seconded by Charles H. Burton, the following resolution was unanimously carried:

"Whereas, pursuant to the Reorganization Act of 1949, the President of the United States transmitted to the Congress of the United States on May 1, 1952, Reorganization Plan No. 5 of 1952 relating to the District of Columbia; and

"Whereas under said plan there would be transferred to the Board of Commissioners of the District of Columbia all the functions of the Board of Tax Appeals of the District of Columbia with full authority to redelegate such functions to an agency of their choice or creation; and

"Whereas under said plan there would be vested in said Board of Commissioners continuing authority to abolish any agency to which they might delegate the functions of said Board of Tax Appeals, to withdraw or modify such delegation, and to appoint and remove at will the officer or officers performing such functions; and

"Whereas the existence of such continuing authority in said Board of Commissioners would be fundamentally incompatible with the judicial nature of the functions now performed by said Board of Tax Appeals, i. e., the trial of tax cases between taxpayers and the District of Columbia, subject to appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia: Now, therefore, be it

"Resolved, That the Bar Association of the District of Columbia is opposed to to the inclusion of said Board of Tax Appeals among the agencies subject to the provisions of said Reorganization Plan No. 5 of 1952."

The CHAIRMAN. Dr. George B. Galloway.

STATEMENT OF DR. GEORGE B. GALLOWAY, LEGISLATIVE REFERENCE SERVICE, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Dr. GALLOWAY. Mr. Chairman, I have a statement, a 15-minute statement. What is the pleasure of the committee? Shall I present it, or file it?

The CHAIRMAN. We are going to treat you as we have all the others. You may either read it or put it in the record, or summarize it, whichever you prefer, Doctor.

Dr. GALLOWAY. My name is George B. Galloway. I am senior specialist in American Government on the staff of the Legislative Reference Service in the Library of Congress. I also serve as a consultant to the Senate Committee on Government Operations and to the House Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Department at their request.

The municipal government of the District of Columbia is one of my assigned fields of responsibility for information and advice. During the Eightieth Congress I was staff director of the Subcommittee on Home Rule and Reorganization of the House District Committee which produced the Auchincloss Report of 1948. That report, which was favorably reported to the House, spelled out a comprehensive reorganization of the District government and recommended establishment of the council-manager form of government for the District of Columbia.

During 1926-29 I was a member of the professional staff of the Philadelphia Bureau of Municipal Research where I became familiar with problems of municipal government and administration in a large city and wrote a series of published reports on the same questions which are now being discussed here in Washington. So I am not a newcomer to the field of municipal government. I appear here today at the invitation of the committee.

At the outset, let me briefly place the question before us in historical perspective. There has been much public discussion and

comment in the last few weeks upon the relative merits of the commission and manager forms of city government. In this discussion there has been some confusion and some misstatements of fact.

The elective commission form of city government originated in Galveston, Tex., in 1901, after a disastrous storm and tidal wave. It enjoyed the greatest vogue during the first decade of the twentieth century. Upward of 500 cities have had this plan of organization. Since 1920, however, the commission form of government has been on the decline, having been abandoned in more than 150 cities over 5,000 population either for the manager plan or for the mayor-council arrangement.

Today the commission plan, in which the commissioners serve collectively as a local legislative or regulatory body and individually as administrators of the municipal departments, or as overseers of groups of departments, is found in 14.5 percent of all the cities in the United States over 5,000 population, while the council-manager plan is used in 25.6 percent of these cities and the mayor-council plan in 59.9 percent of the 2,318 cities over 5,000 population.

After an initial period of popularity, the commission form began to wane in public favor because of a number of defects it disclosed in practice. It came to be regarded as a backward step

1. Because the commissioners, while qualified as policy makers, often lacked experience and competence for administrative work.

2. Since the commission plan combines ordinance-making and executive functions in the same hands, it deprives the administration of any impartial critic in the city government.

3. In its attempt to combine unified control with departmental independence the commission plan confuses responsibility and scatters control between the commissioners as a body and as individuals.

4. Rivalry and lack of cooperation developed between the commissioners as well as logrolling, deadlocks, and "deals." The need of a coordinating official such as a mayor was widely felt.

5. Under the commission plan the experience of large cities like Washington, D. C., has been that the Board of Commissioners is too small in size to make local policies for, and represent fairly the diverse interests of, a large population.

For these reasons the commission form of city government has been eclipsed in the last 25 years by the more successful manager plan. Of the two plans-commission and manager-American experience has been happier with the latter. The National Municipal League has for many years embodied the manager form of city government in its model city charter.

The chief differences between the commission form of government in Washington, D. C., and elsewhere are—

1. That the commissioners here are appointed by the President instead of being elected by the people;

2. That the District government performs certain State functions not found in other municipalities;

3. In the size of the governing body.

Washington has three commissioners, while New Orleans, which is the largest city in the United States with an elective commission, has 567,257 people and 8 commissioners.

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The manager plan: The manager form of city government dates from its first adoption by Staunton, Va., in 1908. Since then more than 1,000 cities and towns in the United States have adopted the manager system. Less than 3 percent of them have ever abandoned it. In the judgment of municipal experts the manager plan has been the most successful form of city government America has produced. It is modeled upon the internal structure of the private business corporation. We have had 44 years of successful experience with the manager plan in cities large and small.

The manager plan has been recommended for adoption in the District of Columbia by the Brookings Institution (1929), by the Dono-. van (District of Columbia Auditor) Committee (1933), by Griffenhagen & Associates, efficiency engineers (1939), by the House District Committee in the Eightieth Congress, and the Senate District Committee in the Eighty-first Congress; by the District budget officer, Mr. Walter L. Fowler, in 1951, and by the Federal Bureau of the Budget

in 1952.

In fact, the only official opposition to adoption of the manager form of government for Washington, D. C., has come from the Board of Commissioners, which would be abolished if the manager plan were adopted.

Brig. Gen. Gordon R. Young, former Engineer Commissioner of the District, was intensely interested in this subject of reorganization of the District government. It was my privilege during 1947, when I was working on the Auchincloss report, to have a series of conversations with General Young in which he gave me the benefit of his personal views on the administrative reorganization of the District government.

On July 16, 1947, General Young sent me a 15-page draft memorandum and a chart setting forth in detail his own reorganization plan. His suggestions, which were very helpful to me in developing the Auchincloss plan, were offered in strict confidence at the time. But after his retirement from office, General Young removed the restriction of confidence on my use of his proposals.

Two features of the Young plan are particularly noteworthy now. First, he contemplated the establishment of 12 new departments, including departments of education, libraries, and recreation: Functions which are left autonomous under the Robinson 15-department plan.

Second, at what he called the first level of the local government, General Young felt that the function of policy determination could best be handled "consultatively by a group of men," but that the function of policy execution "can best be handled by one man."

Expanding on this point, General Young wrote me as follows: Even if the present number of Commissioners and the present method of appointing them is retained, the necessary increase in their powers and responsibilities involved in the reorganization proposed in this paper might justify ap pointing a single executive head under the Board of Commissioners. This would amount in effect to the establishment of the council and city-manager type of government, the Commissioners being the council. The strictly executive powers which they now exercise over the departments assigned to them they would delegate in their entirety to the city manager.

* *

*

In short

said General Young

the introduction of a city manager directly under the supreme group may be needed for efficient administration if the District machinery is reorganized and the Board of Commissioners left as at present; and unquestionably will become necessary if the Board of Commissioners itself is reorganized.

The largest manager city today is Philadelphia, with a population in 1950 of 2,064,794. Under its new city charter, effective January 1, 1952, Philadelphia has a managing director appointed by the mayor. The managing director supervises the 10 major departments of the city government and appoints their heads.

The next largest manager cities today are: Cincinnati, 500,510 population; Kansas City, 453,290; Dallas, 432,927; Oakland, 380,576; Rochester, 331,253; San Diego, 321,485; Toledo, 301,358.

Since 1938 Los Angeles County, Calif., with a present population of 4,151,687, has had in effect the county-manager form of government with a chief administrative officer whose position has acquired the stature of a manager. The government of Los Angeles County is a combination of county and municipal government with a budget of $321 million for the current fiscal year.

It is not correct to state, as General Robinson did in his testimony before this committee on May 15, that the people of Washington are overwhelmingly opposed to a city manager. The truth is that the council-manager form of government has been repeatedly endorsed by spokesmen for local civic groups who have testified before the House and Senate District Committees of Congress in recent years. The Washington Post has also supported the manager plan for Washington editorially.

Far from being "a victory for sound government," as the Evening Star described it editorially, the President's submission of plan No. 5 was in fact a victory for those who have a vested interest in the existing outworn and obsolete commission form of government.

In comparing the relative merits of various forms of government, it is no part of my thought to reflect upon individual officials. Surely the District of Columbia is now fortunate in having a very competent and conscientious Board of Commissioners whose qualifications compare quite favorably with their civilian predecessors.

The awards for achievement which various District agencies have received in recent years, which were mentioned in previous testimony, are indeed occasions for justifiable pride in their accomplishments. But they have no necessary connection with the form of the local government here. They were received by operating departments and agencies below the top level.

Merits of plan No. 5: The immediate question now before this committee, however, is not whether the form of the District government shall be changed. The question before you is: Shall the President's proposal for a broad and continuing delegation of power to the District Commissioners, to enable them to modernize and simplify the structure of the District government, be approved or disapproved.

I suggest that your answer to this question may well depend upon the extent to which the proposed reorganization promises to correct the long-standing and generally recognized defects in the existing administrative organizations of the District government.

What are these defects? As repeatedly pointed out in a long series of objective reports, they are simply these:

1. The District government has upward of 80 separate agencies, too many for efficient administration;

2. Numerous autonomous boards and commissions are beyond the administrative and/or fiscal control and supervision of the Board of Commissioners.

3. Responsibility for the administration of related programs is scattered among several agencies in particular functional fields.

4. The District lacks a chief administrative officer responsible to the governing body for the over-all conduct of the municipal administration.

5. The Board of Commissioners combines the incompatible functions of policy making and policy execution.

6. The Board of Commissioners is too small a body to make local policies for a city of more than 800,000 people and diverse interests. The pragmatic test of plan No. 5 is: Will it correct these defects when put into effect?

It seems clear that the Commissioners' plan to consolidate existing District agencies into 15 departments will go far toward carrying out their announced principles of integration and centralized control. It will modernize and simplify the administrative structure of the District government, coordinate related programs in the same departments, and reduce areas of autonomy. More or less than 15 departments could conceivably be set up. Brookings suggested 8; Griffenhagen 17; Auchincloss 14; Keauver and General Young, 12; Fowler 9, plus 4 offices, and the Budget Bureau plan proposed 10 municipal departments. But the exact number is a comparatively minor matter. The exclusion of a dozen or more District agencies from the operation of the plan will prevent by so much the correction of the existing disintegration in the municipal structure. But apparently the pressures for continued autonomy behind certain agencies that serve special interests in the community are too strong to be overcome at this time. Within these limits, however, we may confidently anticipate that the implementation of plan No. 5 will largely remedy the first three defects outlined above.

There is no positive assurance, however, that the Commissioners' plan will correct the other basic defects of the existing system which I have mentioned. There is no explicit provision in the plan for a chief administrative officer.

Indeed, General Robinson has interpreted section 3 of the plan as having been drafted:

for the express purpose of making unworkable the appointment either of an executive or city manager between the Board of Commissioners and the operating agencies.

The opinion on this point which the committee has sought from the Attorney General of the United States will clarify the meaning of this section.

However, it is evidently not the intention of the present Board of Commissioners to appoint such an officer. If they fail to delegate general oversight of administration to an officer who would correspond to the general manager of a private corporation, appointed by and responsible to its board of directors, then the incompatible functions