The History of County Government
Part II.
The postwar era brought a number of trends that, together, worked as profound a social transformation as the nation had ever seen, and one with extraordinary implications for county government.
Once the great cities had been magnets for the nation’s “best and brightest.” Both housing and jobs were centered within city limits, with growing populations accommodated by vertical development, in the form of ever taller apartment buildings. City governments had strained for decades to meet this rising demand. Now, the advent of peace and prosperity whetted a public appetite for better living conditions, and it seemed to be an appetite many cities could not meet.
Those looking for a key date on which everything began to change—parallel, perhaps, to the April 22, 1889 launch of the Oklahoma land rush—might focus on March 7, 1949. That was the day Levitt & Sons opened its first sales office on a 1,500 acre tract in Nassau County, New York and began taking orders for homes in Levittown. More than a thousand couples were waiting that morning, some of whom had been in line for four days awaiting the chance to buy a four-bedroom house for under $10,000.
The rush to suburbia was on. Certainly areas adjacent to big cities had seen population growth before the war. Nassau County’s population had grown from 303,000 to 404,000 between 1930 and 1940, despite the Depression. But the boom that now swept the country exceeded all previous growth. Levitt put 17,500 households in his Long Island Levittown, and soon followed it with Levittown II in Pennsylvania, which grew into a community of 70,000 people.
Between 1948 and 1958, 85 percent of all new homes built in settled areas were outside the inner cities. And by 1968 a list of the 10 fastest-growing large counties in the United States included six that were suburbs of large cities and four that included a large city within their borders. The top three growth counties in 1960-1968 were suburbs of Los Angeles, Washington, DC and New York. Only six large counties actually lost population during that period, and in each of these the counties’ residents were predominantly located in an old central city: The shrinking counties were New York (Manhattan), Suffolk County, MA (Boston), Allegheny County, PA (Pittsburgh), Baltimore City and St. Louis City (both of which carry out city and county administrative responsibilities), and Hudson County, New Jersey (Jersey City).
But although people moved in large numbers into unincorporated areas, they still expected the services they’d relied on as urbanites: Schools, parks, hospitals, libraries, fire and police departments. All of these expanded services were added to those counties had already provided, and dramatically increased counties’ financial obligations in many areas.
For example, county government spending on libraries, which stood at only $4 million nationwide in 1932, had reached $31 million by 1957. County expenditures on parks, $7.6 million in 1928, had grown by 1957 to $67 million, an increase of nearly 900 percent.
County governments, in existence for centuries, seemed logically positioned to respond to these needs. But however much citizens might look to their counties for services, the county governments themselves were often ill-equipped to deliver.
Although “local” in geographic embrace, counties generally remained defined as arms of the state government, some with powers strictly limited by the continuing application of Dillon’s Rule.
Structures, though, must evolve as needs change. Tens of millions of taxpayers and voters will not acquiesce for long in having their needs go unmet. As the face of America changed throughout the 1950s and later, the impetus for new and better forms of local government became irresistible.
New structures, new strategies
Several initiatives attacked this new host of problems, all with implications for county government.
The challenges facing urban or urbanizing counties demanded dramatic new approaches to government, including modernization of old and ineffective forms of public administration. And because many of the new problems, from transportation to environmental protection, transcended local government boundaries, these new approaches generally stressed cooperation among jurisdictions at the local, state and national level.
In 1959, the National Association of Counties (NACo) conducted its first Urban County Congress, an innovative attempt both to help local officials deal with their new pressures and to update the image of county government in the eyes of the public and of officials at other levels. The conference brought together more than 900 urban leaders.
Vice President Richard Nixon told the assembly that “your responsibilities for the welfare of your fellow citizens will be greatly increased, as an estimated one million acres become urban and suburban each year…I salute you as you start this major experiment in the solution of urban problems.”
This gathering of urban leaders drew not only Nixon’s attention but that of the man who would oppose him for president in 1960, Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy. Kennedy warned that “city governments cannot always assume the sole responsibility for the solution of these pressing urban problems. I repeat, they cannot—our state governments will not—the federal government should not—and therefore you on the county level must.”
These views were mirrored in the nationwide trend for cities, towns, and other “subcounty” government entities to transfer responsibility for key functions to the counties in which they were located. Counties, simply, were seen as the most responsive and efficient level of government to serve public needs in a given geographic area.
During the 1960s, for example, 40 percent of all counties responding to a federal survey reported that they had assumed responsibility for police protection previously provided by a subcounty government. Only three percent had shifted this duty in the other direction.
Similarly, 27 percent had taken over responsibility for jails and corrections, 37 percent had assumed the library management function, 45 percent had become responsible for planning previously done at a more local level, and more than 20 percent of all counties now said they were responsible for roads, highways, sewage, refuse collection and public welfare. In each case, a dramatically smaller percentage of reporting counties had conveyed these responsibilities to subcounty governments.
Fulfilling all these new duties, though, meant counties needed more authority, and more political power. Moreover, they needed to break through decades-old perceptions and begin commanding more respect and cooperation from other levels and entities of government.
The battle, then, was twofold: First, expand county government’s capacity to address local challenges; second, secure counties a “seat at the table” when city, state and federal authorities came together.
One man, one vote
Shifting population alone doesn’t guarantee shifting political power. No matter how quickly they grew, suburban areas would not have the clout to put their own agendas into action if they did not simultaneously enjoy dramatically expanded political power in their state legislatures. During the 1960s and 1970s they largely realized this power as a result of a national political revolution—ironically, a revolution largely instigated in earlier years by city dwelling voters.
Throughout the country, many states maintained a “county unit” system in which every county was entitled to representation in the legislature regardless of its population. Other states, while their constitutions provided for occasional reapportionment, hadn’t done so in decades or more. As cities grew in population, their voters increasingly challenged a system that concentrated more state political power in rural areas at the expense of urban centers.
In the 1950s, for instance, on the eve of the reapportionment revolution, Los Angeles County contained more than 38 percent of California’s population but elected only one out of forty state senators. Dade County, Florida, with about 20 percent of that state’s population, got to choose only three out of 95 members of the lower house and one out of 38 state senators. Cook County, Illinois, had more than half the people of Illinois within its borders and produced more than half the state’s tax revenues, yet elected only 24 out of 58 state senators.
In the landmark case Baker v. Carr (1962), the U.S. Supreme Court, acting on litigation filed by citizens of Tennessee, ruled that urban voters were entitled to challenge malapportionment of legislative districts, and that the federal courts could hear such challenges.
A series of further decisions followed, culminating in 1964 with Reynolds v. Sims, in which the court held that one-man, one-vote applied to both houses of the state legislature. Famously, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that “legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests.”
Despite some further legal challenges, most states proceeded quickly to redraw their legislative district lines. Rural areas lost influence while urban areas gained. Although in the short run this change favored cities, in the long run it also had the impact of increasing counties’ political power and influence in the state capital.
A surge toward home rule
As counties gained political power based on their growing population, many sought vigorously to use this new influence to secure expanded home rule from their state legislatures.
Home rule generally followed one of two models. Some states delegate to their counties some limited and specifically defined powers, while continuing to maintain control over critical functions such as revenue and fiscal policy. In the broader “charter” model, counties are permitted by the state to adopt a form of local constitution with the approval of their own voters. Charter counties have broad discretionary power to determine their own organizational structure, levy taxes, raise revenue, manage their own personnel, and spend money on a wide spectrum of programs and activities.
By 1970 a total of 15 states had granted charter authority to their counties. But it had taken 60 years to reach this point, beginning with California’s constitutional amendment in 1911. Four states conveyed charter authority to counties in the 1950s and another four in the sixties.
Then, between 1970 and 1975, the list grew by 13. Moreover, before that time, hardly any counties had actually availed themselves of the opportunity to adopt charters. Now there was a surge. Though there had been only about a dozen county charters nationwide in 1950, by 1973 there were 71, most of which had been adopted since 1960.
Charter activity continues virtually unabated to this day, although voters have not always approved charter proposals. Indeed, a number of states have had repeated efforts to grant charter authority to their counties defeated at the polls. Still, by 1996, 79 percent of the 47 states with viable county governments had provided for home rule in some form; more than 2,300 counties were covered. Roughly 130 counties nationwide operated under a county charter in that year.
Hand in hand with the charter movement came a drive to modernize the forms of county government to improve administration and impact.
The longest-standing form of county government, and the one most prevalent in rural areas, is the so-called “commission” form, in which voters elect a multi-member board. Known by different names—commissioners, supervisors, aldermen, etc.--these board members wield both legislative and executive authority, sharing some specific responsibilities with separately elected “row (or constitutional) officers” such as a sheriff, clerk, and coroner.
The particulars of this power sharing, i.e., the relative powers of board members and row officers, varies widely from county to county. Supporters praise the commission form as the most democratic because it provides independent election of key department heads as well as board members, and as the least susceptible to corruption because power is more diffused and the system offers more checks and balances.
Critics, though, complain that this system lacks a strong executive, instead relying on (often part-time) citizen-legislators to administer increasingly complex government functions. Diffuse power also means vague responsibilities, and in the absence of professional management of county affairs, key decisions are more apt to be politically driven, these critics say.
Counties have often sought to fill the management gap by creating an officer whose explicit responsibility is the administration of county programs and operations. These structures are generally of two kinds: systems in which the council or commission appoints a professional county manager, and those in which a county executive is separately elected.
One of the results of the county home rule movement was to give counties the authority to choose for themselves among the alternative forms of government, rather than being limited to the form previously prescribed for them by state law.
This ability to choose their own government structure was a key step for counties seeking to apply more resources and talent to meeting public demands and tackling growing problems.
The History of County Government Part III
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