Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1916-05-27
MUNICIPAL LEAGUE PREPARES
A MODEL CHARTER FOR A CITY
Provides for Manager and Council and
Goes Far Toward Solving Old
Problems.

The National Municipal League an
nounces the publication of new model
charter for city government, calling for
a city council and city manager, ac-
cording to the Survey. which declares that
skeptics who still see only the failures
of American municipal government will
find food for thought in the fact that
previous model city charter gotten out by
the league has so far been paralleled by
real charters that the new model became
necessary.
The Survey says:
Shortly after the National Municipal
League was founded, twenty-one years
ago, it organized strong committee of
men whose names afterward became his
torlc in municipal reform and devised a
model charter and municipal home rule
constitutional article
They had no hope that any city would
ever adopt their charter verbatim, and
none ever did. but no charter committee
could entirely ignore the document, and
II mad profound influence during the
next two decades, its main message being
a plea for simplicity and for freedom
from checks and balances and red tape
II called for an elective MAYOR with com
pete and undivided appointive power and
small council elected at large, very
much like the present new governments
of Boston and Cleveland
ABOUT 1910 the short ballot movement
ana the top wave of commission govern
menu came along, pushing the demand for
simplicity still further, and SO the league
allowed its model charter to get out of
print and studied the newer idea with
CONSIDERABLE, but not complete, approval
IL dld. however. instantly accept the com
0n-1119 1901 nj,
lhree years ago. and organized a new
model charter committee in 1919 CON
Sistlng Of William Dudley Foulke, NJ. n.
BAKER, Richard S. Childs. John A. Fairle.
inaso Fesler A. r. Hatton, Herman G.
James, A. Lawrence Lowell, William Ben
nett Munro, Robert Treat Paine, Delos F
wilcox and Clinton Rogers Woodruff The
committee has made several partial re-
ports and has finally produced a complete
charter and home rule article for a
state constitution. embodying what it be-
ileves to be the best current experience
and theory.
Ihe new model charter is a commits
sion-manager plan, and calls for the
election of city council of yaria HE
size and methods of election. This
council hires. from anywhere in the
country. city manager who is their
sole agent and the chief executive of
w! IN! city with appointive power over
the rest OF the city's administration
except the clerk. auditor and civil
service commission, whom the council
chooses.
The committee has drafted three al
tentative election methods: there is a
model non-partisan primary election
procedure; another providing for pref
erential ballot. and a third calling for
proportional representation on the
Hare plan. The initiative, referendum
and recall are offered. as separable
items, with the approval of majority
of the committee
This model charter demonstrates
how modern municipal government has
caught up with the reformers. At least
dozen cities with the commission
manager form have charters that diff
fer from the model only in minor de-
tails, and much of the craftsmanship
of the model has simply been discrimi-
mating work with shears and paste.
The old model charter was a lone
some pioneer. The new model charter
merely falls in line abreast of Dayton,
Springfield, Niagara Falls, Cadillac and