USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Professional and industrial history of Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Volume III > Part 16
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EAST BOSTON FERRY.
In view of the money devoted by the city to the hospital and the pub- lic library, which were not municipal necessities, as defined by munic- ipal jurisprudence, it seems surprising that the East Boston ferry, though owned and operated by the city, should continue as a toll ferry. In old times the East-Boston ferry, when operated, was a part of the Chelsea ferry, which was in private hands. The first regular ferry to East Boston appears to have been established in 1833. In 1852 the East-Boston Ferry Company bought the ferry then in operation for $200,000, the city was to prescribe the duties of the company and the tolls, provided the latter netted eight per cent. on the capital invested, which might be $300,000. The act of incorporation held out the hope of a free ferry, to be established by the city. In 1870 the city bought the ferry property for $275,000, and the enabling act again held out the hope of a free ferry. In 1877 the city council voted to make the ferry free, but the Supreme Court of Massachusetts ruled such a vote to be illegal. Whether or not the city might have established a free ferry in
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1840, under St. 1869, ch. 155, is undecided, although the presumption is against free ferries, as far as the science of jurisprudence is con- cerned. The question would be free from doubt, were East Boston an- other town or city; but it has been a part of Boston since 1637, and the right of the city to build a free bridge to East Boston is not to be doubted, provided authority from the General Court is obtained. The ferry has cost the Boston tax payers about $2,000,000. (See St. 1852, 244; 1868, 352; 1869, 155; Chief Justice Gray's decision in 123 Mass. Rep., 460). The ordinance of April 12, 1891, wisely transferred the management of the ferry from a board of commissioners or directors, appointed annually, to one superintendent. Another ferry, conducted by a railroad company, connects the city proper with East Boston.
PARKS.
In 1870 the people of Boston voted upon an act (St. 1870, ch. 283) under which a board of nine park commissioners, four to be appointed by the State, should lay out one or more parks, the annual cost of maintenance not to exceed $50,000. Two-thirds of the voters were to accept the act to make it binding upon the city. The vote was 9,233 in favor, and 5,916 opposed ; so the measure failed. After the annexa- tions of 1874 another act, under which three park commissioners, appointed by the mayor and city council, were to establish parks within the city limits, was accepted by the light vote of 3,706 yeas, to 2,211 nays, a majority vote to decide. The act did not contain any limitations, except that expenses were to be kept within appropriations made by the city council. The park commissioners have never received a salary ; yet the city has had good service. A fine system of parks has been projected, and is in part complete. Not including the common, the public garden, and the public squares, the parks cover nearly three square miles, and the cost, up to January 31, 1893, was about $11,500,000. The General Court and the city government have been equally lavish in this matter, and the city has received an equiva- lent for its great outlay. The city government has very little to do with the parks, beyond authorizing the loans and expenditures. But the common, the public garden, and other public grounds, to the extent of about 140 acres, with some thirty thousand trees, remain under the care of the city government and its superintendent of public grounds, an office established as early as 1841, and important since the public
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garden has been made a delight to all comers. The parks and these public grounds might well be under one management.
REVIEW OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS.
This ends the list of the great spending departments. Other depart- ments created since the charter of 1854 are certain cemeteries; the in- spection of milk and vinegar, which has proved a benefit; the commis- sioners of the Charles-river bridges; the inspection of buildings, which looks after the safety of all houses and other buildings in the city, and has had the benefit of very much legislation from the General Court, but has been useful; the inspection of provisions; the record commis- sioners, who have published important documents of the early local government; the city architect; and even an art commission. In 1870 the laying out and widening of streets was transferred from the alder- men to the board of three street commissioners, elected by the people ; and in 1874 the registration of voters was transferred from the alder- men to a board of three registrars, appointed by the mayor and alder- men, who could not properly attend to such things. In 1871 a superin- tendent of printing was appointed, whose duties, however, are minis- terial. In 1875 the collecting department was separated from the treasury. But, on the whole, the city government prefers not to mul- tiply administrative departments, and in 1891 an interesting consolida- tion of the bridge, sewer, and sanitary-police departments with the street department was effected. Still there are some thirty-five coor- dinate departments directly amenable to the mayor, not counting the schools, the county officers, the police, and numerous officers paid by fees. The number of appointments made annually by the mayor and aldermen is nearly three thousand, and the number of persons in the service of the city about three times that number.
It is due to the city government to state that most of the city depart- ments are created by the General Court. When a public want arises, and the General Court acts at all, it usually creates a new municipal department, as far as Boston is concerned; for some new duty of town officers in the nature of things means a new department in the city of Boston. In addition, the city has many wants that do not arise else- where. The result is an administrative machinery of vast extent and extremely complicated, but with this element of unity that the expense is assessed upon the Boston tax payers. County expenses are pre- scribed almost wholly by the General Court, and defrayed by the city.
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For years past they have exceeded a million dollars annually. The school expense averages above two millions a year, and is appropriated by the city council in bulk, to be expended by the school committee. In the appointment of the police force, the city has no voice, but it bears the expense, which exceeds a million dollars a year. The ex- penditures of the departments under the control of the city govern- ment are mostly fixed charges. Yet nearly every administrative de- partment, and nearly every expenditure, have been created at the re- quest of the tax payers. They have demanded the best, and they have borne the cost with astonishing ease. With the exception of the nomi- nal poll tax, the city collects nearly every tax it assesses; and the pay- ments are prompt. Yet owing to the fact that the people of Boston de- mand more and receive more, their taxes are the highest in the coun- try. Since the charter of 1854 our population has trebled; our tax has sextupled; yet the community bears the burden without apparent dif- ficulty. But it dislikes special assessments. It prefers that the munici- pality shall do as much as possible, and that the cost shall be de- frayed from the general tax levy.
Under the law of 1890 all subordinates hold their places during good behavior, and since the charter of 1854 the rule of annually appointing all heads of departments has been in part abandoned. A slight begin- ning has been made in reducing departments to divisions of a depart- ment, the advantage being, not economy, but better supervision, greater stability, and less contact with political appointments. For in an important sense appointments made by the mayor are more or less political appointments. Perhaps the administrative machinery of the city could be reduced to a few departments, the political heads of which might come and go with every mayor, while all division heads and their subordinates would serve during good behavior. The United- States Treasury shows that all financial departments of the city might be safely united under one head. Such a department of finance should include the assessors of taxes as bureau officers, and might include the registration of voters, because the assessing and collecting departments have the best knowledge of persons in the city. A great health de- partment might include the city hospital, the inspection of food for man and beast, all cemeteries, and the entire registry of births, mar- riages and deaths. The public library, the publication of early records, and printing naturally go together, and have very much in common with our system of schools. The great departments of police, fire, in-
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spection of buildings, weighers, and medical examiners could be joined. The departments of relief, correction and prisons should be consoli- dated. Finally there would be, or could be, a department of public works, comprising streets, sewers, bridges, parks, lighting, public buildings, the city engineer and surveyor, the architect, the water division, and the ferries, together with the board of survey, and all administrative work now assigned to the street commissioners.
It is not unreasonable that with a new mayor there should be six or eight, but not exceeding ten, new heads of departments. It is contrary to reason that such officers as the city architect, assessors of taxes, the engineer and surveyor, the water registrar, the superintendent of printing, or the city registrar should be quasi-political officers. An officer elected by the people, or appointed by the mayor and aldermen, is almost inevitably a political officer. When the people elect a new mayor, they practically declare that he may select all officers for whose conduct he is responsible. In order to eliminate party politics from the service, therefore, it is important that as few offices as possible should be elective, or subject to the pleasure of the appointing power, and that as many offices as possible, including all ministerial offices, should be taken out of party politics. It is important, also, that the adminis- trative machinery of the municipal service be simplified. The admin- istrative branch of a government should resemble a pyramid. To command popular interest, the system of administration must be in- telligible. The laws that govern Boston are more complicated than the laws that govern the United States; our executive departments are more numerous ; supervision is more difficult. The reason is apparent. We have but one national legislature; the city has three or four. There is but one national administration; the administrative officers of Boston carry into effect the Regulations of the Board of Aldermen, the Ordinances of the City Council, the statutes of the General Court, the laws of Congress, and the directions of the mayor. No wonder, the reformers despair when they undertake to deal with municipal govern- ment.
THE BALANCE OF MUNICIPAL POWER.
This fact, that the spending officers of the city are the servants of so many masters, and that the supreme master, the voter and tax payer, is so exacting, is the chief reason why taxes in Boston are high, and why the municipality does many things that are elsewhere left to
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private enterprise, and for that reason do not appear in the tax levy. The tax payer and the municipal government stand, to some extent, in the relation of principal and agent, or master and servant. Accord- ingly the municipal government cannot be judged justly without some attention to the public that clamors for improvements and is willing to pay the cost; though some persons demand generous expenses and low taxes. To reduce the general tax levy, the betterment law was passed in 1866 (St. 174). It was to let abutters bear a part of public improve- ments; but has not worked well. In theory common sewers were to be paid for by the abutting estates; but collections have been light. Even the parks were to be paid for, in part, by abntters; the object has not been obtained. When municipal expenses became enormous, under the joint influence of inflation, annexation, and the fire of 1842, the General Court limited municipal indebtedness by statute (St. 1875, ch. 209), ordaining that Massachusetts cities and towns should not owe above three per centum of their taxable property as valued by the assessors, though communities owing between two and three per centum of the assessed valuation might incur another one per centum of debt. The same law required sinking funds to be established.
Ten years later, the debts as well as the taxes of Boston were re- stricted by a law of Spartan rigor (St. 1885, ch. 178); but the General Court itself forced numerous exceptions upon the city. The net debt of the city in 1893 (gross funded debt, less cash available for redemp- tion) is not far from four per cent. of the assessed valuation, and the amount required in 1892-3 for interest and sinking funds exceeded four million dollars. The city government is not alone responsible for this; neither is a stringent law a protection against lavish expenditures. Indeed the city government has been carefully protected. The city charters of 1821 and 1854 made members of the city council ineligible for salaried city offices. In 1884 members of the city council were made ineligible for such offices during the term for which they were elected. In 1850 they passed an ordinance making void all sales and contracts, purchases and agreements in which a member of the city council or an officer of the city had any private interest, direct or indirect (Ordin. of Dec. 23, 1850). The civil-service law (St. 1884, ch. 320, sec. 13) made it impossible for the members of the city council to charge wine or tobacco to the city, or more than a dollar a day for meals. The legis- lators appear to have felt that personal economy in members of the city government might promote municipal frugality. But a few
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thousand dollars saved on municipal dinners or carriages are a small item in municipal expenditures that exceeded twenty-one million dol- lars in 1892-3. The real expenditures are demanded by the city gov- ernment, by the General Court, and by the public, though it is customary to chide aldermen and common councilmen, when economy, retrenchment, and reform are in demand.
Up to 1885 the annual city councils controlled municipal expendi- tures, and are responsible for much that happened, though both the General Court and the public demanded much. Under a feeling that the city must be protected, as though it could not protect itself, the power of the city council, and especially the board of aldermen, was gradually curtailed. The establishment of the board of street commis- sioners, in 1870, is a good illustration. It transferred the right of laying out and widening streets from the aldermen to the street com- missioners. Other executive departments were created at the expense of power which the charters of 1822 and 1854 had vested in the city council. The last favor shown by the General Court to the city council was in 1864, when the election of overseers of the poor was transferred from the people to the city council. The aldermen enjoyed the highest degree of power from 1847 to about 1846, and vast power up to 1885. But they gradually lost ground. Misled by a foolish charter they undertook too much; the result was inevitable distrust. In 1884 the law requiring the election of aldermen by districts was passed. It has not proved specially beneficial, nor at all injurious, for the reason that it cannot make any material difference whether an alderman is chosen by one-twelfth of the city or by the whole. The smaller States send at least as good men to Washington as do the large States, and a limited district is as apt to choose well as is a much larger district. But before the law of 1884 could produce results of importance, the storm that had gathered over the board of aldermen and its despised brethren of the common council, burst forth. It was to be a hurricane. The great wrong of the charters of 1822 and 1854 was to be redressed at last. The power of the aldermen was to be placed between the upper and the nether millstone.
THE BALANCE OF POWER RECAST.
In 1883 Benjamin F. Butler had been Governor of Massachusetts, to the sorrow of all conservatives in a State that thought well of the past. In 1884 and 1885, therefore, the General Court undertook to repair all
John 7 Wich
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the mischief that had brought the political aspirant to the head of affairs for a twelvemonth. In those two years the constitution of Bos- ton was revolutionised. Boston had supported Butler; in 1884 it had occasioned a tax rate of 17 per mille, against 14.50 in 1883. This led the tax payer to demand reform. In addition, the city was Democratic ; the State was not; the General Court was overwhelmingly Republican. The time was favorable to radical measures. The civil-service law of 1884 destroyed the favorite patronage of the Boston city council, by placing the clerical and labor force of the city under the rules of the Commonwealth. The law made it illegal for members of the city council to recommend the appointment of policemen, firemen, laborers in the street or clerks in offices, on any political or personal ground. Most of the sections in this good law showed the temper of the General Court by beginning with the word "No." In 1885 the law limiting the debt and the tax of Boston was passed (ch. 178), leaving the city council no latitude in making appropriations, the tax available under the limit (nine per thousand of the average assessed valuation for cur- rent expenses, exclusive of the debt and the State tax) being impera- tively required for the fixed expenditures of the city. Indeed, under the new law the appropriating power could only decide whether the reduction in the income of the city should reduce the outlay for paving, for sewers, for the salary of teachers or something similar. It was a cast-iron law ; but cast iron is not as enduring as a watch-spring, nor so useful.
In 1885 (St. 323) the appointment of the police board was transferred from the city to the Commonwealth, and the famous act of May 2" (St. 266) drew the line between executive and legislative work of the city government, as prescribed in the Massachusetts declaration of rights, in the Constitution of the United States, and in the very phrases that school children use when they speak of their government. The act of 1885 repeated the language of the charters, and then vested all execu- tive and administrative power of the city government in the mayor, to be exercised through the many executive and administrative depart- ments which the past had brought forth. By a stroke of the pen, the executive power exercised by the city council, but especially by the aldermen, who would not concede equal rights to the common council, was transferred to the mayor. For more than sixty years he had been very little else than head alderman, or the presiding officer of the cor- poration ; on June 26, 1885, when the new law took effect, he became
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an officer of very great power. He was made the appointing power, though the board of aldermen was wisely given the power of confirma- tion ; he might veto separate items in appropriation bills ; he was made supreme in all administrative duties, the heads of departments being his servants, whom he could remove at pleasure, and the members of the city council expressly debarred from participation in the executive work of the city, such as the employment of labor, the making of con- tracts, the purchase of supplies, the repair of a sidewalk, the care of public property, or the expenditure of public money. Neither an alder- derman, nor the whole city council, could issue binding orders or in- structions to an administrative department, which thenceforth took its directions from the mayor alone.
Government by committee thus came to an end in Boston sooner than in the Commonwealth, and more radically than in the government of the United States. The General Court acted on the theory, carefully expressed in the Boston charters (St. 1821, ch. 110, sec. 30; 1854, ch. 448, sec. 62), that municipalities are the creatures of the State, and that the will of the General Court is the real charter of the proud city. Fortunately, the nature of things sets a limit to theories. In theory the General Court creates cities; in fact cities grow; and the best legis- lature can but recognise and try to regulate. In theory Boston was made a constitutional monarchy, with the General Court for its legis- lative branch; in fact the General Court cannot legislate for everything in Boston, because in the nature of things the General Court cannot be familiar with all the interests of the city government, and prudent men hesitate to regulate what they do not understand. In theory the mayor of Boston is the master of the many millions the household of the city requires; in fact he has less than his households wants. In theory he holds " the executive powers of the city " (St. 1885, ch. 266, ch. 6); in fact, many powers of a purely executive nature, as to schools, police, county affairs, parks, great public buildings, and even the erection of petty monuments, are past his control. But he is not the servant of the city council; neither can the city council act independently of the mayor. Indeed, real action and execution rest with the mayor ; and his authority is derived from the General Court, rather than from the city council. Like so many of his appointees he executes stat- utes rather than ordinances, and he is not required to give an ac- count of his stewardship to the powers that have created his preroga- tive.
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As neither jurisprudence nor political philosophy has drawn the ex- act line between executive and legislative functions, the city council of Boston should not be censured for neither understanding nor admiring the law of 1885. Surveyors of highways appear to be executive of- ficers; the law of 1885 vests the executive powers of the surveyors in the mayor, and appears to leave their legislative power in the board of aldermen. But what is the power of a surveyor of highways that is not executive ? A similar question applies to the whole charter amend- ment of 1885. The charter of 1822 had vested in the city " the admin- istration of all the fiscal, prudential, and municipal concerns of said city, with the conduct and government thereof " (sec. 1). In 1885 the administration was clearly transferred to the mayor; what, then, was left to the city council ? The inaugural message of Mayor Matthews, in 1892, gives this answer: "The chief function of the city council, as the legislative branch of the city government, is to determine the amounts of money which the executive departments shall be authorized to expend during the year, and the manner in which the money shall be raised." That is, under sharp limitations the city council has a voice as to appropriations and loans (for since 1885 the tax always goes up to the limit then prescribed). No doubt, the city council has other pow- ers; but it has not yet recovered from the hurricane of 1885. Nor is this strange. Chapter 266 of 1885 destroyed the traditions that began with Boston itself; it destroyed the belief that towns were the true model for city government; it destroyed the very theory of munici- pal government on which all New England was brought up. For after all had been said about the General Court being a creator of municipal government, the fact remained that towns had some rights, that they were the organs and the constituents of the Commonwealth, and that the town delegates of 1779 had made the Constitution of the State. The city council suddenly found itself deprived of the only power it valued, and that was the administrative power of the charter. The legislative power the city council knew to be slight. Hence its sorrow, unrelieved by public pity. But since 1888 the aldermen receive an annual salary of $1,500 each; the common councilmen do not.
CONCLUSION.
After two centuries of town government, the power of which was felt by the British crown, and after more than sixty years under a city charter that was thought to preserve what was best in town govern-
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ment, -for the charter of 1854 was merely an amplification of the first charter, -the city of Boston has virtually a government in which the powers are divided as the theories of Locke and Montesquieu, of John Adams and Alexander Hamilton require. The city has an executive head with ample powers. The judiciary, of course, is reserved to the Commonwealth, because the judicial power cannot be municipal, and for that reason should not be vested in a municipal government. The legislative power is nominally vested in the city council; in fact it is chiefly exercised by the General Court, in a long and bewildering set of general and special laws. Where the General Court has left the requisite power, the city council may act. But the General Court does not acknowledge any inherent or natural rights of the great corporation which we call the city of Boston. Jurisprudence sustains the position of the General Court. History teaches a different lesson. It shows clearly and impressively that there is a line to be drawn between munici- pal and State interests, and that municipal concerns should be left to the municipalities that pay the cost, and must share in their honor or their shame. The political history of all great states shows also that free municipalities, free to flourish, and free to suffer, are the nursery of citizens and statesmen fit to govern a free Commonwealth and a free people.
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