The Rise of Gilded Age Municipal Bureaucracies

Although, I discuss city bureaucrats last in a series of Gilded Age policy actors, it is very unclear they are last in their impact over the municipal policy process—or our history. Economic development owes a great deal to the independent park commissions of the Age, but that will not be apparent until Chapter 5. Also, the formation of city bureaucracies relevant to economic development, while not widespread across Big Cities, did begin in New York City and Philadelphia during these years—but that also will be not be known to the reader until Chapter 4. In any case, this section will focus on two city bureaucracies which were key elements of the Gilded Age municipal policy system: the comptroller and independent commissions.

 

The city comptroller played a role not dissimilar from that of a chief operating officer (COO), or even a city manager of later years. He certainly was the city’s chief financial officer. The comptroller was central to development of the budget, usually possessed control (sign off) on city contracts and expenditures, conducted the city’s financial affairs and bookkeeping, a sometimes auditor of departments and commissions, city’s agent in the sale of bonds, and responsible for city’s credit rating. The comptroller was probably more important than the mayor in tax abatements and city incentives. He was also usually ex officio on most boards and commissions along with the mayor and corporation council. The comptroller in most cities was independently elected, often not in the same years as mayor (Philadelphia, Brooklyn, St. Louis, New York City, for example); or the comptroller was appointed by the mayor (Boston, Baltimore and Chicago). “During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, downtown businessmen, not ward politicos, occupied the post of comptroller, just as they did the office of mayor.”[1]

 

 “Few comptrollers of major cities were supine servants of party leaders, or mindless flunkies of the mayor or council. Most had some previous political experience… partisan loyalty to the dominant political faction was not a chief criterion for attaining the post … the emphasis on integrity, financial acumen, and favorable ties with the banking community also strongly influenced the choice of comptroller”[2]. The professionalism and the autonomy of the comptroller’s office are evidenced by the process which followed the death of bureaucrat New York City Deputy Comptroller Richard A. Storrs. Storrs served in that position from 1856 to 1896 when he died. His estate upon death totaled only $15,000—he had a reputation for honesty, early opposition to Tweed and an effective protector of city funds. In any event Ashbel Fitch, the comptroller, received a nomination for Storrs’s replacement from Richard Croker, the famed Tammany boss. Fitch instead called a meeting of twelve presidents of New York City’s leading banks and insurance companies, and they nominated a candidate whom Fitch then appointed[3]. The comptroller’s was not a policy-making position, but it clearly was preeminent in the policy implementation stage. The comptroller was certainly the key liaison on the day to day interrelationships between the chamber and other business organizations, the independent commissions, and the last bastion of hope against municipal legislatures.

 

Gilded Age municipal commissions could be regarded as an experiment, or another example of hybrid, quasi-public organization. Like now discredited, Early Republic corporate charters before them they were arguably clumsy attempts to make both policy-making and public powers accessible to private elites. Commissions were indisputably government agencies. Commissions were governed by their board of directors, whose appointments were determined by mayor and council. The comptroller and mayor usually served as ex officio, and their activities were included within the comptroller’s fiscal, expenditure, bond issuance and audit authority. According to Teaford, selection for these board positions was heavily influenced by chambers, and reserved for “persons of standing and character”. Some boards were self-perpetuating, as their members would fill any vacant position. Many important commissions had independent funding and taxing powers. Teaford calls these independent boards, bureaus and commissions as a third element [after executive and legislative] in [Gilded Age] city government.[4]

 

Among the earliest example of autonomous municipal bureaucracies were police bureaus. As early as the 1860’s police bureaus appointed by state governors were found in New York City, Brooklyn, St Louis, Baltimore and Cleveland, and by the 1880’s Boston and Cincinnati enjoyed state appointed boards. Public health, libraries, schools, and sinking bond commissions were overwhelming candidates for being set up as an independent commission/board. The motivation for forming a board was usually to separate politics for administration, i.e. keep the legislature out—but specialization of expertise in a critical function, public health for example was also important. Between 1870 and 1885, corporate charters permitted boards and these were the golden years of their formation.[5] That they declined after the passage of the 1883 Civil Service Act strongly suggests their transitional role between the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian city government and a strong mayor government.

 

The commission most interesting from an economic development perspective was, of all boards, the park commission. A hint why park commissions are of importance to our history is reveal when Boss Tweed “injected city government” into the construction of Central Park an ongoing project of a New York City Park Commission. Disruptive at the time to the construction, it spurred our soon-to-be-friend Frederick Law Olmsted Senior into launching an independent parks movement, complete with parks commissions and review boards across the nation. In city after city for the next several decades, Big Cities established parks commissions and entered into major projects, such as Boston’s Emerald Necklace. As shall be discussed in future chapters, this movement provided occupations, training, experience, and expertise to a new developing profession of great future importance to economic development: planning. Another economic development-related policy area was public works which Griffith believes “were among the most numerous”. His observation that between 1870 and 1890, it was “medium-sized and smaller cities” that were most “remarkable for the frequency with which such boards of public works appeared in these new charters”—Tennessee and Wisconsin “well nigh universal in medium-sized cities”[6]. As shall be discovered, this is the age of infrastructure installation and public works bureaus handled that vital economic development function—we suspect with chamber involvement and perhaps assistance.

 

Finally, the reader might ask if Big Cities reasonably portray what goes on in second and third tier cities. With some frustration, it must be acknowledged that research on these cities can be sparse, and their sheer number inhibits our ability to deal with them responsibly. One smaller city example, Manchester New Hampshire, suggests that as far as trends such as strengthening the mayor’s office and the propensity to use boards and commissions previous to twentieth century, their experience is similar. In City Politics, Banfield and Wilson observe

 

During the nineteenth century, when reformers were anxious to keep certain functions out of the hands of party machines, the practice was to create a large number of entirely independent boards and commissions—sometimes twenty or thirty. Most of these eventually became city departments under the mayor and council, but today (1963) many are still loosely tied or not tied at all to the city government proper. The distribution of authority in Manchester, New Hampshire [1880 population 32,600 and 1900 population nearly 57,000] is typical of what exists in many small cities. Manchester [in 1963] has twenty-one boards and commissions loosely tied to city government …[7]

[1] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., p.58.

[2] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., pp.58-59.

[3] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., p.61.

[4] Jon C. Teaford, the Unheralded City, op. cit., p.66.

[5] Ernest S. Griffith, A History of American City Government: the Conspicuous Failure, 1870-1900 (New York, Praeger Publishers and National Municipal League, 1938, 1974), pp. 52-53. Griffith believes there were some states that used boards and commissions more than others. The South for instance “lagged” in their use. He also noticed our aforementioned “herd” effect,  arrows in the quiver, in regards to forming public health boards and commissions. By 1873, he found between thirty and thirty-five cities had already formed public health boards

[6] Ernest S. Griffith, A History of American City Government: the Conspicuous Failure, 1870-1900 , op. cit., p 56.

[7] Edward Banfield and James Q. Wilson, City Politics, op. cit., p. 82.