SEC. 2. Separate City Elections.23

SEC. 3. Nominations.

Candidates for elective city offices shall be nominated by petition signed by qualified voters of the city. The number of the signatures to such petition shall be determined by the Council of the city, but no more than fifty signatures shall be required. Such petition shall be filed in the office of the Mayor at least thirty days before the date of the election; provided, however, that in the case of the death or withdrawal of any candidate so nominated, such petition may be so filed within a less period than thirty days. The voter must vote separately for each candidate for whom he desires to vote; if the election is by ballot the Council of the city shall determine the form of ballot to be used, but the names of all candidates for the same office must be printed upon the ballot in alphabetical order under the title of such office.

The petitions provided for in this Act need not be one paper, and may be printed or written, but the signatures thereto must be the autograph signatures of the persons whose names purport to be signed. To each signature the house address of the signer must be added, and the signature must be made and acknowledged or proved before an officer authorized by law to take acknowledgment and proof of deeds. The certificate of such officer under his official seal that a signature was so made and acknowledged or proved shall be sufficient proof of the genuineness of the signature for the purposes of this Act. The signing of another's name, or of a false or fictitious name, to a petition or the signing of a certificate falsely stating either that a signature was made in the presence of the officer or acknowledged or approved before him, shall be punishable as felonies.

23. No election for any city office should be held at a time coinciding with the time for holding State or national elections. Proper provisions to accomplish this result should be drawn in harmony with the general system of holding elections in the particular State.

AN EXAMINATION OF THE PROPOSED MUNICIPAL

PROGRAM

DELOS F. WILCOX

The Committee on Municipal Program, in its survey of the municipal situation in the United States, has recognized the existence of three fundamental evils in the government of our cities:

I. The first of these evils is economic, and consists in the waste of public funds, through the multiplication of offices, the employment of inefficient officers, the payment of exorbitant prices, and the expenditure of large sums in relatively fruitless enterprises.

2. The second evil is " political," in the true sense of the term, and consists in the inadequacy of the service rendered by the city government to the people of the city and State. It is believed to be the true function of the city as a political organization so to regulate the relations of the citizens and so to master the environment of urban life that the people of the city may have the fullest possible opportunity for self-development in civilization. As a matter of fact, however, the physical, moral, and esthetic conditions, amenable to political control, are often so neglected that the true ends of associated life in the city are partially unattainable. To say nothing of rapid transit and abundant light and water, many cities are notoriously lax in the protection of life and property, and particularly in sanitary protection. This inadequacy of social service is very clearly seen in the lack of foresight so often displayed by city authorities in the laying out of streets, parks, and playgrounds, and in the provision for schools.

3. The third evil of city government is a moral one, and consists in the corrupt use of civic authority for the furtherance of individual ends. It is patent in the utilization of public funds as assets with which to pay political debts, in the barter of franchises and contracts for private remuneration of one kind or another, in the failure to enforce the laws, and sometimes even in the protection of vice and crime for a money contribution or for political support. This evil gets its chief importance, not from the direct financial loss to the city, nor from the freedom enjoyed by the vicious and criminal classes, but from the fact that it throws politics into disrepute and degrades civic ideals, so saturating public opinion with distrust and a sense of helplessness that co-operation among the people for the attainment of truly political ends is rendered well nigh impossible.

Every existing evil has one or more causes, and to destroy the evil the causes must be removed. The causes of the evils of municipal government are, many of them, plain to even the casual observer. Some, however, are more obscure, and often the obscure cause is as important as the patent one. The committee finds the following principal causes of the fundamental evils already mentioned:

I. Of the economic evil, waste of public funds.

1. The first cause is ignorance, which takes three forms-ordinary illiteracy, or narrowness of intellectual culture among public officials, ignorance on the part of the people of the actual processes of their government, and that species of ignorance exhibited by men possessing wide general culture when they are called upon to perform public duties of a special nature and for which they have had no special preparation.

2. A second cause of waste is partisanship, by which is meant,

not the legitimate adherence to political organizations that stand for different public policies in the city, but rather the introduction of irrelevant issues into the choice of city officers and the solution of city problems.

3. A third cause of waste is State interference, by which is meant the attempts so often made by State Legislatures, the majority of whose members are ignorant of city conditions, or at least responsible to a constituency thus ignorant, to settle local problems of government. If partisanship means the introduction of irrelevant issues, State interference means the introduction of irrelevant men to govern.

4. A fourth cause of waste is municipal irresponsibility, which is the counterpart of State interference, and consists in the conduct of municipal affairs without due regard to the duty that the city as a local organ of government owes to the State at large.

5. A fifth cause of waste is indefiniteness of organization, on account of which the incidence of responsibility is obscure and the people are unable to hold themselves and their officials to strict account for the right conduct of public affairs.

II. Of the political evil, inadequacy of service.

1. The first cause is individualism, an undeveloped civic consciousness, on account of which the people tend to rely upon private effort for the satisfaction of public needs, and in many cases to stigmatize legitimate co-operative civic enterprises as "socialistic" and therefore unwise and dangerous.

2. A second cause of inadequacy of service is inadequacy of power, the city being unable to undertake needful civic enterprises on account of the parsimonious enumeration of its powers in its charter, or on account of obstructive limitations put upon its procedure by the constitution and laws of the State.

3. A third cause of inadequacy of service is undemocratic organization by reason of which the people of a city are unable to make their will effective.

III. Of the moral evil, official corruption.

1. The first cause is greed, not the greed of politicians particularly, but the greed of people generally in a community where the struggle for life is intense and wealth takes the place of culture in popular ideals.

2. A second cause of corruption is the lack of civic integrity; that is to say, a deficiency in civic ideals and an absence of civic unity, due in large measure to the newness and compositeness of most American cities.

3. A third cause of corruption is the private control of public privileges, by which special powers are intrusted to individuals and corporations without due responsibility for their proper use.

The committee recognizes that many of these causes are such as can be removed only through long-continued processes of education and social development. There are, however, many of them inherent in our present system of laws, and it is to the removal of such through a better organization of city government in all its relations that the committee's attention has been specifically directed.

The conditions of American commonwealth government-of which the municipality is a part-are such that a program of legal reform for cities must be divided into two sections, one to be incorporated in the constitutions of the commonwealths, and one to be enacted as a part of the general laws. The committee has; therefore, drafted a constitutional amendments embodying those remedies for the evils of municipal government which, in its opinion, may properly be made a part of the fundamental law, and also