In the second place, Honorable Judges, the permanent adoption of a commission form must necessarily mean a sacrifice of legislation and the ultimate destruction of local self-government.  Even though the city may be subordinate to the state, nevertheless, it has a broad field of independent action.  Otherwise, why give it a separate personality and a separate organization?  Cities are permitted to exercise vast powers of police and of taxation.  It is idle to say that a few commissioners can give satisfactory legislation.  They cannot represent community interests.  Their executive functions will naturally bias their judgment.  Moreover, each commissioner, knowing little of the needs of the other departments, will naturally take the word of its administrative head, especially since he desires the same freedom.  This was actually the case in Sacramento, Cal., where the commission plan was tried for fifteen years and given up as an abject failure.  Says the Hon. Clinton White of that city:  “In almost every instance, the board soon came to the understanding that each man was to be let alone in the management of the department assigned to him.  This resulted in there being in fact no tribunals exercising a supervisory power over the executive of a particular department.”  Honorable Judges, a reviewing and legislative body is indispensable in city government and a commission makes no such provision.  Weak in administration, wholly lacking in matters of legislation, dangerous as a theory of government, it cannot help but result in the complete subjection of local government to the state.  The inevitable result of its permanent adoption will be that the important local legislative functions will become a mere administrative board with discretionary power as in the case of Washington, D.C.  In the words of Professor Goodnow:  “The destruction of the city council has not destroyed council government.  It has simply made local policy a matter of state legislative determination.”  If we wish to destroy the life of the city, make it impotent to discharge the functions for which it was organized, then, and then only, it might be feasible to place over it a commission.

But, Honorable Judges, authorities are agreed that cities must be allowed greater freedom of action in local affairs, that municipal home rule is indispensable.  The governments of our large cities have been dominated to such an extent by the state legislatures, usually partisan and irresponsible to the locality concerned, that in many cases self-government has become a term, hollow and without meaning.

The gentlemen condemn the city council, yet they pass over the real cause for its decay.  Restore to the city its proper legislative powers, confine the work of the council to legislation instead of allowing it to go into details of administration,