REPORT OF

THE NEW YORK CHARTER COMMISSION

Dated March 8, 1909.

To the Legislature:

The Charter Revision Commission of 1907 made its report to the Governor on December 1 of that year. The report pointed out the confused condition of the law affecting the city, analyzed the city government, and recommended various amendments.

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On April 13, 1908, the legislature passed an act providing for the creation of a new commission to be known as 66 The New York Charter Commission," to be appointed by the Governor and to consist of fifteen persons to serve without compensation. The act defines the duties of the Commission in the following language: to inquire into the local government of the city of New York and the counties contained therein with power to investigate the manner of conducting and transacting business in the several departments, boards and offices thereof, the effect and working of the charter of Greater New York and the acts amendatory thereof, and supplementary thereto, and of any and all other acts relating to said city, and to suggest such legislation as it may deem advisable with respect thereto. Said Commission may in its discretion draft and submit with its final report a new charter and an administrative code for the city."

The Governor, on April 21, 1908, appointed the Commission, eight of the appointees having been members of the Charter Revision Commission of 1907.

After

The Commission organized on the 27th day of April, 1908, and at once took up for consideration the present condition of the city government in connection with the report of the Commission of 1907. Some time was necessarily consumed in study of that report by the members of the present Commission who had not served upon the former one. thorough consideration the Commission has determined, besides reporting its conclusions and recommendations, to present a draft of a charter and of an administrative code, the former of which accompanies this report, the latter of which is in course of preparation and will be submitted at a later date. The two may, we believe, be advantageously made complementary parts of a single statute.

In order to facilitate its work, the Commission was divided into sub-committees to each of which was referred the duty of investigating and reporting upon the manner of conducting and transacting business in the departments referred to it. Throughout the summer the chairman or other members of the sub-committees pursued their work and this preliminary task was carried on unremittingly until in September it had progressed to a point which permitted the Committee on Draft to begin the preparation of the charter, chapter by chapter. From

October 1, 1908, until the date of the report that Committee met every night with the exception of Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, and the evenings on which the full Commission was convened, and has repeatedly held sessions during the daytime.

In the preparation of each individual chapter and title the Committee on Draft in every instance through one of its own members or one of the other sub-committees, carefully investigated the actual operations of each department and bureau, and considered the statutory provisions applicable thereto with such officers and employees as were believed to be best qualified to explain the prevailing practice and illustrate the actual administrative interpretation of the charter. It was also sought to discover how far actual organization conformed to the letter of the law, how far the practice was the result of administrative interpretation, and to what extent it was a spontaneous development. Particular care was exercised to ascertain how far administrative practice reflects the law as well as the degree to which the departments had found it necessary to disregard the statute because either of difficulty in its application or of the obsoleteness or unintelligibility of its pro

visions.

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The various committee investigations, although long and tedious, were absolutely necessary if the law and the facts were to be made to correspond, and the law were to be relieved of obsolete, unintelligible and systematically disregarded provisions. A particularly long and precise investigation was required concerning the operations of the finance department, the sinking funds, the dock department, the police department, the health department, the charities department, the department of education, the department of taxes, the borough presidents and the board of assessors, and much time was necessarily spent in investigations of provisions of the existing charter dealing with the city's bonds and obligations, particularly assessment bonds, revenue bonds, special revenue bonds, and general fund bonds.

Inasmuch as the Commission was charged with the investigation of the effect and working of the charter, and all other acts relating to the city and was empowered to report such legislation as it might deem advisable in the premises, it became a matter of primary importance to consider constitutional limitations upon the city's borrowing capacity. The Commission through a sub-committee made as exhaustive a study of the subject as was possible within the time and means at its disposal, and copies of its two reports to the Governor in relation to the subject are hereto annexed. There is also inserted in the proposed charter a section providing so far as the legislature may, a method for calculating the borrowing capacity of the city, the application of which, in the judgment of a majority of the Commission, should render it impossible for the city to find itself again in the position in which it now is viz., without any other standard for the determination of its debt-incurring power than the fluctuating opinions of the administration for the time being. If the legislature have the power to provide such a method, the entire Commission concurs in the wisdom of formulating a rule which, by requiring stated reports by the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, may serve as a partial restraint upon the inclination to reckless expenditure.

The legislative authorization to report a charter and an administrative code the Commission interprets as an authorization to report a charter new in form with such substantive changes as it deems necessary to render government economical and efficient. Hence the effort of the Commission has

been to conform law with wise administrative practice; to eliminate the purely obsolete; to clarify the text; to harmonize the law with administrative interpretation; to efface the redundant and establish coherence. It has sought to follow the lines of the historical development of the existing charter, with due consideration for the actual experience in charter history of other American cities with similar problems; to make no radical or purely experimental changes; to preserve existing phraseology where it was clear or had received a definite meaning from the courts; to bring all matter relating to the same subject under one title; to correlate and coordinate different departments and bureaus, and, so far as practicable in the time at its command, to substitute order and symmetry for the present confusion and cross division of powers and duties and to give the law, in a word, an intelligible, logical form. One purpose has been to eliminate from the charter much general statutory law which is found both in the charter and in the revised statutes. The magnitude of this entire undertaking will be appreciated by careful study and analysis of the Commission's work, in tracing to their several origins numerous provisions of the existing charter, in correlating diverse sections referring to the same subject-matter, and in formulating the results in simple yet comprehensive language.

The proposed charter contains all provisions which touch upon the corporate powers, rights and franchises of the city, the city's obligations and the sinking funds established for their protection, and all substantive law of a constitutional character relating to the organization of the municipality as a selfgoverning community, and as the representative of the state in the administration of general law within the municipal jurisdiction. The fundamental changes are comparatively few, and will readily be apprehended. The chief value of the Commission's work and the feature of it which has required the most time and care is its attempt to give intelligible and coherent shape to the entire charter and to separate the organic or structural matters of city government from adjective or administrative details. In making this separation it has been actuated by the desire to formulate a charter of a permanent or abiding nature, for it recognizes that the administrative code will doubtless require frequent amendment, either for the adoption of improved methods or in response to successful administrative practice. The code in the nature of things should be a more fluid body of law, susceptible of change and evolution without change or alteration of the charter proper. The advantage of this dual statute will, we think, be at once apparent to the legislature and the people. The charter can and should be placed in all hands and will be readily comprehended. The administrative code, not being of such fundamental importance, bears a closer resemblance, for instance, to the ordinances of the Council, and belongs in a somewhat larger way to that body of adjective law which includes local ordinances and regulations. It is, therefore, not of such general interest or fundamental importance as the charter, but is of special and particular interest as the embodiment of details affecting the conduct of city or departmental busi

ness.

Our report, therefore, will assume the form of two draft bills which illustrate as perfectly as the