NORTH YARD HARVARD UNIVERSITY JUL 13 2004 COPYRIGHT BY THE ACADEMY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE HARVARD LIBRARY EXECUTIVE RESPONSIBILITY IN ILLINOIS1 FRANK O. LOWDEN T is not necessary to point out to an audience of this kind that government is no longer the simple thing it was half a century ago. We have gradually been taking on new functions of government. Merely to preserve order is not the sole end of government in the minds of the American people today, and as government from year to year has taken on new functions it has created new agencies for the discharge of those functions. The most popular form which that agency has taken in recent years in the state, and perhaps in a lesser degree in the municipalities, has been the commission. When a commission was once established it was related to absolutely nothing else in the state government; it was theoretically responsible to the governor, but it was not articulated with any other branch of the government. Then, when another new activity was invoked, a new commission was organized, or some other form of activity to take its place. That had been going on year after year until in Illinois, at the beginning of 1917, there were something over 125 absolutely independent agencies of government having nothing to do with one another, not related or co-ordinated in any manner. Though each was theoretically responsible to the governor, of course in practice it was impossible for any governor, no matter what his industry, to exercise genuine supervision over this number of agencies. There was of course much overlapping of functions, there was much needless expense, and perhaps worst of all, there was of necessity great inefficiency. That is the problem we had to meet when our legislature assembled a year ago last January. Fortunately, a very able commission had been at work making a survey of our state government, and they made an admirable report. Taking that report as a basis, we tried to group these more than 125 agencies into a smaller number, putting those that were related to the same general subject 1Read at the National Conference on War Economy, June 5, 1918. under one head. We found that nine departments would logically include all of them. Those departments were: finance, trade and commerce, public welfare, public works, labor, mines and minerals, agriculture, public health, and registration and education. After we had determined upon the number, the question of the form of the departments arose. It is perfectly obvious that it would have required a revision of all the laws of the state unless we simply conferred upon a department, when we decided upon it, all the powers that were possessed by the various agencies which were merged into the department. That we did. Next, the question arose whether in framing the administrative code we should define by law the functions of heads of bureaus and divisions within a department. I insisted strongly that all the powers in the department should be concentrated in the department head, who, by rules and regulations, not by statute law, should provide exactly what the duties and powers of the subordinate divisions within that department should be. That view prevailed after much discussion. As a result, the head of a department can be held to a strict responsibility, because every subordinate part of that department is absolutely within his control. He can determine by rule and regulation exactly what the duty of every subordinate within the department shall be. If you do not accept that principle, you may have in form a government of departments, but in fact you will have a number of bureaus and divisions which are not responsive to the head of the department. That is exactly what has happened in Washington. You hear frequently that they have ten departments of government down there. They have hundreds, not ten, and for this reason: When Congress creates the Department of War, it does not stop there, but every time it establishes a new bureau in the War Department, it defines precisely and definitely just what the limits of that bureau are, and just what the bureau chief can or cannot do. The result is that the secretary of war is not the head of that department. He simply presides over any number of absolutely independent bodies within that department. The result is that you cannot have responsible government, and our friends in Congress, who are largely lawyers, when they frame a law, get themselves into the mental attitude of a lawyer who is drawing a will, wanting |