Evening star., 1951-04-03
Another Local Reorganization Plan

In the summer of 1949 the Commissioners
directed Budget Officer Walter L. Fowler to pre-
pare an aggressive plan" for reorganization of
the Municipal Government. The plan has now
been submitted to the Commissioners and made
public.
The Commissioners have not expressed
themselves on the plan and will to some extent
be guided in their Endorsement of its provisions
by local public sentiment The best way for
them to obtain such sentiment Is to distribute
the proposal to various civic groups and then
invite testimony in public hearings from mu-
nicipal officials and others who may wish to
appear. Unless the plan is merely to gather dust
on shelves with other discarded municipal re-
organization plans the Commissioners would be
well advised to arrange for the hearings in the
immediate future.
For whether it is so intended, the plan is
presented as an alternative to the Kefauver
home rule bill and hearings would tend to give
interested citizens an opportunity to express
themselves as between the two. The Fowler plan
differs in reorganization detail from the Kefau-
ver proposal But there are at least two funda-
mental differences. The Fowler plan retains the
commission form of government The Kefauver
plan, of course, abolishes the commission form
of government and substitutes another one based
on new charter The Fowler plan would effect
reorganization of the local government by de-
greeS; in other words, most of the changes would
be carried out one at time. The Kefauver re-
organization would take place overnight, upon
approval of the home rule bill by Congress and
the people of Washington The abruptness of
the reorganization has been one basis Of opposi-
ton to the Kefauver bill.
Both proposals, however, are based on the
city manager principle In the Fowler plan, the
title given to this administrator would be
Executive Officer" serving under a policy
making Board of Commissioners and charged
directly with general administration of the city
governments various departments. Under the
Kefauver proposals the city manager would
work, in much the same general sort of relation
ship, with an elected City Council. A gesture
toward more representative local government is
contained in the Fowler proposal, which pro-
vides for citizens advisory council with its
duties and responsibilities rather vaguely de-
fined. Three or five citizens would be elected
ut large to this advisory council.
But the sum and substance of the Fowler
plan is retention of the present form of local
government with new and more orderly and
logical system of functional grouping Mr.. Fow-
Ter believes it would save money. If any such
unheard-of magic as cutting the cost of govern
ment is possible, what are we waiting for?
Some of Mr.. Fowler's reorganization plan
could be made effective without legislation. But
wherever Congress has specifically assigned, in
any one of it's many acts affecting the District
of Columbia, function to any local agency, it
will require another act of Congress to reassign
the function. There has as yet been no attempt
to draw up the number Of legislative changes
that would be necessary. That presumably will
await the Commissioners decision on what they
plan to do about the Fowler proposals.