The silver state news. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1907-1909, 1908-05-05
WASTE IN PUBLIC WORK.
San Francisco Chronicle.

The waste of the public money in
public works is outrageous in all of
our American cities That is the OBJ
lection j nthe public operation of any
utility whatever that can safely be
intrusted to private hands. Some of
our utilities should be operated by
municipalities whatever the waste
sewers and parks and fairgrounds for
example-and most people put the
water systems in the same category.
There is some disposition among us to
consider the waste by public officials
in this city worse than elsewhere.
II is not so. Other cities are as pn-
fortunate as we, perhaps more so.
No city has suffered more than that
supposed city of all civic virtues
Boston.
We recently printed an article from
the Municipal journal end Engineer,
which described the sewer system and
the cleaning of the same of the city
of Boston. A "Finance Committee
ha' been Invs\igating the accounts
of that department, and while in most
e.scs they could get little or no infor-
nation from the alleged records,
rev things that were discovered gave
some idea of what must be covered
up in the jobs for which the expendi-
lures could be traced With costly
system of inspection one Inspector can
inspect from five to six catch basins
day. An employ of the commission
inspected 100 day. Ard all the city
sewer work seems to have been about
as wasteful Costly as the city work
RI = hx al
that ease than contract work, under
which contract work was paid for as
cleaning catch basins which did not
exist, and apparently for hundreds
moro which id not need cleaning and
which were not cleaned. That, of
course was graft. There was 20 means
of finding out even how many catch
basins there was in the city. The
commission found thta the defects in
the department were "insufficient and
inaccurate records, inadequate. inspec-
tion. lack of proper supervision and
instruction over the day labor force,
and negligence of the selection of the
work to be done by contract
1t is probably never possible to get
public work done as faithfully and
economically as private work is per-
formed Occasionally this may be ac-
complished by some particularly ener-
getic and honest official The inevi
table tendency is to waste, because
it is to the interest of the officials that
there should be waste. IF they allow
waste those who profit by it will be
their friends and work to hedlp them
keep their jobs. If they do not do it
they will make many enemies and few
friends. The public very rarely takes
notice of faithful official service But
while waste cannot be eliminated from
public work it can be minimized by
immediate publication from week to
week of the details respect to which
there is most danger Of waste and
fraud. BY proper accounting we do
not mean any particular system of
bookkeeping, but merely such de-
tails in original entries, accompanied
by vouchers, as will enable any in
quired to discover, in the case of any
expense incurrer, precisely who did
the work, how he did it, how much
was done and how much each man did
each day. Doubtless some methods of
bookkeeping are better than Others,
but as a rule any municipal book viii
he found correct on the assumption
shet the original entries gives tn
ssary information The trohle ;s
','ih the original entries. Tho lc
soll what it is necessary to know
not necessary nor desirable that all
such details be published. 1t * srff'-
cient if condensation be published
IN such a form as to make suspicious
items readily noticeable and the pub
lie thus put on inquiry with reference
to what the complete records will show
an diff the public would only concen-