The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-07-26

| but trim the edges of the old charter, | the local board of trade began to agi- tate for commission government, and produced a bill applicable to any third
 class city in the state Lockport in- 1 ciuded, for en improved commission 1 government: r..n.
 | In most of the fundamental features the bill has attempted to make a com | olnation of the best existing commits 1 sion government charters. The pow CTS Of the city are vested in board 1 Of five men elected at large for four years and subject to recall after six | months on a p per cent petition. The candidate receiving the largest num- | Der of votes takes the title of mayor | has a few special duties under war; | ious state laws, but otherwise has no 1 special powers. He is chairman of | the commission or council, as it is ] called, but has no veto power. There l are no other elective officers. Re- | garding this feature, the pamphlet, of the Lockport Board of Trade makes | the following statement:
 | ''The basic merit of the commission | plan, and the one that is responsible for its unquestionable success, is that | it is workable form of Democracy. | It can be operated easily by the peo- | pie without the aid of political ma | chimes, which under the old form are | an indispensable arm of the govern | iHCHl AIle SIlOTI DdllOl-OIly nN6 lO l elect. all of them important and con- | spicuous-is the gist of the plan. It 1 is so short that the people are not l tempted to rely on ready-made 1 tickets but each voter puts togeth- | CT his own pet ticket without help | from professional ticket makers. Like | wise the candidate has no incentive | to seek the ticket makers but simply | goes directly after the votes, and, l when elected, has no one to be grate- | full to but the. voters.
 There are no obscure elective of | fees. Every one is important enough | to be brilliantly illuminated by the | concentrated spotlight of public cu- | riosity and interest.
 ''In this environment the people | know exactly what they are doing on | election day. The people are all in politics. are all complete politicians! The first and broadest improvement over the Des Moines plan is the sep | aratiOn of the representative and ad-
 ministrative functions by the creation of an appointive chief executive call ! ed the city mana ger, who presideS oV- | CT all departments and is himself the | servant of the commission, holding of | flee at their pleasure.
 Political scientists have long deplor- | ed the unique and unsuccessful Am erican custom of putting upon the
  men who are to do technical, admin 1 istrative or executive work. Most men are ready to admit that the pe0- 1 pie are not in position to select the | best city engineer or auditor, but look with complacency upon the struggles of the people to select men of execu- l tive capacity who can administer com plicated city departments, enforce har- mony and discipline, ssecucre loyal CO., | operation, and produce results from a business standpoint. The task of se- | lecting the latter is harder than se- lecting the former. The choice of an administrator is not a matter in which the gathering of many judgments is valuable. The intensive investigation into the qualifications of candidates for such positions by a few men who are to be responsible for the perfor- | mances of the person they choose is more likely to prove satisfactory.
 The Des Moines plan, which makes each member of the commission ex- oficio the head of one of the five de- partments of the city, makes it prob able that the people will elect good representatives and poor administra- tors, or good administrators and poor representatives. It is rarely likely
 that the man in the city who is best qualified to administer a department of public works, for example. will all so be one of the five best vOte-getterSi ! The rule laid down by Fiske years ago is unquestionably sound: For representation, elect; for administra- tion, appoint
 The Des Moines plan also is faulty iii that the commission must entrust the execution of its orders, not to a servant of their own choosing, but to coordinate elective officer who may not agree with the policy involved, and who can distort the orders in car vi uyjth nf iShment or removal.
 The Lockport plan, which provides that the commission shall execute it's policies through hired administra- tor, leaves to the commissioners sim ply the function of telling their city managers what the people want, and seeing to it that he carries out their orders in the spirit in which they are issued. One this point the Lockport argument is somewhat less theoretical, but equally sound:
 ''The chief improvement in this act over previous commission plans is the creation of this city manager, thus completing the resemblance of the plan to the private business corpora tion with it's Well-demonstrated capac- ity for efficiency. This gives the high ly desirable single-headed executive in place of the five-headed western system where each member of the
 UT COunCl USCOIuSS uCdO of city department. It disposes Of the confusion of responsibility in- herent in the western plan where the board as a whole is responsible for all departments and each commissioner is also responsible for his own.
 ''This improved plan also frees the people from the necessity of trying to gauge the fitness of candidates to do executive and technical work as de- partment heads. The people can elect true representatives labor men for ex- ample, men who are typical leaders of numerically important elements of the population, and, as they will only direct policies and will not personally execute them, the efficiency of the de- partments is less likely to be inter- fered with. Likewise the depart ments will not be subject to demoral- ization by needless changes of their executives nor will they be at the mercy of the ignorance of some man who is elected on, say, franchise is sue and finds himself obliged to learn and direct the details of city finance or street paving.
 'The list of available candidates is widened immensely by the fact that the commissioners (aldermen) are not to be obliged to abandon private ca reers for what may be but a single term of office at the head of an un- familiar and perhaps unongenial de- partment They simply represent the pople, at the ity hall with power ito review, criticise, question and direct the work of the city manager, who is
 1.