| POWER GRAB ON LONG ISLAND |
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Politics is funny. Things that happen on the high levels of government show up again happening on the lower levels. Yesterday it was a case of getting rid of an Attorney General who had developed political halitosis and had to be replaced, today it’s a town board doing the same thing with a bunch of administrative assistants, sewer inspectors, building managers, etc., for the same kind of reasons that cost the A. G. his job. Like him, they were getting in the way and they had to go.
This re-staging of a drama lately played out in Washington on a national stage is now taking place in Brookhaven, Long Island, the township where I reside. It’s small-town politics, but Brookhaven isn’t a small town actually. The population is half a million. The politicians consider it worth fighting over and they fight. In elections last November the Republicans regained control of the town board, winning a one-member majority. The Democratic Supervisor won re-election also, thereby becoming a hunted man in the eyes of the board. They immediately voted for a re-organization of the town government which would place the offices of the town assessor, tax receiver, personnel chief, planning director, parks commissioner and purchasing director under the board instead of the Supervisor.
This would reduce the supervisor to the condition of a castaway on a desert island, which is exactly what the board intended. Out here politics ain’t beanbag, as the saying goes. But then, when was it ever? The legislature cutting the legs out from under the executive has happened before. The most famous case was in 1867. President Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, was engaged in extreme combat with Congress over postwar reconstruction of the South. Congress wanted tough measures; Johnson didn’t. His opponents had a friend in his Cabinet, Secretary of War Stanton, a holdover from Lincoln’s administration. Johnson wanted him out, but Congress passed a Tenure of Office Act that stripped him of his power to fire Cabinet officers. Johnson fired Stanton anyway
Congress struck back by voting Johnson’s impeachment. His trial went on from March to May of 1868 and was decided in his favor by one vote, cast by Senator Edmund Ross of Kansas. John F. Kennedy memorialized this in his book Profiles in Courage.
Oh yes, the Tenure of Office Act was later declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. They thought the intention of the Constitution was to give the president authority over his appointees and not to turn it over to several hundred members of Congress. Clearly the Brookhaven Town Council doesn’t agree. They want to make the town employees responsible to seven bosses, the council members, rather than to one, the supervisor. Nothing like variety, is there?
Even when a government does have unity of command, i.e., one person in charge, things can degenerate to a point where nobody’s in charge and anarchy reigns. In England in 1780 for instance, “economical reform” was the catchword of the parliamentarians fed up with King George III’s expansion of the so-called civil list, his royal slush fund for the maintenance of his establishment and everything appertaining thereto. This last took in a large number of the members of Parliament, whom George had put on his payroll in return for their votes. This way he had been able to continue the American war through one disaster after another, simply by defeating any anti-war measures introduced in Parliament. The opposition was mounting, though, and after the surrender at Yorktown in 1781 it became irresistible. Reform was demanded: George must account for the money he used for bribery and for the other out-of-control expenses as well.
The royal setup was a rat’s nest of pensions, sinecures, overlapping jurisdictions, no-show jobs, secret accounts, hired stand-ins, empty offices, graft, malingering and general chaos. Besides being King, George had other titles as well, duke of this, earl of that, each one entitled to an income but also saddled with expenses for estates rarely even visited. On all his properties there was at least a skeleton staff living well at the King’s expense. Unfortunately for him, they couldn’t vote in Parliament, but they did enjoy good appetites and never missed a meal. In his major residences there were bigger staffs, sometimes including servants to wait upon the servants, and always they were furnished with long tables and big kitchens for the convenience of hearty eaters putting away three meals a day.
All this grew up over the centuries English royalty existed, often creating new offices to be filled by the high nobility as a way of binding them to the king, even though the nobles eventually tired of the positions and farmed them out to substitutes, who split their fees with their employers. Among these offices were two called the great wardrobe and the removing wardrobe, which had no functions but did provide incomes for “dependent” members of Parliament.
That wasn’t all. There was a jewel office serving the same purpose, a Board of Works which built nothing, a Mint no longer in use, an artillery office abandoned but still staffed, and on and on. It was all about political patronage, a subject as familiar in the eighteenth century as it is now. “Boondoggles” was not a word in use then, but they existed all the same.
This kind of thing still goes on. Working at a school polling place one election day I was shown a storeroom by the custodian which was stuffed literally to the ceiling with new desks and chairs never used. This was how the school made sure it used up its full budget each year so as to get the same allotment the next year.
This shows how things can go to pot when too many cooks are in the kitchen and too many departments under one roof or one government. They provide a good illustration of chaos theory. If Brookhaven plunges ahead with its plan to share out authority over operations to a legislative junta instead of an executive, they will go the same way. Can they be stopped? I’ll report on that in my next dispatch from the front. | |
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