USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II > Part 30
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7. Attorneys at law.
a. Admitted to practice by Supreme Court.
b. Duties-as officers of court prepare and present cases for trial, examine witnesses, collect precedents, and assist judges.
B. Other court officers and attendants.
I. The Reporter of the Supreme Court.
a. Appointed by the court.
b. Publishes decisions in Rhode Island Reports.
*By and with the advice and consent of the Senate. Recess appointments by Presiding Justice.
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2. Clerks of courts.
a. Elected by the General Assembly.
b. Duties-to attend court, record procedure, enter judgments, issue original writs and writs of execution.
c. Town clerk usually probate clerk unless other is appointed.
3. Stenographers.
a. Appointed by justices of Superior Court.
b. To record testimony.
c. To make transcripts of testimony.
4. Jury Commissioner and Deputy Jury Commissioner.
a. Appointed by Justices of Superior Court.
b. Examine qualifications of citizens for jury duty and draw panels.
5. Jurors and Juries.
a. All qualified electors over 25 years of age are liable, unless exempt. Jury service is optional for women.
b. Drawn by jury commissioner.
c. Service (1) on grand or (2) on petit juries.
6. Sheriffs and Deputy Sheriffst
a. Attend sessions of courts, on assignment by sheriff.
b. Serve writs and other process.
7. Witnesses.
a. If summoned, to give true and impartial testimony.
b. Not eligible as jurors.
8. Probation Officers.
a. State Probation Officer appointed by Public Welfare Commission, appoints assistants.
b. Duties-
(1). State Probation Officer, care and custody of female offenders under age 16; relief of families of adult prisoners.
(2). Other probation officers, supervision of juvenile offenders released on parole, and care and custody of children committed to officer by court.
9. State Bureau of Criminal Identification.
a. Appointed by Attorney General.
b. Record and identification by finger prints and other devices.
C. Public Recorders of Evidence.
I. Notaries Public and Justices of the Peace.
a. Appointed by the Governor quinquennially.
b. May administer oaths, attest affidavits, take acknowledgments required on deeds of real estate and similar instruments, summon witnesses, record protest of notes and other negoti- able instruments.
2. Town Clerks (or register of deeds).
a. Appointed by towns and cities.
b. Record deeds and other conveyances of real estate, including leases for more than one year, mortgages, assignments and powers of attorney; mortgages of personal property ; attach- ments and liens on real estate; assignments of wages; plats in condemnation proceedings ; and plats of land divided into house lots.
3. Town clerks (as probate clerks) or probate clerks.
a. Appointed by towns.
b. Record petitions and proceedings in probate courts, and accept wills for custody.
D. Sheriffs and Deputy Sheriffs.
I. Sheriffs, one for each county, elected by the General Assembly.
2. Each sheriff may appoint deputy sheriffs.
3. Sheriffs and deputy sheriffs (under the direction of sheriffs)
tSee D.
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RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
a. With the constables and police appointed in towns and cities constitute a state constabulary.
b. Are charged with the enforcement of law.
c. Serve writs of arrest and other process in criminal cases.
d. Serve original and other writs in civil cases, including subpoenas in equity cases.
e. Serve prerogative writs and extraordinary process issued by Supreme Court.
f. Summon witnesses.
g. Attend the sessions of courts as designated.
h. The Sheriff of Providence County with deputies attends the sessions of the General Assembly.
i. Are custodians of courthouses and jails (unless otherwise provided) in the several counties.
E. Department of State Police.
I. Superintendent, captain, lieutenant and troopers.
2. Superintendent appointed by Governor.
3. Duties-enforcement of law, and patrol of parts of state not adequately patrolled by town or city police.
CHAPTER XXVII. FINANCE AND BANKING .*
HE use of wampum-the clamshell money of the Indians-served the purpose of a medium of exchange not only between colonists and Indians, but also between colonists, so long as the Indians had commodities to sell which the colonists wished to buy. The use of wampum as currency ceased when the Indians came to market only as purchasers offering clamshells and bringing no other commodity to sell, for which the colonists could turn the clamshells back. The wampum period was short- lived in Rhode Island, for there was no extensive back country from which the Indians might bring a wealth of peltry such as attracted the Dutch traders to the Hudson and Connecticut rivers. In their trading relations with the mother country the Rhode Island colonists must soon have exhausted the small store of coin in the colony, had they not early begun to produce a surplus of products of the farm salable in the West Indies and to build wooden ships for sale in Europe. Thus they established that exchange of commodities which is essential to any trade between communities unless one is engaged in exhausting the other by means of a favorable money bal- ance in trade. As it was, and in spite of the enterprise of farmers and sailors, Rhode Island at a very early date felt the constraint that want of a monetary system imposes upon the trade and commerce that are the most prolific sources of wealth, and had recourse to paper money. The effect was stimulating immediately, although the event was disastrous because of failure to observe sound principles of regulation. The development of a medium of exchange, subject as is paper money to vicissitudes that challenge the most alert of financiers, was tremendously important for Rhode Island-in spite of the disturbances that accompanied deflation-because it induced and made possible an exploitation of resources and an undertaking of enterprises that scarcely could have occurred otherwise. Rhode Island needed fluid capital and found it in paper money. All of this preceded the year 1790 and the ratification of the Constitution of the United States, which forbade states to "coin money ; emit bills of credit ; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts."; Through the paper money system and recourse to lotteries Rhode Island was able for much of the colonial period to support the government without taxation. The courts were maintained in large part by fees, as were also other officers. The interest paid on loans of paper money replenished the treasury suffi- ciently to pay the expense of the General Assembly and incidental charges. The colony evaded much of the cost of public improvements by setting up, through lotteries, gambling games that yielded money for such projects. In instances in which taxes were levied payment in kind was permitted, clearly a recognition of the want of ready money. The change from independ- ence to statehood in the nation was so momentous that Arnold brought his history of Rhode Island to a close with the year 1790; it was no more epochal in politics than in public finance.
SOURCES OF REVENUE -- The ordinary expense of maintaining the state government from 1790 to 1800 ranged between $5000 and $6000, and the principal source of revenue, aside from fees, was a tax levied upon the towns at a valuation per town fixed by statute. With the ratification of the Constitution the revenue from imposts was surrendered to the federal estab- lishment. Toward the end of the period excises in the form of license fees were introduced, and the system was extended, both state and towns deriving a revenue in this way. The license
*For the history of Rhode Island's paper money see chapters on colonial period and chapters X, XIII and XIV. ¡Article I, section 10.
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RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
fees included a tax on lotteries, which, partly because of the tax, were transformed from enterprises beginning with projects for public and quasi-public improvements into financial enterprises for private benefit, and eventually into publicly licensed gambling games. The state income in 1828 and thereafter for several years was sufficient to yield the annual appro- priation of $10,000 for the support of public schools, and enough more to carry the permanent school fund through one of the periods of largest increase. Lotteries were forbidden by the Constitution of 1842 except such as had been granted previously. Other excises yielding con- siderable state revenues were taxes on the capital stock of banking corporations, and after 1826 the part claimed by the state of liquor license money.
For twenty-five years, 1824-1849, no direct taxes for the support of the state government were levied upon the towns. Meanwhile the cost of maintaining the state establishment had increased to approximately $90,000 annually. Not all of the obligations of the state had been met from excises, however. In the period the General Treasurer occasionally had neglected to invest in bonds for the permanent school fund the revenues of the state dedicated by law to this purpose, as the pressure for ready money to liquidate claims against the state left him so little option otherwise that a committee which investigated alleged irregularities placed the blame upon the General Assembly rather than the Treasurer. The state prison in Providence had been constructed and paid for without recourse to a general tax, and the expenses of the Dorr War, amounting to more than $106,000, had been incurred and paid. In the instances last mentioned, however, recourse had been taken to the United States deposit fund, which, after having been loaned first to the state banks, was turned back by them into the treasury because the banks could not afford to pay interest upon the fund, and was paid out by the General Treasurer under orders of the Assembly. Indeed, the situation was almost compell- ing. The deposit fund, $386,611.33, lying idle, in large part in the treasury and yielding no revenue, could scarcely be held there at the same time that a tax was levied upon the towns; the Assembly spent a part of the deposit fund and avoided the odium of a general tax. A return to a tax on property assessed against the towns at a valuation established by statute was made in 1849.
REVENUES IN 1850-The state revenues in 1850 were $84,402, derived as follows: Prop- erty tax, $17,080; savings banks, $36,300; insurance companies, $3160; auctioneers, $1230; licenses liquor, entertainments, pool and billiard tables, $1260; peddlers' licenses, $6070; fees for commissions issued to officers, $240; court fees, fines, jails and prisons, $10,460; prison labor and board of prisoners, $3270; turnpikes, $1000; dividends on permanent school fund investments, $3335; rents of oyster beds, $85; rents and interest, $402; all other sources, $510.
The expenditures for the same fiscal year totalled $92,010, as follows: General Assem- bly, $7810; general officers, $1500; military, $300; courts and jails and prisons, $35,700; Indians, $100; state support of public schools, $34,900; interest, $760; all other expendi- tures, $10,940.
The Commissioner of Public Schools, since 1845, was still, except the general officers elected by the people, the only state officer ; and the state's contribution to the support of pub- lic schools, $35,000 by annual appropriation, accounted for 38 per cent. of expenditures. A little more, 38.8 per cent., was expended for the maintenance of courts and jails and prisons. If, on the other hand, the expenditure for public schools were reduced by the income of the permanent fund, and the expenditure for courts and jails and prisons by the income from fines, etc., the percentage of net expenditures for public education was 43.5, and for courts and jails and prisons was 28.3. With these items out the net income would be $66,337 in 1850, and the net expenditures $73,945. No additional state office was created until an auditor was
COURT STREET BRIDGE FROM COURT HOUSE, WOONSOCKET
GLOBE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, WOONSOCKET
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FINANCE AND BANKING
appointed in 1856; the extensive development of charitable, reformatory and penal institutions began a decade later than that.
The annual state appropriation for the support of town public schools was increased $15,000, from $35,000 to $50,000, in 1854, and in the same year $3000 was appropriated to be expended by the Commissioner of Education for the maintenance of a normal school. The state was not committed, however, to a generous program for the normal school; in 1857, the General Assembly authorized removal to a town that would provide quarters rent free, and Bristol was chosen. The normal school was closed in 1865 and was not reorganized until 1871. The public school appropriation was increased to $70,000 in 1868, and to $90,000 in 1869, the second raise to compensate towns for the abolition of tuition. Appropriations for evening schools and free public libraries carried the total expenditures for education, includ- ing the normal school, to $120,710 in 1875. One of the largest payments in 1875 was $180,530 for interest on the state debt. Rhode Island had no state debt at the outbreak of the Civil War.
Wartime expenditures were financed in large part by bond issues, and the burden of inter- est payments fell upon the general treasury, inasmuch as the federal government, while recoup- ing the state for military expenditures, did not include interest. The expense of administra- tion had been increased principally by the additional cost of the General Assembly, which in the quarter-century from 1850 rose from $7810 to $31,320. Courts cost four times as much, jails and prisons more than twice as much, and the state's new institutions at Howard, includ- ing workhouse, reformatories, almshouses, and asylums had added $90,000 annually to state expenditures. A few new offices had been created, but the expenditures for commissioners of insurance, railroads, inland fisheries and shell fisheries were only $5420. Other large items were $23,830 for militia, and $10,550 for a state constabulary to enforce the prohibition law. The total state expenditures in twenty-five years had risen over half a million dollars, from $92,010 to $595,170. The largest items of revenue were the general property tax, collected through the agency of the towns, $492,420; taxes on savings bank deposits, $112,920; on insurance companies, $56,800. The costs of courts and institutions were offset by income amounting to $61,910; of schools by income on the permanent fund, $22,090; and of bonded indebtedness (interest) by interest earned on deposits. The income for the year 1875 was $786,690, exceeding expenditures by $191,520. No revenue from liquor licenses was received in 1875 because of prohibition; the income in the preceding year from this source had been $70,000. As it happened, no part of the state expenditure for the building program at How- ard fell due in 1875, although the program was being financed at the time from general revenues, without recourse to additional specific taxation.
STATE FINANCES AT END OF CENTURY -- At the end of the century, 1900, Rhode Island's major sources of revenues were taxes and excises on general property, $644,120; savings bank deposits, $351,970; insurance companies, $157,610; liquor licenses, $109,670; incor- poration fees and corporations, $44,210; other excises and licenses, $16,420; rents of oyster beds, $20,970, a total of $1,344,970. To offset expenditures for courts and jails and state institutions, $109,410 was collected; interest and rents, aid from the United States for sol- diers, etc., carried the total income to $1,482,200. The expenditures for the year reflected the development of governmental agencies that had been created in the half-century from 1850; and the increasing cost of government itself, in the items: Executive department, $5690; General Assembly, $59,920; financial department, $11,600; elections (an entirely new item in state expenditures, arising from the secret ballot law and state supervision of elections), $10,290; boards and commissions, including insurance, railroads, factory inspection, inspec- tion of fertilizers and feeding stuffs, agriculture, shell fisheries, inland fisheries, banks, dams
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RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
and reservoirs, weights and measures, health, $69,690; military, $61,600; courts, $251,750, a total of $470,540. Other large items included : Jails and reformatory institutions, $172,120; relief of soldiers and sailors, Indians, almshouses, insane asylums, hospitals, $203,980; edu- cation and libraries, $314,340; interest and sinking funds, $114,300; construction, $163,660, this item chargeable principally to the proceeds of the sale of bonds for the construction of the State House.
Back at the beginning of the quarter-century previous a new Providence County Court- house had been constructed with ample provision for almost half a century of development. The bonded indebtedness incurred during the Civil War had been paid off in 1894; the new interest and sinking fund charges were principally because of bonds for the construction of the marble State House, nearing completion and to be occupied in 1901. The payment of the bonded debt had relieved the treasury of an annual interest charge of more than $125,000. The state had undertaken a program of construction in the period, which had included land and buildings for Rhode Island Normal School, $421,000; Rhode Island College of Agricul- ture, $120,000 ; State Home and School, $80,000; Institution for the Deaf, $69,000; Sol- diers' Home, $97,000; courthouses, $110,000; jails, $30,000; armories, $150,000; state prison, asylum for insane, almshouse and workhouse, $185,000; breachways, highways and bridges, $214,000; campground for militia, $50,000 ; and totalled $1,526,000. The construc- tion of the new marble State House had been bonded; other new construction had been undertaken without provision of special or additional revenues.
The treasury was empty in 1896; the state was in debt to the amount of $90,761.75, and the construction of some buildings had been discontinued because funds were not available. The building for Rhode Island Normal School was up to the second story, and there work had stopped because the treasury was empty. The Governor, in a special message to the General Assembly, reviewed the situation, and directed attention, in the instance of the Normal School, to the danger of disintegration unless the building could be completed or at least covered in. The situation was embarrassing in other ways. The Treasurer had the proceeds of sales of State House bonds, part of which had not been expended, and would not be needed immedi- ately ; yet he was constrained to hold this fund intact because of the Supreme Court ruling that the money could not be diverted .*
The constitution limited the amount of state debt that could be incurred without the express authority of the people; eventually the latter was sought and obtained through the referendum in 1896. The Treasurer sold tax orders in anticipation of taxes due from towns to the amount of $642,000 of the total tax of $646,000, under authorization of the General Assembly. In the same year, 1896, the General Assembly pledged the state to pay its indebt- edness in gold coin, this as an answer to bimetalism. Other expenditures, particularly those incurred in 1898 in connection with the raising and equipping of soldiers for the Spanish War, tended to increase the temporary indebtedness of the state. Yet the financial condition of the state was such that the embarrassment indicated by discount of tax orders was becom- ing a diminishing factor, and except for the Spanish War debt (actually a federal obligation) and the bonded indebtedness for the State House, Rhode Island was practically out of debt at the end of the century. A committee on the revenues of the state, reporting in 1897, sug- gested taxes on incomes, inheritances, corporations and franchises as the simplest devices for raising more money easily. Rhode Island was not ready for a taxing program of the type, and the matter was dropped without action, because the pressure of urgent necessity had been abated. The ease with which the embarrassment of 1896 was adjusted suggests that the pro- gram for permanent improvement and construction was within the means of the state as measured by current revenues, but that care had not been taken so to allocate expenditures as
*19 R. I. 216.
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FINANCE AND BANKING
to bring them within a schedule correlated to the available surplus in successive fiscal years. The discount paid to banks on town tax assignment orders, as interest on anticipated revenues, amounting in four years, 1896-1900, to $25,600, could have been saved by careful budgeting.
BONDED INDEBTEDNESS-The bonded indebtedness of Rhode Island on January 1, 1901, was $2,300,000, incurred in the construction of the State House; in 1901 another bond issue of $700,000 for completing the State House was authorized. Other bond issues since 1901 have been as follows: Highway construction, 1906, 1909, 1912, $1,763,000; armory construc- tion, 1906, 1923, $730,000; penal and reformatory institutions, 1909, 1914, 1915, 1918, 1923, 1927, $4,100,000; harbor improvement, 1910, 1913, $976,000; Metropolitan Park, 1908, 1914, 1929, $1,150,000 ; bridge construction, 1917, 1920, 1923, 1927, $1,800,000 ; 1920, soldiers' bonus, $2,500,000 ; courthouses, 1925, 1927, $2,375,000 ; Washington bridge, 1927, 1929, $3,500,000; Rhode Island State College, 1927, $600,000; Rhode Island College of Education, 1927, $660,- 000; State office building, 1927, $925,000; state airport, 1929, $300,000 .; Total bond issues have been $25,179,000, of which $1,905,000 has been retired. Against the balance, $23,274,000, the state has sinking funds amounting to $4,000,000.
CURRENT REVENUE-From $1,482,800 in 1900 the state revenue has risen in thirty years to $15,059,437.70 in 1929.# The revenues in 1909 and in 1919 were, respectively, $2,317,- 371.67 and $5,321,702.23. The increase in revenue in the first decade was due to normal gains from most sources, but principally to gains in the general taxes on town and city prop- . erty, $224,000; on savings bank deposits, $103,000; on insurance companies and agents, $133,000; from licenses and fees, $60,000; from leases of oyster beds, $86,000; additional to almost $100,000 derived from the taxation of public service corporations attending the rapid and extensive development of electric tramways, and $50,000 from taxes on motor vehicles. The oyster fishery yielded almost its largest revenue in 1909; in the succeeding years it declined steadily as the waters of Narragansett Bay were abandoned by oyster farmers because of the pollution of waters and other unfavorable conditions. By ten year periods the decrease in oyster revenue was from $106,839.48 to $84,089.97 in 1919, and to $51,302.07 in 1929.
With the purpose of increasing revenues and readjusting the burden equitably the gen- eral tax laws were revised in 1912, and a tax commission was created with the principal func- tion of finding sources of taxation and assisting in collecting the revenue. The result of the new tax legislation in operation, of other changes in the tax laws, and of the efficient admin- istration by the tax commission appeared in the almost doubling of revenues in 1919 as com- pared with 1909. The tax act distinguished tangible and intangible property, and limited the taxation on intangible property to forty cents per $100 of assessed valuation. The state tax on general property, in towns and cities was fixed at nine cents on each $100 of ratable prop- erty, the valuation to be fixed by an annual local assessment.§ The new tax law imposed a tax upon business corporations, except public service corporations, based upon a fair valua- tion of the capital stock plus the "corporate excess," the latter defined as including the "bonded indebtedness," "debenture indebtedness," "other indebtedness," and indebtedness carried as a "cover for a division of its profits," the purpose being to reach a fair valuation of the actual working capital of the corporation, whether carried as a liability to stockholders for the value of their shares or as a liability because of capital borrowed rather than accepted as investment. It also imposed a franchise and minimum tax on domestic corporations not assessed for cor-
¡An additional bond issue to finish courthouse authorized, 1930.
#The years ending in nine were selected to avoid comparisons with irregular fiscal years incident to change. Thus the calendar year 1930 falls into part of a short fiscal year of seven months, December 1, 1929 to June 30, 1930 ; and part of a twelve-month fiscal year beginning July 1, 1930.
§Changed in 1930 to a tax upon the amount of the town revenue from taxation of estates, thus to pre- vent towns limiting the amount of contribution to the General Treasury by holding the valuation to a low figure.
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