64 A STUDY OF THE CITY CHARTER
of representative citizens and to serve as its chairman. The committee's task
was to study the revenue problems confronting the city and submit its
suggestions and recommendations to the Mayor and the Council.
Although the responsibility of the citizens' tax committee related to
city finance, it is significant that the first section of findings and recommendations in its final report, issued in March, 1944, is devoted to the city
charter." Because the Mayor's appointment and removal of commissioners
are subject to Council consent, the report pointed out, the Mayor maintains only an indirect control over the commission-headed departments.
Also, the report continued, the charter charges the Mayor with the duty
of exercising a careful supervision over all city affairs, but the Mayor lacks
the power to carry out this obligation because of the wide dispersion of
authority under the charter.
Government by many commissions, the committee said, is recognized
as an expensive and relatively inefficient type of organization. It then went
on to quote from notes prepared for it by the California Taxpayers' Association:
Although the cost of boards, commissions, and other chief administrative
personnel may not be considered large in relation to total municipal expenditures, it amounts to a substantial sum. . . . Cities which do not have board organization have only the expenditure for the head of the department, and the
double administrative entity is not supported.
Before a policy can be put into effect in the City of Los Angeles, it must
follow a tortuous path through the executive, legislative, and administrative
bodies. Unless a complete spirit of harmony and cooperation prevails, decisions
arc likely to be delayed and action slow. It is usually difficult to fix responsibility for action.
The appropriation of money for expenditures is the responsibility of the
Council and the Mayor, but the spending of money is performed largely by
boards which are beholden neither to the Council nor the Mayor.
. . . Each city department tends to become a separate organization doing
work in its own way and not always recognizing that it is part of a larger government having a common purpose.**
According to opinions expressed to the committee by both officials and
laymen, the report stated, the existing charter is not a satisfactory instrument of government; under the charter authority and controls are diffused,
actions delayed, and operations expensive. The committee concluded that
23Report of the Los Angeles Citizens' Tax Connnittee, Los Angeles, March 17, 1944, pp.
12-14.
**lbiJ., p. 13.
CHARIER REFORM EFFORTS 65
one of the principal means of bringing about greater economy and effectiveness in city government would be the adoption of a new city charter,
constructed to meet the needs of a modern, growing city. The committee
therefore recommended the election of a board of freeholders at the next
regular or special city election to revise and streamline the charter to provide a more simplified form of government with direct lines of authority
and responsibility.
More Council Defeats
On October 20, 1944, about seven months after the publication of the
tax committee study, the Council's Charter and Administrative Code
Committee recommended the submission to the voters at the May, 1945,
election of the question of electing a board of freeholders to draft a new
charter. "A complete revision at this time seems desirable!' the Council
committee noted." The Council, however, defeated adoption of the recommendation on November 20 by an eighr-to-five vote. On the same day,
the Los Angeles Taxpayers' Association suggested that the Council request
its Personnel Committee and Mayor Bowron to select fifteen persons to
constitute a charter revision committee. It would prepare, with the aid of
experts, a revised charter for presentation to the voters at next year's May
election. More than three months later, in March, 1945, the Personnel
Committee recommended that the communication be received and filed
because it already had been given consideration. Thus ended another attempt to get major charter reform under way.
The Jacobs Report
Recommendations for comprehensive changes in the charter soon reappeared and again, as in the recent instance of the Los Angeles Citizens'
Tax Committee, they were made in a study sponsored by the city government. In July, 1945, J. L. Jacobs and Company, consultants in public
administration and finance, presented a report composed of recommendations for coordinating and simplifying the city government.2" These recommendations were a by-product of a personnel classification and pay
plan study which the Jacobs firm had completed for the city a few months
earlier and which had enabled the consultants to analyze the administrates Angeles City Council File No. 18,568.
^Administrative Coordination and Simplification of Los Angeles Municipal Governmental
Machinery, J. L. Jacobs and Company, Chicago, July 16, 1945.