Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 77, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1912 — THE BUSINESS SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT FOR INDIANA CITIES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE BUSINESS SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT FOR INDIANA CITIES

PUBLISHED BY THE BUSINESS SYSTEM OP GOVERNMENT STATE COMMITTEE OF THE INDIANA FEDERATED COMMERCIAL CLUBS.

SERIAL NO. 4. Publicity. In the Business System of Government for Indiana Cities 'publieity of municipal affairs is provided for in ample and multiplied ways. There can be no secret conclaves of the Board of Councilors or star chamber sessions of the Board of Administration. All meetings are open; all proceedings are of record; all voting is upbn roll call. The transactions must be transcribed in the minutes which It is the right of every citizen to examine if he likes. Monthly reports of receipts and expenditures throughout the government must be rendered arid published. A monthly summary of proceedings must be made and printed. At the end of the fiscal year there must be an audit of all the books and accounts of the city and the result must be published. From first to last, in the Business System of Government, there is publicity. The names of candidates for councilor in the primary must be published, and the names of their sponsors must be signed to their petitions of candidacy, which become public documents open to inspection by any citizen. The names of candidates chosen in the primaries must be published. All ordinances for franchises, public grants and privileges must be extensively published. Ordinances proposed for initiative must be published. Petitions for recall and elections based thereon must be completely advertised. Nothing is done in the dark. There is no shadow, hole or cranny in the entire Business System of Government that can offer a hiding place for', crookedness or a refuge for crooks. The people cannot be kept in "ignorance of what is going on in their government. They are within touch with it all the time. Any citizen who does not constantly know of the proceedings a,nd proposals in the administration and of the conduct of each official will' have only himself to blame. The char- i ter for the Business System of Gov-1 eminent, in conserving the welfare i of the city, its people and their interests, provides every safeguard that publicity can give.

taken in the Business System that it shall not be perverted or abused. Each instance in those cities where the recall has been invoked and has succeeded, or where attempt made to use it has failed, shows that the people go about this business of sitting in judgment upon their arraigned officials with judicial calm and sober spirit to deal justly.

The Referendum. In the Business System of Government for Indiana Cities one of the important provisions is for the Refi ereudum. This section of the charter j provides that no franchise, grant or , other public privilege shall be valid and become effective until the people i have had an opportunity to vote on i it. Such an ordinance, after passage by the Board of Administration, must be approved by the Board of Councilors. It is then placed on file for thirty days. If, during this period of suspension, 25 per cent of the legal voters of the city petition for a referI endum the ordinance must be subi mitted to a vote. If a majority of the I votes be cast against it, the ordinance becomes extinct. It is provided, how- | over, that if after a petition for a ref- ! erendum has been filed the Board of , Councilors repeal the ordinance. : against which protest has been made, no election need be held. The Ref--I erendum embodies the right of the people to say directly for themselves I what disposition and use shall be ■j made of the property which belongs to them as the public. Under such a provision it becomes impossible for the authorities in the government to give or barter away valuable privileges upon terms that are not fair to the people. Almost every city in America has suffered Vast loss through the carelessness, in some instances, and through the corruption, in other instances, of its local government in giving valuable grants to corporations. The greatest source of j boodiing, bribery and graft in our , cities has been in the enormously vali uable rights of monopoly conferred by | councils and aldermanic boards on I utility corporations. Franchises without limit as to term and without condition as to honest restraint have in many cities exposed the people to extortion and robbery and bound them in a virtual slavery to interests that ostensibly were chartered to be the servants of the people. Without recourse, the people have stood helpless while their stupid or corrupt representatives in government gave away or, for their own gain, sold privileges of monopoly worth millions. The Referendum gives the people the means to decide in their own judgment and by their own ballots whether or not a proposed franchise is a good bargain for themselves. It is a measure of genuine democracy as well as of good business sense. It will dry the springs in which many corpotions have their source. No corporation or other interest will undertake to pay for what a local government is of itself unable to deliver.

The Recall. The Business System of Government for Indiana Cities gives a place of great importance to the Recall. The principle of the Recall is operative from top to bottom. The people may recall the Board of Councilors. In turn the-Board of Councilors may recall the Board of Administration. Likewise the Board of Administration may recall the officials and employes who are under it. Each element may recall the branch of government for whose appointment and conduct it is directly responsible. It all rests on the question of performance to the satisfaction of the people. The moral of the Recall is that it corrects the chronic disabiliy of our local rule, ■which, though it permits the people at fixed intervals to say WHO their government shall be, denies them afterward the right to say WHAT it shall be. The Recall is the recourse of the people between elections. The voters do not have to wait two or four years to rectify blunders made at the polls or to punish betrayals of public trust. The Recall, through a new' principle of operation in local government, has worked well. As a measure of public good it has been justified by results in those cities that have employed it. More than two hundred cities are now operating under charters which contain provisions for the Recall, yet use of it to remove officials has been made but eleven times, and of these twice each in two of the nine cities that furnish the examples. This principle of continuous control by the people has i immense virtue as a. preventive and high value as a spur to energy and a guarantee of efficiency. That is the reason it is so seldom needed as a remedy. The fact that such a power is always in the hands of the people is enough. Officials will not often provoke the use of it. That it. is neither an easy nor a cheap instrument to wield breeds practical caution in employing it. And it' will work, better as the people on the one hand improve in the understanding to use it and as officials on the other hand gain in respect for it. In the Business System of Government any ten voters may institute recall proceedings against all or any part of the Board bf Councilors by filing with the city clerk a signed request that a petition for recall be issued and stating the ground for actipn. If within thirty days 25 per cent of the voters of the city appear at the city clerk’s office and sign the petition for recall, then an election must be ordered. If within that period the petition fails tof obtaining the required number of signatures, then it is returned to the ten who requested a petition and they must pay the costa incurred, including those of publication. It is proposed in the Business System of Government to make the recall the Base resort of the people in a crisis In their home rule, not a bludgeon in the hands of the vicious or a weapon for malcontents and soreheads. It is guarded with , such checks and restraints as will counsel the people to sanity and moderation in the use of their power. The recall Is not a measure of spite nor an instrument of revenge. It is the lever kept in the hands of the people to control their government. Care is

The Initiative. In t’ usiness System of Governmen .or Indiana Cities one of the vital features is the Initiative. This is another measure by which the people may declare WHAT their government shall be. The Initiative is the complement of the Referendum. It enables the people to obtain measures of government that they want, while the referendum arms them against measures that they do not want. Under the initiative the voters have the right and the means to take the lawmakng power into their own hands should government refuse to give them what they believe they need. Ihe initiative is not a new principle of democratic action* The name and process only are of later origin. Through the machinery of the ballot is made practicable the most direct form of law-making, as when the people of a community came together in mass-meeting on the village green to pass their laws and institute their measures of self-rule Under the Initiative law-making today becomes as literally the voice of the people as it was then in the old town meeting. In the Business System of Government the method of the initiative is this: If any city government refuse to pass such a law as the people want, 20 per cent of the voters by petition can require that the proposed law be> submitted to a vote. If a majority of the votes be in favor of the ordinance submitted, it thereupon becomes a legal and binding ordinance. While the petition is pending the Board of Councilors may, if it wills, pass the ordinance demanded and thus make an election unnecessary. If the people find they have been mistaken in the value of an ordinance procured by initiative they may later repeal it; but the government has no power to repeal or amend ordinances Instituted by the initiative, though it may Bubmit to popular vote at regular elections proposals to repeal or amend such ordinances. Not more than one special election for the initiative may be held in any one year, but several ordinances may be submitted at one time, and such ordinances may be voted upon at any regular election.