property. To actually pay this and continue in business would not, for ordinary enterprises, be found possible. The result is that both the assessors and the assessed adopt a rough scale of depreciation, accepting as accurate a figure that is perhaps one fifth or one tenth of the probable actual value of the property concerned. Meanwhile the incentive to dishonesty remains, and a vast amount of property escapes untaxed.
