ROBERT T. CRANE

University of Michigan

A special interest attaches to the decision of the people of Michigan in 1908 to adopt municipal home rule. The cities of this state were already in enjoyment of exceptional protection from legislative interference. The doctrine of the unwritten constitution, first enunciated in Michigan by Judge Cooley and followed in but a few other states, gave to Michigan cities a peculiar position. The exact extent to which this doctrine has made cities independent of the legislature is controverted. It is not too much to say, at all events, that the cities of Michigan have enjoyed in consequence a more sheltered situation than have the cities of most other states.

Michigan cities were thus early safeguarded from the wilder excesses of legislative domination; yet their treatment, favorable as it was in comparison with other American cities, was not deemed satisfactory. The people of the state considered that conditions demanded a fundamental change in the relations between the cities and the legislature of the state.

Some of the conditions at least which were responsible for the formation of public opinion may be briefly stated. Among these are to be noted the web of legislative enactments and amendments in which city charters became enmeshed; the narrowness of the activities in which municipalities were permitted to engage; the awkward, inefficient, forms of governmental organization and the unbusinesslike methods forced upon them by law; the direct intervention of the legislature in questions of salaries, tenures and duties of local officials; the imposition by law of unnecessary financial burdens for purely local purposes; and above all else, the intolerable manner in which changes in the laws were effected.

The confusion resulting from frequent changes in the charters by means of local acts particularly affected, as indeed did most of the other legislative atrocities, the larger cities of the state. Hundreds of pages of laws making additions and repeals, and repeals of additions, and repeals of repeals, were appended

to some of the original charters. It became excessively difficult to determine what provisions of these manifold acts of the legislature were in effect. The supreme court of the state referred as early as 1880 to the charter of Detroit "as a confused and blind collection of enactments and amendments." The fundamental law of Detroit had not then approached the height of its complexity. The charter of each city became merely one of a series of laws affecting that city. Each session of the legislature added a volume of special acts altering the legal powers of various cities. Only at rare intervals did a revision properly incorporate into a charter the changes effected through special and separate acts of the legislature.

The judicial doctrine that a city must be able to show that any power which it might attempt to exercise had been granted by the legislature, together with the legislative practice of granting to cities only specific and enumerated powers, combined to hamper the free development of municipal activities. Even when the legislature was disposed to make the additional grant of power desired, the necessity for its action imposed delay. By and large, the Michigan legislature was not illiberal. Action could generally be secured on reasonable requests. Much more onerous was the jealous strictness with which the courts construed delegations of power, often withholding from cities the full measure of what they had sought and believed they had obtained from the legislature.

The cities of Michigan were afflicted by their charter with an assortment of governmental antiquities. Incongruous odds and ends of governmental machinery, salvaged from the wrecks of every experiment tried in the administration of American cities, were thrown together. Organization was framed neither upon any logical principle nor upon the sure teaching of experience. The general type of government was what is often called "federal." A mayor and council were its most prominent organs. It was based on the principle of the separation of powers, so far as it was based on any principle at all. To avoid any semblance of consistency, Michigan charters generally made the mayor the presiding officer of the council as he had been before the doctrine.

of separation was accepted. Some of the administrative officials were appointed and some were elected, and it appeared to make little difference which was one and which the other. Some functions were in the hands of individuals and some of boards-boards of all kinds, partisan, bipartisan and nonpartisan. And these boards again, survivals of a mid-century experiment, were allotted indifferently to certain departments in some cities and to others in other cities without any real reason for the variation.

City government under these legislative charters was as loosejointed as possible. All sorts of officials and boards were given, by charter, authority and independent tenure of office. They were under no common superior. There was no positive control, no discipline, scarcely any leadership. Hence their voluntary and continuous cooperation became an absolute prerequisite to the accomplishment of anything. Under such an arrangement they could do little ill, but it was impossible also to do much good. And this it was entirely impossible to accomplish, as a normal thing, promptly, efficiently, and economically.

Not content to create an organization whose very lack of coordination made it difficult to operate, the legislature laid down regulations for its operation of such a nature as to impede further its success. Such regulation provided, for instance, cumbersome procedure for the authorization of payments from the city treasury, or forced an improvident or impolitic extension of public improvement.

Intervention by the legislature was especially frequent and annoying in questions of salaries, tenures and duties of local officials. A large list of officials and boards was set up for each city by the legislature, their employment made obligatory, and their tenure fixed. Salaries likewise were stipulated by law and must 'be paid by the cities. The cities could not get rid of unnecessary officials without action by the legislature, though they were allowed to add other officials. In the matter of salaries, however, the cities were powerless in many instances either to raise or lower them. The development of new activities, such as that of public health, was in consequence distressingly hindered. Even the power of selecting local officials was tampered with. In some

instances the organization of specific city authorities was such as to remove them from all control by the local community and to 'relieve them from all responsibility to the community.

The amounts to be raised by taxation for local purposes, and the amounts to be appropriated for expenses, were in large measure determined by state authority. The legislature had even reached the point of requiring that a particular street in a certain city should be paved. Whether justly or no, irritation was felt at dictation by the legislature as to how much money a city should raise and how it should spend it for objects which were of purely local concern.

More objectionable to the cities than any of this obstruction of freedom and facility in developing their organization and activities in true accord with their progressive needs, was the uncertainty as to when a city might receive a blow from the legislature through some unexpected, unacceptable and arbitrary enactment. A large number of local bills passed each legislature. Some were desirable and properly designed to cure defects or to provide necessary changes. Others were passed simply for the purpose of erecting more jobs or higher salaries, with consequent increase of the burden upon the taxpayers. Seldom was legislative intervention in the interest of economy. Often the motive was purely political, as where the legislature of 1891 changed the ward boundaries in one city, only to restore them a few months later, the temporary alteration sufficing to effect the removal of the Republican aldermen.

The immediate inference often deduced from these occurences that the legislature was moved by malevolence in its treatment of the cities was ill-founded. The legislature as a whole was not evilly disposed. The misfortunes of the cities were found to be due almost wholly to their own local representatives in the legislature. These members practically held in their own hands the fate of the cities in their respective districts. To them the great power of the legislature was in this particular almost abdicated.

The influence of the local representative of a city in the legislature arose from the ordinary procedure on local bills. A member would introduce a bill concerning some city in his dis

trict. He would say it was a good bill and one which for some alleged reason it was important to pass immediately. He therefore moved to suspend the rules and to put it upon the second and third readings at once. The legislature could know but little of the circumstances. With the great number of bills before it each could not be discussed. The legislature was perhaps and usually perfectly agreeable to meeting the wishes of the city. And unless someone was on hand to contest his statement, the legislature naturally acted on the assertion of the local member that the city desired the bill enacted. A bill would sometimes be passed by one branch, be brought before the other and passed there without any examination as a matter of courtesy, and then be signed by the governor, all within one day.

Measures constantly became law before the people of the city had any intimation that any legislation was even contemplated. Anyone who could get the backing of a local member in the legislature might reasonably hope to put over even an inherently vicious measure. It does not speak badly for the individuals in the legislature that they did not make worse use of their opportunities. Only the most incessant watchfulness could give the city a chance to combat their influence. Through a faulty method of handling local bills, the cities thus fell a prey to political influence in the legislature.

Most of the evils of legislative regulation of the cities, then, were due merely to defective legislative procedure. Yet it seemed impossible to find a practical corrective of this defect. Public opinion, influenced by the strong state league of municipalities, demanded on the other hand a radical change. The solution adopted was municipal home rule.

Home rule in Michigan as established by the revised constitution of 1908 is a matter of spirit rather than of legal form. It is true that radical changes in form have been inaugurated. The city charter is no longer an act of the state legislature. It is now a local constitution framed and adopted by the people of the city. The grant of powers by the state to the city is no longer in the form of an enumerated list of specific powers. It is a blanket