cational chapter of the administrative code, which can easily be recast if the Davis law is to be continued; and this fact illustrates the statement heretofore made in this report, that the provisions of the code may readily be adapted to conform with such changes (if any) as the legislature may make in the proposed charter.

In support of our conviction that exclusive control of local salaries should be left to the city, we submit that neither successful nor economic administration of the city's affairs will be attained so long as the legislature usurps a power that belongs of right to the city, thereby relieving appropriating officers of responsibility for more than one-half of the expenditure for salaries and wages. New York City, in common with other and less heavily burdened municipalities, ought to be permitted, through its duly elected representatives, to determine the compensation of all its officers and employees. It is the only city of importance in the state which is not free to fix teachers' salaries. Existing salaries remain unchanged by the draft charter which provides that they shall remain as at present unless and until changed by the board of estimate and apportionment.

We bespeak special attention to the section of the proposed charter respecting the form of the budget. Under the present charter a taxpayer would find it almost impossible to discover for what matters the budget should make provision. Yet few things are more important to him than to know that his servants, in making appropriations, are not over-stepping law. For the first time in the city's history reference to all matters which are the subject of appropriations is made in one proposed section. One distinct advantage of this change is that it serves to educate the taxpayer to discriminate between current expenses and capital outlays. All annual expense of maintaining the city government should (and but for archaic sinking funds would) be paid from the city's revenues and its receipts from taxation, whereas all expenditures for permanent improvements, including the acquisition of land, should be met by issues of corporate stock or, whenever the city may be reimbursed by means of assessments upon property especially benefited, by the issue of assessment bonds. A sharp distinction is made in the new charter between corporate stock and assessment bonds, and between corporate stock and assessment bonds on the one hand and special revenue and revenue bonds on the other; the latter classes of obligations being mere devices for anticipating the collection of income from taxation. The rule that current expenses shall be paid out of taxation allows no ex

ception. Hence, we provide that all the annual expenses of the dock department shall, like those of other departments, be provided for in the budget and met by taxation, thus discontinuing the evil practice of issuing corporate stock for the running expenses of the dock department.

The budget should include also a detailed statement of all receipts of the general fund and of all sinking funds, the surplus income of which eventually finds its way into the general fund. The city will thus have a scientific budget of receipts and expenditures.

SINKING FUNDS.

Before a draft of the chapter on Sinking Funds was made, a history of the sinking funds was prepared, in order that the Commission might more intelligently discuss existing provisions. The law of the sinking funds remains substantially unchanged. The old pledges of the city's revenues for the payment of its creditors are preserved inviolate. There has been a rearrangement of the order of sections, resulting in more consecutiveness and coherence, and for the first time the actual sinking funds of the city have been enumerated. This chapter should enable the reader to understand the nature and purpose of the various funds. Obsolete provisions and solecisms of expression have been eliminated, but no contractual pledge has been infringed.

The Commission believes that it would be possible to refund the entire funded debt of the city, exclusive of the several water debts, at a satisfactory rate of interest, which would permit of the abolition of the several sinking funds. Many sources of revenue might be increased to the city's gain, if they were not to be locked up indefinitely in sinking funds, and some might perhaps be reduced in the interest of the city and the taxpayer.

The theory which once made sinking funds prevalent has long since been abandoned. Provision for meeting all funded obligations at maturity should be made by raising by taxation the annual interest upon these obligations and the requisite amortization instalments. Substantially all the sinking fund revenues consist of the city's own obligations; its creditors therefore have in the last analysis no other security than the city's own promise to pay. If the sinking fund system were to be abolished and the payment of the debt provided for by amortization methods, the present anomalous and artificial system of withdrawing surplus revenues from the sinking fund by the issue of general fund bonds

to that fund could be discontinued. This is a method of preventing by indirection undue increase of these funds, and in effect is an evasion of those provisions of law which require their maintenance intact for the City's creditors.

BONDS AND OBLIGATIONS.

Charter provisions regarding corporate stock and other city bonds have not the sanctity of sinking fund provisions. The Commission has here made substantive changes in the law. It has made a clear line of demarkation between corporate stock, assessment bonds, special revenue bonds and revenue bonds. Corporate stock can never be issued to pay current operative expenses if the Commission's theory be adopted. To insure better prices and better interest rates for the city all bonds must be sold after public advertisement, but in case of special emergencies, of which the board of estimate and apportionment is sole judge, revenue bonds or special revenue bonds may be sold without advertisement.

The Commission proposes that corporate stock shall be issued for improvements only. Assessment bonds, although in part eventually convertible into corporate stock, are primarily issued to pay for public work for which the city may be reimbursed by assessments collected from property especially benefited thereby. Failure to heed the proper distinctions between the several classes of city obligations has led in practice to the use of one form of bond where a different kind only was proper, and to confusion of the funds from which bonds of different kinds should be paid.

We have retained the provisions regarding general fund bonds, but have provided in the board of estimate and apportionment chapter that the interest on such bonds shall be defrayed from annual taxation - our purpose being that the budget shall reflect all current expenditures, of which interest on bonds held by the sinking funds is undoubtedly one.

THE ADMINISTRATIVE DEPARTMENTS.

These are treated in a single chapter under particular titles. In Title I are all administrative provisions applicable alike to all departments. These provisions are now scattered throughout the present charter, and are repeated in different administrative titles, and sometimes even in different sections applicable to different bureaus provided for in the same title.

Finance Department.

The Finance department of late years has become the repository of so many functions that it has grown beyond reasonable and workable proportions. It now exercises many powers that with greater propriety should be under the control of the board of estimate and apportionment. Accumulation of functions in the comptroller has at times given him an ascendency over the mayor in respect of purely administrative matters, but without any corresponding responsibility for administrative results. The department is amorphous and chaotic. In order to readjust relations between it and other departments we recommend that the bureau of claims be transferred to the board of Estimate and Apportionment and that a Bureau of Real Estate and a Bureau of Franchises be created therein; that the chamberlain be made the head of an independent department to be known as the city treasury department, in which there shall be three bureaus that of the city treasury, that of the collection of taxes and revenues, and that of licenses. The chamberlain's office at present is nominally a bureau in the finance department; but the chamberlain is actually an independent officer appointed by the mayor like other heads of departments. Our proposed changes make the city chamberlain a more efficient factor in the administrative government, and secure for revenue collections and for licenses attention impossible under the present organization.

We favor a bureau of licenses in lieu of a department, as this branch of the city's business has not yet developed to proportions justifying the erection of a co-ordinate department. But the entire matter of licenses should fall in one bureau for systematization of the license system and treatment of the matter of licenses and permits in such manner as largely to increase the sources of revThe adoption of this recommendation should go a long way toward making successful the effort to secure an adequate estimate of revenues from sources other than taxation, thus tending annually to relieve the tax levy.

enue.

The Penal Sections of the Chapter.

The present charter contains fully 170 sections which, being penal in their nature, should disappear from the charter proper. Many are repetitions of provisions of the Penal Code or Code of Criminal Procedure, and are altogether needless in the charter. Others so nearly repeat the provisions of one or the other code

as to leave the law in doubt, because of the question raised as to which is controlling. Others, in whole or in part, are in neither the Penal Code nor the Code of Criminal Procedure, yet in one or the other code they undoubtedly belong. All penal charter sections have been segregated, and we recommend their re-enactment in a separate chapter of the administrative code until such time as they shall have been properly cared for in the Penal Code or Code of Criminal Procedure. A few penal sections touching matters of peculiar gravity are retained in the proposed charter, for the sake of greater clearness and in order that the charter may adequately depict the entire plan of city government.

Sections of present administrative titles which are repetition of matter already generally provided for in the Public Officers' Law have been eliminated because they encumber the charter and make it less intelligible. These remarks apply to all of the administrative titles.

The Police Department.

In this department we recommend that the Commissioner must appoint a deputy in the borough of Brooklyn; and that to a deputy commissioner who shall be a counselor at law of five years' standing be confided the conduct of all police trials. The police commissioner is to frame rules of practice for police trials, to be approved by the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the First Judicial Department, and is to review the trial commissioner's findings and fix the punishment. No writs of certiorari shall hereafter issue to review his determination, but it may be reviewed by an appeal to the Appellate Division, whose decision shall be final. This procedure should render trials simpler, juster and more expeditious, and guarantee all members of the force an absolutely fair hearing by a competent officer, under specific rules permitting appeal to a satisfactory superior tribunal. It would have the effect of eliminating the injurious consequences of arbitrariness and individual temperament which have for years past been a constant cause of complaint in the disciplinary administration of the department.

We have also recommended that a schedule of penalties be required to be fixed by the commissioner, which shall be just and may be equally applied to all, so as to make it impossible that like offenses tried by different persons or by the same person at different times may result, merely as a matter of temperament or bias,