The third form of government was government by boards.Here it was attempted to place the administration of various municipal activities in the hands of independent boards.Thus a board had charge of the police, another of the fire department, another of public works, and so on.Often there were a dozen of these boards and not infrequently over thirty in a single city, as in Philadelphia.Sometimes these boards were elected by the people;sometimes they were appointed by the council; sometimes they were appointed by the mayor; in one or two instances they were appointed by the Governor.Often their powers were shared with committees of the council; a committee on police, for instance, shared with the Board of Police Commissioners the direction of police affairs.Usually these boards were responsible to no one but the electorate (and that remotely) and were entirely without coordination, a mere agglomeration of independent creations generally with ill-defined powers.
Sometimes the laws provided that not all the members of the appointive boards should "belong to the same political party" or "be of the same political opinion in state and national issues."It was clearly the intention to wipe out the partizan complexion of such boards.But this device was no stumbling-block to the boss.Whatever might be the "opinions" on national matters of the men appointed, they usually had a perfect understanding with the appointing authorities as to local matters.As late as 1898, a Democratic mayor of New York (Van Wyck) summarily removed the two Republican members of the Board of Police Commissioners and replaced them by Republicans after his own heart.In truth, the bipartizan board fitted snugly into the dual party regime that existed in many cities, whereby the county offices were apportioned to one party, the city offices to the other, and the spoils to both.It is doubtful if any device was ever more deceiving and less satisfactory than the bipartizan board.
The reader must not be led to think that any one of these plans of municipal government prevailed at any one time.They all still exist, contemporaneously with the newer commission plan and the city manager plan.
Hand in hand with these experiments in governmental mechanisms for the growing cities went a rapidly increasing expenditure of public funds.Streets had to be laid out, paved, and lighted;sewers extended; firefighting facilities increased; schools built; parks, boulevards, and playgrounds acquired, and scores of new activities undertaken by the municipality.All these brought grist to the politician's mill.So did his control of the police force and the police courts.And finally, with the city reaching its eager streets far out into the country, came the necessity for rapid transportation, which opened up for the municipal politician a new El Dorado.
Under our laws the right of a public service corporation to occupy the public streets is based upon a franchise from the city.Before the days of the referendum the franchise was granted by the city council, usually as a monopoly, sometimes in perpetuity; and, until comparatively recent years, the corporation paid nothing to the city for the rights it acquired.
