Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 May 1916 — MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT [ARTICLE]

MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT

Towns That Tried New Fads Go ■J Rack to Old Forms. Denver has gone back to thd old mayor-and-council form of government after experimenting with the commission form for tw r o years. Two women holding the office of mayor in their home towns have resigned. Several towns'' and cities that abandoned ward elections have adopted the old system again. Such experiments do little harm even if they fail. This lesson that they teach i 9 that the public usually gets the kind of government that it deserves in this free country. If the voters lose interest in the elections and do not watch their elected officials closely the machine politicians do the work for w'hat there is in it. As long as this indifference prevails one form of municipal government is as good or as bad as another. The commission form of government works well when the voters elect able and upright commissioners; but, when they do not, control in the hands of a few' is more dangerous than when a larger number have something to say about the expenditure of money. New r York is the best governed large city in the country because the newspapers keep alive the interest of the voters. Conditions are not perfect here, but most of the faultfinding is exaggerated. Those at the head of affairs are doing their best and no serious scandals have been unebvered for many years. The city government is handicapped by interference from Albany, and cannot control expenditures because its hands are tied by state laws, but New York is morally the cleanest of the great cities of the. world and is improving all the‘time. Its shabby looking streets are due to the vast amount of subway construction and other permanent improvements, from which no immediate relief is in sight. New York's experiments in changing its form of government have worked fairly well and would he still more successful if the state legislature would give it what its people desire. Persons and newspapers in smaller municipalities have been holding New York City up as a horrible example for many years, but the little political rings that control local politics are much more powerful and dangerou's in these smaller places than they have been in New York for more than 40 years. When its people or any section of them think anything is wrong they make themselves heard. They are learning to fight their own battles, as the Staten Islanders are doing in theif fight against the garbage plant. The public is always better served when it watches its servants closely an<J lets them know' it. Denver is changing its form of government again because its citizens sat back and let the commissioners do what tlreyi pleased without saying a word at the right time.—New York Commercial.