CHAPTER III.

THE CHARTER OF GREATER NEW YORK.

The Charter of Greater New York is the last, or rather the latest, of a long series of Charters granted by the State Legislature of New York for the government of the city. There were eleven distinct Charters granted between 1846 and 1890, so that the average life of a Charter is only four years. The Charter preceding this was regarded by Mr. Godkin as the best because it reduced the elective element almost to vanishing point:--

No community as heterogeneous as ours can manage its affairs successfully through democratic forms without reducing to its lowest possible point the number of executive officers whom it has to watch, and call to account when things go wrong. As soon as responsibility is widely diffused in such a community, “deals” or bargains between politicians for the division of the offices at once begin.

In no community, homogeneous or heterogeneous, can public affairs be managed successfully when the supreme Legislature always stands ready to remodel the Charter whenever the minority in the City can command the support of the majority in the State. It is bad enough in London when the minority in the County Council can appeal to the majority in the House of Commons. But the House of Commons only interferes by way of obstructing legislation desired by the Progressive majority. It never attempts to revolutionise the constitution of the Council, because the majority at Westminster does not agree with the majority at Spring Gardens.

It would not be a very great exaggeration to say that in the past the only effective government of the City of New York has consisted of Tammany Hall Executive as a Lower House, and the Legislature at Albany as an Upper Chamber. These two bodies were not shadows. They were both governing realities. When Tammany did not control the State Legislature, Albany was the only hope of the despairing Republicans. How constant was the interference of the State Legislature may be inferred from the fact, vouched for by a return presented to a State Commission on the Government of Cities, that in the ten years between 1880-9 no fewer than 399 different amending laws were passed at Albany affecting the Charter of New York City. A State Legislature which passes nearly forty laws every year changing or amending the City Charter is a factor to be reckoned with.

The demand for Home Rule for the city, often repeated, does not seem to be supported in earnest by either party. Both admit the need for it. But neither seem willing to risk anything to obtain it. The Charter of the Greater New York sprang from the Commission appointed in 1896 to consider and report upon the proposed consolidation and unification of the government of the great urban area now known as Greater New York. The subject had long been under discussion, but when the Charter came to be drafted many drew back. Mr. Croker asserted that if the citizens had been permitted to vote yea or nay upon the adoption it would never have come into force. The Referendum was not permitted, and the Charter came into force this year without the preliminary of a popular mass vote.

General Tracy, the Republican candidate at the recent election, was President of the Charter Commission, with Mr. De Witt as Chairman of the Committee. Among the other members were Mr. Strong, the Mayor of New York; Mr. Seth Low, the first Tsar-Mayor of Brooklyn; Mr. Gilroy, Tammany comptroller of the City of New York, and several other influential men. They unanimously agreed to recommend the Charter as it stands at present, although Mr. Seth Low and Mayor Strong dissented from one or two of its provisions.

The Commissioners set to work in the belief that they were framing a constitution for a city which in the lifetime of those now living would have 6,000,000 citizens. Mr. De Witt, the Chairman of the Committee, who tells us that “his embattled energies laboured at the Charter for eight long consecrated months,” contemplated with pride the result of his handiwork. Speaking of the Charter, he declares:--

It is adequate to all the emergencies of the vast future. It is constructed not merely for the present, but for many centuries to come. It has in it all the virtues of existing charters and the vices of none. It will adapt itself to any extent of domain, and to any multiple of population. As well with a population of ten millions as with a population of three millions, it will give to each neighbourhood the utmost care and attention, and to the imperial metropolis, as a whole, the utmost dignity and power. The form of government for Greater New York, it will be the model upon which Greater London will be constructed.

Without making quite such a lofty claim for the Charter as this, there is no doubt that it is an important document, and one which will well repay a careful study. It is somewhat voluminous, filling with its annexes no less than one thousand pages.

It has, however, been made the subject of a very painstaking and lucid analysis by Dr. Albert Shaw, whose “Studies of Municipal Administration in the Old World and the New” entitle him to speak with some authority on the matters dealt with by the Charter. His analysis of the Charter was published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for June, 1897, under the title of “The Municipal Programme of Greater New York.” Mr. De Witt published his clear and concise idea of the Greater New York in _Munsey’s Magazine_, under the title of “Moulding the Metropolis.” The Charter itself, with its 1,620 sections, has been published in popular form at 10 cents by the Brooklyn _Daily Eagle_. The text of the Charter, with the aid of Dr. Shaw’s and Mr. De Witt’s analyses, enables any one to form a tolerably clear idea as to what the Charter does and what the Charter means.

Mr. Croker repeatedly assured me, before the recent Mayoral contest began, that the Charter was a monstrosity and an absurdity, that the system of government which it established must inevitably break down, and that not even an archangel could make it work satisfactorily. Mr. Croker can hardly be said to be an impartial judge, but his verdict is sufficiently in accord with that of Dr. Shaw to justify very grave misgivings as to the prospect before the second city of the world.

During my stay in New York I was simply besieged by interviewers, begging me to tell them what I thought of the Charter. I turned a deaf ear to their solicitations, preferring to make a more careful study of the Charter itself with the advantage of the analysis of Dr. Shaw. Even now I rather shrink from expressing an opinion, lest it should be misconstrued as implying any claim on my part to sit in judgment on those who are saddled with the responsibility of governing New York. But when doctors differ, the people decide, and when local experts are at hopeless variance as to the merits or demerits of the Charter, it may perhaps be permitted to a British onlooker, even at a distance of 3,000 miles, to put on record the way in which the Charter strikes him. If this should not be denied me, I may say at once that the Charter seems to have written on its face thoroughgoing distrust of the people. The aspect of the Charter is black with despair. It is far worse as an expression of democratic despair than the Brooklyn Charter, for the Brooklyn Charter at least trusted the Tsar-Mayor, whereas the New York Charter shrinks even from doing that.

In explaining the provisions of the Charter, I prefer to quote from Dr. Shaw’s analysis. He says:--

First comes the mayor, who is entitled the chief executive. He is to be elected for four years and is not eligible for an immediate re-election, and his salary is to be 15,000 dols. a year. The business of city administration is divided into eighteen executive departments. These are the departments of finance, of law, of police, of water supply, of highways, of street-cleaning, of sewers, of public buildings, lighting and supplies, of bridges, of parks, of building, of public charities, of correction, of fire, of docks and ferries, of taxes and assessments, of education, and of health.

The members of all these boards, with one exception, are appointed by the Mayor, not elected by the people. The one exception is the City Comptroller, who is at the head of the Finance Department. He is elected at the same time as the Mayor. The Mayor also appoints all the members of the five school boards, which look after education in the five boroughs of Greater New York:--

The system provided for in the new charter puts the executive government wholly into the hands of the eighteen departments, which are practically supreme in their respective eighteen spheres, except as they are limited by two important groups, or boards--namely, the board of estimate and apportionment and the board of public improvements. One discovers with some surprise that the ordinance-making power, which would nominally belong exclusively to the municipal assembly, is, in the Greater New York charter, conferred upon all the executive departments.

Where then, it will be asked, does the Municipal Assembly come in, for there is a Municipal Assembly which is divided into two chambers? To which the answer is that the Municipal Assembly is practically reduced to the function of a debating society; for, says Dr. Shaw:--

The eighteen executive departments take away from the municipal assembly the larger part of the ordinance-making power; the board of public improvements in practice controls municipal plans and policies as regards the construction of works, and the board of estimate and apportionment intervenes to prepare the budget, both on the side of income and on that of disbursement.

It is true that the budget must be voted by the Municipal Assembly, which on that occasion sits as one body. But its control is practically nil. The real financial control is vested in the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Mr. F. V. Green, writing in _Scribner_ for October, 1896, points out that the framers of this board carefully avoided the principle of direct election. He says:--

Probably in no other part of the globe, however autocratic its government, is such power of taxation and appropriation committed to so unrepresentative a body as in this foremost city of the land of liberty, whose Government originated in a protest against taxation without representation. And it is a still more curious anomaly that this system, which was established as one of the results of the overthrow of the Tweed _régime_, and has been in operation for twenty-three years, is the most successful feature of the present form of city government--the only one of which criticism is seldom heard.

After this non-elective board has approved of the estimates, they are then sent down to the Municipal Assembly to be voted. But, says Dr. Shaw, the Municipal Assembly

must complete its action within a certain number of days. It may not add a penny to the estimates at any point whatsoever. It is permitted to throw out items or to make reductions, but it must not offset these by voting increased sums for any object. When it has completed its consideration, the budget goes to the mayor for his final action. The mayor has authority to veto any amendments that the municipal assembly may have made. That is to say, he may restore any amounts that have been subtracted.

But, it will be said, the Mayor’s veto may be overridden. It may, but only if there is a majority of five-sixths of the Municipal Assembly against him. Such unanimity is practically unattainable.

It would, indeed, seem as if the chief purpose of the Municipal Assembly was to give its members practical lessons in the working of simple sums of vulgar fractions. Again, to quote Dr. Shaw:--

No man will ever become intimate enough with the provisions of this charter--no matter how many years he may sit in the municipal assembly--to know for a certainty, without careful reference to the document, by what kind of a majority a particular piece of business must be carried to have validity. Some actions in the municipal assembly may be taken by a majority of those present and voting, provided there is a quorum. Other things may be done by a simple majority of all those elected; still others require a two-thirds majority of all those elected, others a three-fourths majority, others a four-fifths majority, others a five-sixths majority, and others absolute unanimity. I suspect that there may be still other percentages or proportions requisite for certain actions; but the seven that I have mentioned have caught my attention, as I have endeavoured to run through the document.

In the report of the Commission presenting the Charter, the Commissioners point out that the Charter introduces, “in accordance with established American polity, a variety of checks and safeguards against the abuse of the powers conferred upon the Municipal Assembly.” There is no doubt on that head. The distrust of the popular elected assembly appears at every turn. The popular assembly is emasculated from the very first moment of its existence. It is carefully deprived of the right of initiative in matters of the first moment, and elaborate provisions are made for depriving it of the exercise of the authority which in England we should regard as absolutely indispensable. To begin with, the Municipal Assembly is forbidden to grant any franchise or right to use the public streets except upon the approval of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, and then only for limited periods, with due provision for periodical re-valuations. The Municipal Assembly is not allowed to sanction any work involving the expenditure of any large sum of money, or to create any debt, to dispose of any franchise, or to levy any tax, without the concurrence of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Even then its decision is subject to the veto of the Mayor. In cases of public improvements of great magnitude and cost, the Municipal Assembly cannot vote by a simple majority. Unless it can muster a majority of three-quarters of its whole membership it can do nothing. It is possible, therefore, for one quarter of the Assembly, plus one, to paralyse that body at will. In fact, it is impossible adequately to explain the impotence of the Assembly which, according to ordinary English ideas, ought to be the source, seat and centre of all powers. No doubt clauses exist conferring upon the Assembly certain powers, but at the end of the clauses you will always find that they have not to be exercised excepting on the initiative of some Department which is not elective, or with the concurrence of some Board which is equally free from the taint of a popular elective origin.

All that, however, is consistent enough with the Napoleonic conception of the true method of democratic government. Napoleon, with his ministers of state, never claimed to exercise such control over the _Corps Législatif_ as the Mayor of Greater New York will exercise over his elective assembly. He is allowed a free hand to appoint his own executive, and he can pass his own budget, so long as he can find one-sixth, plus one, of the Assembly to support him. The creation of the Tsar-Mayor, however interesting as indicative of the rooted distrust of elective assemblies which is supreme at present in the American mind, is not the feature of the Charter which reveals most deeply how far the distrust of popular government has gone in the United States. For, after giving the Mayor supreme responsibility, and electing him for a term of four years, these astonishing charter-makers carefully provide that he shall only have a right to remove the commissioners, whom he has been allowed to appoint, during the first six months of his term of office. It is this limitation which shows how thoroughly the modern American distrusts his governing men. Faith in an elective council has perished utterly; but faith in a Tsar-Mayor might have shown the survival of some faith in the elective principle. But the stipulation carefully made in the Charter that the Mayor’s right to remove the heads of departments whom he has nominated shall cease six months after his election, is the most astounding illustration yet afforded of the deep-rooted distrust which the American of to-day has in all elected men.

Ex-Mayor Grace, writing after much experience of the working of city governments, declared:--

The absolute power of removal as well as of appointment of all commissioners and heads of departments should be vested in the mayor, the power of removal to be subject to no check beyond that of filing the reasons for such removals--expressed in writing.

Mr. Seth Low, the first Tsar-Mayor of Brooklyn, and Mr. Strong, the Mayor of the Reform Administration in New York, both declared, in a supplementary report, their conviction that the authority given to the Mayor to make appointments without confirmation ought to carry with it, as a matter of course, the authority to make removals in the public interest without charges at any time. Their protests, however, were overruled. The majority dare not trust the Mayor with such powers. The result is that “for three years and six months the government of the City of New York will be carried on by eighteen separate departments, not one of which is directly responsible or accountable to anybody. They do not derive authority directly from the people, and they certainly owe nothing to the Municipal Assembly. On the other hand, there is no power in the Mayor to hold them accountable.” Says Dr. Shaw:--

It is bureaucracy pure and simple. I am not ready to assert it positively, but I am of the impression, from some knowledge of the subject, that the very shadowy municipal assemblies provided some years ago for St. Petersburg and Moscow had a greater legislative and financial authority than the new municipal assembly of the Greater New York; and I am inclined to believe that neither in the administration of those Russian cities nor in the administration of the Russian provincial governments will one find a bureaucratic system so complete and so indirect in its responsibilities to the public as the bureaucracy which the Greater New York charter creates.

There is no necessity to go further. I have quoted enough to justify the title of “Despairing Democracy”; for here we have a democracy in such depths of despair that it first emasculates its elective assembly, and then hamstrings its Cæsar.