Needless Complexity

Our dual system of city and county administration confuses the public mind, disorders the management of public affairs, and checks at the outset many improvements in local government. The worst part of it is that the distinction, from the standpoint of the citizen, is purely imaginary.

Counties Were Needed

County government, anyway, started as a unit of local government brought over from England in a day when all government was overwhelmingly rural; and the creation of counties in the United States ever since then has gone on that same assumption. Counties were organized to apply government to more or less sparsely settled regions where the chief business of government was to act as the state's local agent in performing state functions.

Conditions Changed

As urban areas grew up, city governments were formed to handle the special needs of the congested districts. But the scheme of county government was left unaltered.

So long as a city remained but a small part of its county the confusion was not serious. But when a city spreads over almost an entire county, and contains the majority of the population, problems and difficulties accumulate.

When as in the case of Philadelphia-city and county are coterminous, and the county has lost its rural administrative characteristics and taken on many functions of ordinary municipal government and when the separate county organization is no longer founded on anything but legal phrases and political expediency, then the need of city and county consolidation, in both law and fact, becomes selfevident and essential.

Not Philadelphia Alone

The confusion is not confined to Philadelphia. It has come up elsewhere-Denver, St. Louis, Baltimore, San Francisco and has been met and solved. And now comes news of a proposed constitutional amendment for our neighboring state of Ohio.

The proposal will, if adopted, free the entire state from the plaster of inflexible uniform county government, and will, in addition, permit the voters in counties of 200,000 and over to abolish any or all existing local governments within the county and substitute a single unified city-county government.

If Good for the "Sixth City," Why Not for the Third?

In Cleveland and Cuyahoga County, where the chief consolidation project is to be effected, the Civic League of Cleveland describes the issue thus:

928454

To be substituted for:

1 county
3 cities

32 villages

16 townships

41 school districts

1 city-county.

Beside an estimated saving of 20% in cost of administration (an estimate based on Denver's actual experience), Cleveland expects to avoid confusion of authority, to secure definiteness of responsibility and to promote administrative cooperation throughout the whole urban area.

Why are we so lax? When shall we hear the good news of a constitutional amendment in Pennsylvania, under which Philadelphia city and county can really be made one organization, free from the enormity that now stands in the way of effective government; free from the absurdity of duties of city administration performed by officials who are not city officials; free from civil-service dodging; free from conditions under which a discharged city employe can change his desk in City Hall and appear, when the smoke blows away, as an employe of the "county" of Philadelphia.

"Not only is eternal vigilance the price of liberty, eternal struggle is the price of liberty."-Elihu Root.

1919 Charter Series: No. 1 Perfecting the Merit Syste

The New York Tublic Library,

476 Fifth Ave.,

No. 355

New York Ci

March 13, 19

If civil service is good for the city of Philadelphia, why isn't it good for the county of Philadelphia?

NE of the important features of the new charter measure now before the state legislature is the proposal to strengthen and to extend the scope of the merit system in Philadelphia. In obtaining a clear understanding of this feature of the new charter, the following brief statement may be helpful:

1. The Merit System Extended to County Departments

The present law regulating the civil service of Philadelphia applies only to the departments directly under the mayor and to the office of the city solicitor. The one other "city" department— the receiver of taxes-was exempted from civil service by special legislation. The present law does not apply to any of the county departments; nor does it apply to departments in the twilight zone between county status and mayoral jurisdiction, such as the Fairmount Park commission.

If the proposals of the Charter Revision committee are adopted, all city and county departments, including those in the twilight zone, are brought under civil service. In order to avoid constitutional difficulties, the county civil service is provided for in a separate bill.

2. A Single Commissioner Chosen by the City Council

The present civil service law is administered by a commission of three members appointed by the mayor for overlapping terms of five years and removable at the pleasure of the mayor.

The proposed law will be administered by a