Note 9 — Chapter XII · THE MENACE TO UNPOPULAR GOVERNMENT OF THE COMMISSION FORM OF GOVERNMENT FOR SMALLER CITIES

The question is frequently put whether it is better to have five commissioners and let them choose their own chairman as a mere presiding officer, or to provide that one commissioner specially elected shall be chairman, with special executive and administrative powers. The two plans represent simply a difference in the degree with which the executive and legislative powers are united. If one commissioner is elected specially as a chairman or a mayor, with administrative and executive duties, and the other commissioners are merely an advisory board, you have a certain degree of separation of the executive and legislative functions. The chairman or mayor must in that case be elected at large from the city. His office will be so conspicuous and important as to overshadow the offices of the commissioners, and there will be the probability of deadlocks between the executive and the commissioners exercising the legislative power. If, on the other hand, all the commissioners are equally possessed of the executive and legislative power, there is a complete union of both functions. The majority of the commission then becomes entirely responsible, not only for the making, but for the enforcement, of the laws and administrative measures. So far as the disrupting of extra-legal government in cities the size of Galveston is concerned, it is believed not to make any material difference which plan be adopted. The surer course is that of making the majority of all the commissioners responsible for the exercise of the entire legislative and executive powers.

It is entirely in accordance with the principle of the union of executive and legislative powers in the commission that it hire a professional municipal administrator to hold office at the pleasure of the commission and delegate to him such executive duties and legislative power, subject always to the control of the commission, as the commission sees fit.