Community Civics and Rural Life Part 58

The services performed by your towns.h.i.+p government.

A complete list of your towns.h.i.+p officers, and the duties of each.

(Committees of pupils may interview some of the more important officers to get a description of their daily routine, kinds of service performed, etc. Also discuss with parents.)

Officers of the colonial New England town that do not exist now, and their duties.

What is parliamentary law? (Valuable training may be secured by conducting school meetings, club meetings, or occasional regular cla.s.s exercises, in accordance with parliamentary procedure.)

Why public discussion is a check upon the conduct of persons holding responsible positions.

The popular interest in public questions in your towns.h.i.+p.

If there is a finance committee in your towns.h.i.+p (p. 399), how does it serve the community? Does it hold hearings? (Attend and report upon some such hearing.)

Town planning in your community (what has been, or what might be, done).

The value of having a plan.

Is your community more like that represented by the chart on page 402, or by that on page 403?

The extent to which voluntary organizations in your community co operate with and through the local government.

The extent to which your state agricultural college promotes community organization.

The feasibility of organizing your town (or community) by some such plan as that outlined on page 402.

The value of a community "forum" as a means to good government.

Why the official town meeting should (or should not) be encouraged in your state.

Procure and examine recently published official reports of your towns.h.i.+p government. What do these reports tell you? What is the value of such reports? Are the reports of your towns.h.i.+p generally read by the people of the towns.h.i.+p? Why? Discuss ways in which your towns.h.i.+p reports could be made more useful.

THE COUNTY

The other unit of local government with which the colonists were familiar was the county, which in England embraced a number of towns.h.i.+ps. In the colonies of New York and Pennsylvania the county and the town s.h.i.+p were developed together as in England; in the southern colonies the county was organized without the towns.h.i.+p.

Today the county exists in every state of the Union, including the New England states. In Louisiana it is called the PARISH.

TYPES OF COUNTY GOVERNMENT

There are two main types of county government. According to one plan, as in New York, each towns.h.i.+p elects a representative to a county BOARD OF SUPERVISORS, which is sometimes quite large.

According to the other plan, as in Pennsylvania, the people of the county as a whole elect a small BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS, the towns.h.i.+ps not being represented as such even when they exist. The board of supervisors or commissioners levies taxes and makes appropriations for various county purposes, such as constructing and maintaining roads, bridges, and county buildings, paying the salaries of county officers, caring for the county poor, and conducting the county schools. It is sometimes spoken of as the county legislative body, but it is rather an administrative body, its lawmaking powers being very slight.

COUNTY OFFICERS

Among the important county officers are the sheriff, who is chief guardian of the peace in the county, has charge of the jail, is the chief executive officer of the county court (see p. 439), and sometimes acts as tax collector; the county prosecutor (also called the prosecuting attorney, the district attorney, or the state's attorney), who prosecutes all criminal cases in the county and represents the public authorities in civil suits; the county clerk, who keeps the county records; the register of deeds, who records all transfers of property; the coroner, who investigates the cause of violent and mysterious deaths; the tax a.s.sessor; the treasurer; the auditor, who examines the accounts of county officers; the surveyor; the school superintendent; the health officer. Some times there are others.

LACK OF INTEREST IN COUNTY GOVERNMENT

Although practically every citizen of the United States is also a citizen of a county, the people have as a rule shown surprisingly little interest in county government. As generally found it affords a striking example of poor service resulting from a lack of teamwork. County government has the reputation of being one of the weakest spots in our whole system of government.

WILL COUNTY GOVERNMENT SURVIVE?

We seem to have gotten into the habit of not expecting much service from the county government. Where the towns.h.i.+p government is strong, as in New England, it takes the place of county government. Where people live in cities, they look to the city government to serve them rather than to the county government. In rural districts the people have come more and more to look to the state and national governments for such service as they expect government to give. These facts might suggest the question whether or not we really need county government.

One recent writer says,

There are some parts of the country where I can see that the county will pa.s.s out of existence entirely in a very short time, unless it does adjust itself to the new conditions. [Footnote: H.S. Gilbertson, in the University of North Carolina RECORD, No.

159, October, 1918, p. 37.]

The same writer says,

Unless the county does measure up in this way, the powers of government and the services which it renders will have to drift away from local control and be placed in the hands of some government more fit and which will probably be further away from home.

EFFECTS OF THE LONG BALLOT

Students of county government attribute many of its defects to the "long ballot." In one county in North Carolina, at a recent election, there were twenty-five different candidates for county offices on each of three party tickets, making seventy-five candidates among whom each voter had to choose. Towns.h.i.+p and state officers were also elected at the same election, bringing the number of persons to be voted for up to about fifty out of 150 candidates. It is apparent that the average voter would have difficulty in voting intelligently.

GOVERNMENT WITHOUT A HEAD

The long ballot has other results than the mere difficulty of intelligent voting. One of these is a GOVERNMENT WITHOUT A HEAD.

While the board of supervisors or commissioners is nominally at the head of the county government, it has to work through the various administrative officers. These are also elected by the people, and may be of the opposite political party. At all events, they are independent of the board, not responsible to it, and may or may not work in harmony with it. A former member of a county board in North Carolina says,

Most persons are under the impression that the board of commissioners, with its chairman, is at the head of the county government. ... The board does have authority to say how about 19 cents of the entire tax levy may be spent, but its authority over the balance of the levy, over any county official, such as the sheriff, clerk of the court, coroner, constable, county judge, or recorder, is nil. The chairman of the board does have the honor ...

of smiling and trying to look pleasant when complaints are made about bad roads, excessive tax a.s.sessments, or the delinquency of some county subordinate, over whom neither he nor the board has any control.[Footnote: M. S. Willard, North Carolina Club Year Book, 1918, p. 87.]

THE OPPORTUNITY OF THE "BOSS"

Another result of the long ballot is the opportunity it gives the political "boss" to control the selection of officers. It is not uncommon to hear rural citizens ask such questions as, "What's the use of farmers taking off time for politics when the whole thing is run by political bosses anyway?"[Footnote: Graham Taylor, in Rural Manhood, October, 1914, p. 328.] "In such counties office- seeking has become not the means to the end of performing service, but exists for the immediate reward, and whatever service is rendered to the people is incidental to that other object.

"[Footnote: H. S. Gilbertson, Forms of County Government, in the University of North Carolina Record, No. 159, October, 1918, p.

37.]

BAD BUSINESS METHODS

Along with these defects, and largely because of them, bad business methods have characterized county government, resulting in poor service and wastefulness of the people's money. A faulty system of keeping accounts is as unbusinesslike and disastrous in public business as in private business.

OUR LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

When I was first connected with the government of my own county, I became very much interested to know whether we were doing better or worse in the management of our road finances; in the cost of maintaining our county prisoners; in the maintenance of our county home and numerous other county inst.i.tutions, than were other counties. I was anxious to find out what was being done in other counties in the way of appropriations for hospitals and I selected twelve or fifteen counties and wrote letters to the county officials asking for information. In answer to probably two of my letters I received intelligent and satisfactory replies. Probably half a dozen more gave me some figures which were of very little use for purposes of comparison, and to my other letters I received no replies, although the first request was followed up by a second and a third letter. I then began an effort to secure copies of the newspapers in which had been printed the financial statements of the counties. I succeeded in securing probably ten statements and, after a fruitless attempt to coordinate these statements so that I might secure information which would enable me to know whether we were doing better or worse than our neighbors, I became hopelessly lost in a jungle of statistics and reluctantly gave it up as useless, and turned my attention to doing what I could to place our own county affairs in such condition that they could be understood by those of our taxpayers who might be inquisitive enough to want to know how the money was handled which they paid for taxes. [Footnote: M. S. Willard, County Finances in North Carolina, in the University of North Carolina RECORD, No. 159, October, 1918, p. 80.]

THE FEE SYSTEM

The practice of compensating county officers from FEES received for special services and of allowing them to retain the interest on public money is one ill.u.s.tration of extravagant business methods.

For many of the services performed by county officers fees are charged, on the principle that the person served should pay for the service. It did not occur to the people to inquire how much their officers were getting in this way. In one county, in which there was a large city, investigation showed that the sheriff had a net income from fees and commissions of $15,000, the county treasurer $23,000, and the county auditor over $50,000.

From the point of view of economy and efficiency it is better to pay all officers an adequate salary and to require that all fees, commissions, and interest on public money be returned to the county treasury. It keeps the tax rate down and makes possible an increase of service.

The county office fees and commissions in North Carolina amount to something like one and a quarter million dollars a year, if they are collected according to law. The total is large enough to pay all salaries in at least 58 counties of the state, and leave large balances to apply to schools, roads, jail expenses, interest, and sinking funds. These large surpluses are being wasted in most of the salary counties. [Footnote: E.C. Branson, The Fee System in North Carolina, in the University of North Carolina Record, No.

159, October, 1918, p. 69.]