The times., 1899-06-25
IMPORTANT DUTIES
| OF THE COMPTROLLER
Busy Man Who Holds the Ma
tiOn's Purse Strings.
An Autocratie Tribunal in Settling
Financial Questions.
MIR. TraceweIrs burdens Increased
by Problems Growing Out OF
the War With spain.

One Of the most important Offices in the
Government is that of the Comptroller OF
the Treasury. In one sense the Comp
troller is tribunal from whose decisions
the departments cannot appeal. No money
| can be paid out of the Treasury without
the Comptroller's approval He is the man
who. figuratively speaking. holds the purse
! strings of the United States. Therefore,
he is about the busiest man in the employ
of the Government.
The Attorney General is the law officer
! of the Government and his construction Of
the statutes is supposed to be final. but
where appropriations are involved the Az
| torney General must stand aside and abide
by the ComptroIIer's decision.
Hardly day passes that the Comptroller
is not called upon for decision. He Is
the one to whom every disbursing officer
| or agent of Government looks for guild
, ance in paying out money. The several
departments each have an auditor whose
business IL is to carefully examine the ac-
! counts of his department Frequently an
! auditor disallows an account OF disburs-
ing officer or rejects claim Tor payment
or refuses contractor his money. Then.
in order to secure another hearing an ap-
peal is taken to the Comptroller of the
Treasury, who reviews the auditors de-
cision. It not infrequently happens that
the auditor is reversed and the money or
dered 10 be paid. But. if the Comptroller
! sustains the auditor. then the only relief
is Congress or the Supreme Court Of the
United States
Again, an auditor Of the department may
be in doubt concerning the construction of
a statute involving the expenditure Of
money. and in order to be on the safe side
he submits the question to the Comptrol-
Ter. And the Comptroller's decision is the
law until some other Comptroller comes
along and renders contrary opinion.
a few years ago there were two Comp
! trollers, the first and the second. and they
were independent Of each other. In con-
sequence it often happened that on similar
questions of law the two Comptrollers
would render opinions almost diametrical-
iy opposite. The Doekery act. however.
did away with this system and today
there is but one Comptroller with an as
s!stant- The assistant considers such ques-
tions as are submitted to him by the
Comptroller.
By this method all friction is removed
Comptroller are uniform. There IS 10 di-
yided opinion CT the court as b.fore the
Docliery act went into effect
There is story connected with the Of
fee OF the Comptroller that VIII bear re-
peatilg- although it happened, so say the
olders clerks in the Treasury Department.,
during Grants Administration. A csitain
| newspaper had claim against tie Cow
eminent of something like $40 600 for ad-
vertising- II was political matter. SO It
was said. The case came before the Goa p
tFoiler, ard he disallowsd the e,sim. The
matter was brought to President Grants
attention The President sent for the
Comptroller and asked II he could not re-
verse his decision. The Comptroller re-
piled: Mr.. President. you may appoint
another Comptroller, but you eennot
change my decision in the matter" The
Comptroller continued to hold his cfic7-
1t was during the Cleveland Adm MS
tration that Comptroller Bowler hgld rp
the FIVE million dollar sugar bounty ao-
preparation and forced the planters to take
the case to the Supreme Court foc settle
ment MIR. Bowler failed to agree with
Congress in this matter and rendered an
opinion that the bounty could Cot he pail
However, the Supreme Court sill oth,r-
wise.
Hon. Robert J. TracewelI. the present
Conn RtrOller. who ranks with the best law
yers in the State of Indiana, has during
this Administration rendered some very
important decisions. He really has had
more work to do than his Predsc-s ors in
recent years for the reason that iunumer-
able questions have arisen out OF tie
Spanish-American war. One decision that
he gave few months ago has caused more
talk and comment than any opinion by
his office since Bowler's sugar bounty de-
cision. It was the civil service case. The
Comptroller, in replying to a United States
marshal said he would recognize the GER
tifcate Of appointment when made by the
proper authority and would not hold in
nOcent disbursing officers responsible for
the acts OF their superiors. In other
words, the civil service rules and Tegula-
tions did not have the binding effect of a
statute. He also rendered decision in
the telephone question which astolished
the telephone companies. He held that
the Government would only pay the
amount authorized by law. The telephone
company accepted payment but did so
under protest II the court hold that the
present law is unconstitutional then the
telephone company will recover the full
amount from the Government.
All questions affecting the War and Navy
Departments are handled by Comptroller
Tracewells efficient assistant. Hon l. P.
Mitchell. He. too, halls from Indiana
Just now Assistant Mitchell is up to his
ears in work growing out of the Navy
Personnel act. Every few days ne IS call
ed upon to construe some section of the
act affecting the pay of officers.