ment of assembly districts was based on the enumeration made in 1892, and the extraordinarily rapid shifting of population. since that period has resulted in leaving some of the assembly districts with a voting population approximately five times as great as that of others. The most accurate way available to the Commission for ascertaining the present voting population of the various assembly districts was to take the vote cast at the recent election. The number of aldermen allotted to each aldermanic district has been ascertained by taking the total votes cast at that election, and for every five thousand votes or major fraction thereof cast in any assembly district the Commission has allotted one alderman. In each district the vote taken as a basis was the highest total vote, whether for candidates for Presidential Electors or for Governor. The result has been that the smallest assembly districts have one alderman each, the greater number two each, and a few three or four each. A difficulty arose from the fact that portions of two assembly districts of Westchester County now lie within the borough of The Bronx, and that a fraction of an assembly district in the former County of Queens now lies within the Borough of Queens. We have dealt with these districts by adding the fractions from Westchester County to the Thirty-fifth Assembly District of New York County, giving this territory six aldermen, and by adding the fractional district in the Borough of Queens to the Second Assembly District of Queens County, thus giving this territory three aldermen. The result of the arrangement proposed is that there will be one hundred and twenty-three aldermanic districts. To avoid possible misapprehension, we repeat that this allotment of aldermen among the several assembly districts is merely temporary and is intended to continue only until the next legislative apportionment after the census in 1905, when there will be two aldermanic districts in each assembly district. The President of the Board of Aldermen and the Presidents of the Boroughs, under the proposed charter, will have seats

and votes both in the Board of Aldermen and in the Board of Estimate and Apportionment.

We believe that it is of great importance to secure a constant publicity in the conduct of all City affairs. The Board of Aldermen should have ample powers to institute inquiry at all times. For this purpose, and also in order to secure intelligent and uniform legislation, we have continued the provision of the present charter that the heads of the several departments should have seats, without votes, in the Board. But we have extended this by requiring each head of department to attend, whenever summoned by the Board of Aldermen, and by requiring him to answer any questions that may be put to him by any member touching the affairs of his department, of which forty-eight hours' written notice shall be given.

At present the time of the Municipal Assembly is largely taken up with the most trivial matters, such as granting special permits for stands of one kind or another upon the public streets. By section 50 of the bill herewith submitted we provide that the Board of Aldermen may not pass any special ordinances in relation to these matters, and that all ordinances in relation thereto shall be general ordinances, which may apply either throughout the whole city or throughout specified sections thereof; which shall fix a definite license fee for every authorized structure, encroachment or obstruction to the street, according to the character, extent and duration thereof; and which shall provide for the issuing of revocable licenses therefor. The adoption of these and other like provisions will, we believe, give more serious purpose to meetings of the Board, and will lead men of character and ability to become candidates for aldermen.

It has been strongly urged upon the Commission, that some system of proportional or minority representation should be adopted in the composition of the Board of Aldermen. This Commission has not thought it necessary to consider this subject, because it agrees with the views of the former

Commission, that under the Constitution of the State, it is impossible to provide for such representation in the Charter "without making a vital part of the Charter depend upon a provision of uncertain constitutionality." And a majority of the Commission concur with the former Commission in recommending a constitutional amendment authorizing laws to be passed providing in municipal elections for minority or proportionate representation. Some of the advantages which are looked for under such a scheme of minority representation we hope will be found in the system we recommend of small aldermanic districts. Under the present Election Law (chapter 909, Laws of 1896, as amended by chapter 363, Laws of 1899) it is in substance provided that five hundred electors may nominate a member of Assembly or School Commissioner, while independent nominations of candidates for public offices to be voted for only by the electors of a town or ward of a city, or a village, can only be made by one hundred. electors." This does not in terms cover the case of aldermanic districts such as we propose; and we recommend an amendment to the Election Law providing that some reasonably small number of electors be empowered in such districts to make independent nominations.

THE MAYOR.

The Commission does not recommend any abridgment of the very great powers now vested in the Mayor, except in so far as such powers are necessarily abridged by the enlargement of the powers conferred upon the Borough Presidents by the other provisions of the Charter. On the contrary, the Commission recommends that the powers of the Mayor should in some material respects be enlarged. Experience has shown, both in the former cities of New York and Brooklyn, that very great powers can wisely be entrusted to a Mayor elected by the

people at large, and that a concentration of responsibility in his hands conduces effectively to good government.

With respect to the Mayor's term of office, there is force in the arguments which have been presented to us for a reduction to two years. The Commission, however, recommends that the present provisions of the Charter in this regard be left unchanged, and that a Mayor be elected for a term of four years and be ineligible for re-election for the succeeding

term.

The most important change which we have made in the powers of the Mayor, and one which must have far-reaching consequences, is to extend throughout his entire term the absolute power which he may now exercise only for the first six months of his term, to remove certain executive officers; and to provide that all his appointees (except members of the Board of Education, Judges, etc.) shall hold office without definite term.

Under the present Charter important executive functions of government, except in the matter of the finances, are in the hands of Commissioners who are not directly accountable to the people or even to their elected representatives. Immense powers are thus vested in persons who are nominated by the Mayor, but who, six months after the Mayor takes office, pass out of his control and out of the control of any one representing the people, except in the event of their committing some offense which is susceptible of formal legal proof, and which, under the technical rules established by the Courts, will require a removal. The futility of that course has been proved on various occasions. The Mayor cannot reasonably be held responsible for officials unless he has an absolute power of removal.

The tenure of office of the higher appointive officials in our city government is unlike that which prevails in the federal government where all the principal officials hold their office at the pleasure of the President, and are removable by him at

will. Such was the system adopted in the early days of the Republic. At the present time, when The City of New York

as

now constituted embraces more inhabitants and vastly greater wealth than were contained in the whole United States at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, the Commission believes that a similar system should here prevail.

The Commission does not attach serious importance to the argument that the appointment of officials without definite term and subject to the Mayor's power of removal will make it more difficult for him to secure the services of competent and able officials. As we have just said, similar conditions prevail in the federal service, and it is highly improbable that any Mayor will ever remove an official of his own appointment without some justifiable cause. It may, indeed, be hoped that the possession of a constant power to remove will rather tend to keep in office many heads of departments during the administrations of successive Mayors, especially those whose duties are of a technical or professional character.

BOROUGH GOVERNMENT.

The Charter as at present existing and as originally framed contemplates the division of the city for administrative purposes into five boroughs. In each of these divisions a Borough President exists whose powers at the present time are practically limited to the possession of a seat in the Board of Public Improvements, with no vote "except upon matters relating exclusively to the borough of which he is President." He is also a member of each of the Local Improvement Boards. within his Borough, but, as we shall presently point out, these Local Boards, under the restrictions of the Charter, are possessed of few effective powers.

It is clear that the vast territory comprised within the present City of New York, embracing as it does, districts so essentially different as the crowded east side of Manhattan