Los Angeles daily herald., 1888-12-30
The Hasty Passage Of ordina.cea,

The HastY Passage Of Ordinancea.
The Consolidation Act, which has Tor
80 many years controlled the legislation
and defined the powers Of the Board of
of San Francisco, is a menu
ment more enduring than stone to the
foresight, sagacity and ability of its
author, the late Horace Hawes, for many
sessions representative in the Legisla
ture from that city. Whatever scandal
has cropped out in the government of
that city has been in despite of the plain
meaning and intent OF the Consolida-
tioa Act. None Of its provisions has done
more to defeat bad and corrupt measures
than that one which requires that before
the final passage of any ordinance it
shall be passed to print, and published
in some newspaper for ten days.
The publicity thus given to the ordi-
nances before their passage enables every
citizen to critically examine them, and
when serious defects are discovered they
can be amended before it is too late.
Los Angeles goes on very different
plan. The ordinances are not published
until after they have been finally passed,
so that whatever errors they may con-
tain are then beyond the reach Of cure.
The San Francisco plan is by far the
best, and should be naturalized in Los
Angeles.
During the past three or four years the
City Council has granted street railroad
and other franchises in great numbers.
The street railroad franchises are SO
numerous that if every one of them were
practically carried out there would be
very few thoroughfares in the city with
out tracks. Street railroads are good
things; but there may be too much of a
good thing in this respect as in others.
If every ordinance had been passed to
print before it became a law, we opine that
the public eye would have detected a great
many flaws in them that would have
been corrected. There is good deal of
discussion going on now with reference
to the ordinance just passed by the
Council giving the Los Angeles, Utah
and Atlantic Railroad Company certain
city lands on the east side of the river
and granting it the right -of-way through
the city over the east bank of that
stream. If the ordinance had been
passed to print, the Council would have
had the benefit of wider criticism of its
provisions than it can now have.
There is one point upon which
serious question is raised. Whilst
section 13 EXPIRE ssly declares that any
other company shall have the privilege
Of the joint use of its tracks through the
city, upon certain conditions, yet this
use is in terms confined to tracks built
ION the lands granted said railroad COM
pany by the CITY," The question arises
whether this company cannot under
these terms shut out all other companies
that may seek to reach here and pass
over their road. True they would be
obliged to let them use that portion of
their track built over the lands
granted by the city; but how about
the privilege to pass over lands not
granted by the city, but belonging to the
company? The east side of the river is
about the only route left for outside rail-
roads wishing to come here to reach our
city, and we should be careful not to lock
them out by any careless or ambiguous
concession on our part. We hope that
before Mayor Bryson signs this ordinance
he will make careful inquiry into the
legal effect of its wording in this and
other respects. We want the Utah road
and all other roads that are willing to
come here, but we do not want to block
any road out of our city by irremediable
mistakes in our ordinances.
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