The news in this publi
cation is released for the
press on receipt.
SEPTEMBER 15, 1926
THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA
NEWS LETTER
Published Weekly by the
University of North Caro
lina for the University Ex
tension Division^
CHAPEL HILL, N C.
THE UNIVEI^ITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS
VOL. XII, NO. 44
COUNTY GOVERNMENT CHAOS
reform or bankruptcy
The' least creditable institution in
America today, the least efficient and
most wasteful, the thing the average
citizen knows least about, the subject
must neglected by the colleges and uni-
versitiej of. the country, the Dark
Continent of American politics, the
jungle of American democracy—such
are the arresting phrases that have
come into common use of late to char
acterize county government and county
affairs in the United States.
Tne grand jury reports and the
■yearly balance sheets given to county
taxpayers completely justify these
phrases, at least in all but a bare hun
dred or so of our 3,200 counties. These
documents make a rare body of litera
ture, and they are well worth studying.
The law in every state calls for a
round-up of county finances and an or
derly exhibit of the same in every
county every year. Last year in eighty-
four of the hundred counties of a cer
tain state these exhibits, such as they
were, went to the public in the local
papers; in a few instances in pamphlet
form. In five counties they were merely
tacked upon the courthouse doors for
lack of county papers. Forty counties
published only partial statements and
sixteen counties published no state
ments at all.
As a rule the newspapers carried these
statements piecemeal. Instead of giv-
ing the entire exhibit in ope issue, a
half dozen issues Or so carried the story
of county finances. -To get the whole
report it was necessary to clip from
week to week, file the fragments care
fully away, and finally assemble all the
parts for study— a tax upon attention
that the average citizen is not equal to.
Usually the typesetting and proofread
ing, or lack of proofreading, sprinkle
the columns so thick with all sorts of
errors as to make the whole thing use
less for any purpose whatsoever. As a
result the most alert taxpayer throws
up his hands in despair. It is a capital
way of befuddling the public mind, but
it is the common way in most states.
Dark Mysteries of the Tax List
No wonder a country eoitof was
moved to say the other day, “The an
nual statement in my county is so ab
surd that 1 alwajs feel like I'm robbing
the treasury when I render a bill for
printing the rigmarole.” And the bill
for county printing was $1,786 a tidy
little sum for a country weekly.
But the money of the taxpayers will
be wasted in this fashion for many
years to come unless intelligent citizen
ship demands a businesslike statement
of county rinances. Here is a problem,
just one among many, for county-study
, clubs to work at. ,
In fewer than a dozen counties was
there any proper assembling of assets,
indebtedness, receipts and expenditures
for the various purposes of counti
business. Commonly the exhibits lack
a classification of accounts, and there
fore nobody can tell exactly bow much
is spent tor this or that purpose—say
on paupers, the total number or the
per-capita cost; or on highways, the
miles built, the average cost per mile
of the uitterent types of road, the per-
capita daily cost of labor and work
animals, or the share of the various
townships m the expenditure for roads
and bridges during the year.
As a result the average citizen knows
little or nothing about county finances,
about, the tax list and the amazing
inequities, iniquities and delinquencies it
discloses every where; about what county
revenues are spent for, and whether
they are spent wisely or unwisely, effec
tively or wastefully. As a rule, nobody
knows whether or not the county is on
the safe side of the deadline—not even
the final authority in county finances.
Whatever may be its name.
For instance, a certain county council
in Indiana in iy28 proposed to raise the
tax rate by a lull third, with enough
money on hand in the general fund to
finance the county two whole years
without any tax levy at all. The
finance authorities were stupidly ignor
ant of the big cash balance, or interested
people forgot to mention it, or some
body was getting ready to play a shabby
trick on the taxpayers.
We happen to have at band a copy or
two of what impresses us as being a
really worthwhile kind of financial ex
hibit by a board of county commission
ers—an orderly a-b-c affair, as it prop
erly ought to be for the average
reader. It is a thin booklet three and
a half by six inches, and it is mailed
out yearly to every taxpayer in the
county. The reader can stick it in his
coat pocket and chew on it at his leisure.
It is so compact and simple that a way
faring man, though a taxpayer, can
read it as he runs and get some sense
out of it about the money affairs of
his county.
He can see the receipts in detail and
in lump sums. Under proper head
ings he finds just how much was spent
for the various purposes, to whom
county money was paid and for what
the total expense of courts, juries,
paupers, care and feeding of prisoners,
bridges, road building and repairs by
townships, equipments and materials
purchased, interest paid, county office
commissions and fees, and so on and
He can learn the miles of highway
built, the average cost per mile, and
the per-capita daily cost of work
animals and hired labor. He sees at a |
glance what the bonded and floating in
debtedness of the county is.
A Billion-DoUar Pie
He has a chance to see where the
county stands in its finances. And
since the same forms of accounting and
reporting are used year b^ year, he
knows whether the commissioners are
doing better or worse than former
commissioners.
It is easy to see that if every county
in the stkte were using the same form
of annual exhibit, this or somh other,
the taxpayer would soon begin to know
what counties were using public money
to the best advantage and what coun
ties were wasting public funds.
As it is, there is no basis for com
parison. In one county in 1914 the
convicts engaged in road work cost
jl 13 a day; in another, niiety-five
cents; in another, $1.73- But we just
stumble on these differences here and
there in the country weeklies. No pub
lished state report enables anybody to
compare his county with every other m
the details of county expense.
County bookkeeping and reporting
ought to be .simple and uniform, and
then the people might know in every
county whether or not their commis
sioners were getting results or getting
left. ,
But at present nobody in the state is
in any position to say whether or not
the people are getting proper results
from the $75,000,000 the counties are
spending on roads alone during the last
five years and the $96,000,000 more
spent on othef county purposes. And
so it is the country over, at least out
side the two or three states that re
quire uniform county accounting and
reporting upon all public moneys han-
died. , ,,
Of course there are waste and graft
in county government-innocent waste
by county officials unacquainted with
costs and prices, untrained m business
methods and easily misled in business
contracts; , waste because of crude
methods of bookkeeping; all kinds of
waste, more or less honest waste.
On the other hand, there are waste
and graft because organized big busi
nesses want a finger in the annual
billion-dollar pie of county expendi
tures in the United States.
It is usual to find in almost every
county somebody who represents these
business interests, who plays the game
with the local authorities and turns the
trick with ease and comfort to his soul.
There is money to be made in selling
construction materials, heating outfits,
furniture and supplies of all sorts,
gasoline and oil, automobiles, auto
trucks and school buses; in taking con
tracts to build roads, bridges and cul
verts, courthouses, jails and school
buildings; in controlling bank deposits,
of public funds, in buying county
bonds and lending to county boards-
honest money, dishonest money, all
sorts of money!
Wherever the business end of county
affairs has come under strict tevira
and pitiless publicity, amazing inem-
ciencies are disclosed. For instance A a-
meda County, California, saved $810,-
000 in one department in four years by
a searching investigation of county
business.
In Indiana, since 1909, county offi-
cers have returned to the county
t-easuries the greater part of $l,b0U,-
COUNTY GOVERNMENT
The least creditable institution in
America today, the least efficient
and most wasteful, the thing the
average citizen knows least about,
the matter most neglected by the
colleges of the country, the Dark
Continent of American politics, the
Jungle of American Democracy, are
some of the phrases in common use
about county government as com
monly found in the 3,200 counties of
the United States.
County government is without
ideals. County officers serve with
no manual of duties, responsibilities
and procedure—expeept in a bare
half dozen states. It is a headless
affair, uninformed, unregulated,
irresponsible, 'and governed by local
custom mostly— regardless of law.
The subject in general is covered
by no body of organized informa
tion; it has developed no science;
and no courses on county govern
ment are offered by any American
college or university—so far as we
know.— E. C. Branson, in the 1917-
18 Year-Book of the North Carolina
Club on County Government and
County Affairs.
000 improperly paid them. Frank G.
Bates, in the American Political Science
Review, reports a long list of more
recent sidelights on local government
in Indiana—a bridge built at the public
expense on a private road; eight school
buildings erected for $466,000 less than
the bond issue proposed for that
purpose; only two of forty-two culverts
a single county built according to
contract; tax levies reduced $7,000,000
m five years by a businesslike review
of local budgets.
The Indiana Way
These inefficiencies get into the light
in Indiana, first because the state tax
commission, when petitioned by local
taxpayers, reviews and revises proposed
bond issues and tax levies, and second
because the state board of accounts pre
scribes uniform systems of accounting
and reporting in all public offices, state
and local, audits all public accounts and
undertakes the recovery of all misap
propriated funds. The explanation is
simple. In a quarter-century local
taxes in Indiana have risen from $19,-
000,090 to $100,090,900 a year.
Here is a brief list of innocent and
wicked items, chosen at random out of
a document upon the county affairs of
another state where county taxes have
increased almost exactly 1,000 percent
m the last twenty-five years;
“A pay roll of $1,300 or some such
amount turned m weekly by a road con
struction boss; always paid and never
checked.
“One hundred nineteen bills, total
ing $16,211.67, paid at one sitting by
county commissioners w'ho could not
possibly know what the money was
spent for.
“A county highway commissioner
trades with himself through a dummy
roads boss for use of'teams in roads
construction.”
A Trail of Inefficiency
“A board of county commissioners
jointly with a county board of edu
cation borrowed $50,000, kept the
transaction off the records, deposited
the money in a bank whose president
was a school-board member, the chair
man of county commissioners being a
stockholder. The bank was not bonded
and failed six months later with total
loss to the taxpayers.
“A new board of county commis
sioners pays a contractor $1,000 more
than he offered to take from the old
board.
“The county commissioners pay a
highway contractor $76,000 to get them
selves out of a bad bargain.
“Rural police, traffic officers, game
wardens, justices of the peace, mayors,
clerks of recorders courts and superior
courts are required to turn over to the
county treasurer for the public-school
funds all fines and forfeitures collected;
but delayed, infrequent reports or no
reports at all are the rule. What the
annual loss is to the school funds nobody
knows. I
“In one county a batch of vouchers
amounting to $70,626.40 for road arid ;
hr idge work-paid but uncanceled. No i
mark to show that they had become
worthless as evidences of debt. |
“No record anywhere in the court-i
house showing the indebtedness of the
county, and not an'official who could
give any intelligent estimate.
Tn another aounty, the clerk of the
court embezzled $30,000 before he was
caught.
‘Of the last twelve sheriffs in a cer
tain county five have defaulted.
“In still another county the sheriff is
both tax collector and treaurer; is short
in his treasury account and behind $100, •
000 in his tax collections; gets round
$10,000 out of these two offices; spent
$12,00(1 to get elected.”
Such circumstances account for the
rising interest among the people in
local government and courthouse affairs
in America. There are signs of it in
every state of the Union.
We happen to know because it has
be^n our particular job the last twelve
years to assemble every scrap of print
about county government in the United
States. It is a whale of a job and it
keeps five people busy day by day in the
Department of Rural Social-Economics
at the University of North Carolina.
For ten years or more pronounced em
phasis has been laid on the problems of
local government in Nprth Carolina, and
at last a state commission on county
government and three field research
workers are concentrated upon this
particular problem. The press of the
state, and particularly the country
press, is busy with it. The State Asso
ciation of County Commissioners is
sponsoring the movement.
Reform or BanKruptcy
The beginnings of interest in this and
other states were confessedly faint and
feeble, but tbe response.of the public is
now pronounced and emphatic. Every
body seems to know at last that town
ship and county government is almost
everywhere a ramshackle affair, that
county government in the thirty-two
hundred counties of the United States
must be improved, and that it must be
done in dire self-defense.
The explanation lies in the staggering
increase of the tax burden. It is a
question of reform or bankruptcy m
almost every county of the Union.
The most hopeful thing about the
situation is the statement we have heard
times without number out in the open i
country—namely, “I don’t mind paying
taxes, no matter how much the total is,
provided the other fellow is paying on |
the same basis of valuations, and pro-:
vided further that I can see a dollar’s i
worth of benefit for a dollar’s worth of !
'^'*lt is worth noting that this growl is |
not against taxes per s'e, but about tax
inequities and courthouse inefficiencies. :
It is not a growl against public schools,
public highways and.public-health work,.
but a growl againsftincompetency and
WAStC.
North Carolina’s Progress
North Carolina already has three
counties operating under county man
agers distinctly so named, and five
other pouhties have county managers
in fact but under other titles. Just
recently a group of midstate counties
has declared for the county-manager
plan, or rather the candidates for county ,
offices are themselves proposing this
plan and campaigning this issue. By
the time the November elections are
over,the people of this state will he
fairly familiar with the phrase “county
manager,’’ if not with its full signifi-
cance.
The total cost of county government
in North Carolina has risen from $3,-
000,000 to $36,000,000 a year, all be
tween 1904 and 1924. A ten-fold in
crease in county taxes alone in twenty
years is a staggering fact in public
•finance.Meanwhile the volume of
county bonds in North Carolina has
now reached the huge total of $102,000,-
000, municipal bonds have soared to
$121,000,000, while the bonded indebted
ness of the state is now $134,000,000-
three-fifths of it for improved highways
alone, on a self-financing basis—that is
to say, gasoline taxes, license and
registration fees are sufficient to cover
construction, maintenance, interest and
sinking-fund charges.
Mainly these state and local bonds
have been issued for better school build
ings, improved highways, streets, sew
erage systems, water mains and drain
age projects. At bottom they are in
vestments in common prosperity and
well-being.
Since the Great War, such increases
for such purposes have swept tl^whole
of' America ■ like'a prairie fire and tax
increases in other states are very like
the tax increases in North Carolina.
In 1924 county government revenues the
country over were almost exactly $1,*
I 000,000,000, or three times the total of
ten years before.
Signs of an Awahening
Not everybody pays municipal taxes,
for barely half the population of the
United States lives in incorporated
towns and cities. Relatively very few
people pay taxes directly into the Fed
eral treasury, and under the new law
they will be 2,333,000 fewer next year.
And still fewer pay state taxes in states
like North Carolina and California
that have abandoned tbe general-prop
erty tax for state purposes.
But the county tax collector knocks
at every door, town and country.
At last a new era of public concern
has begun, mainly within tbe last fifteen
years, and largely because of Goodnow's
thirty-three page^ on local government
in bis Principles of Administrative Law
in the United States; John A. Fairlie’s
work at the University of Illinois;
Maxey’s Survey of County Governments
in Delaware; the books of James, Por
ter, Shambaugh and others; the chap
ters of Gilbertson, Dodds and Childs in
the National Municipal Review, and the
articles of Herbert Quick in The Country
Gentleman.
But better still, the folks themselves
are at last waking up. The Farm
Bureaus beyond the Mississippi are
pushing the work of local tax-study
clubs and they are asking very em
barrassing questions—namely, Who
pays taxes, and what becomes of tbe
taxpayer’s dollar? The investigations of
the farmers’ tax-study clubs may not
be competent in many instances, but
given time they soon might be.
It’s up to the Farmers
vAnd this is not all. It is not the
farmers alone that are worrying about
taxes. It has come to concern industrial
enterprisers in North Carolina and
every other state chat is moving out of
agriculture into manufacture. Perhaps
they have been quicker than the farm
ers to learn that the essential matter
of attention is not state taxes but
municipal and county taxes.
In North Carolina something like half
of our industrial plants are in unin
corporated villages or out in the open
country, and county taxes on physical
properties and corporation excesses
have come to be a critical matter. Tbe
local tax burdens'on mills and factories
vary in different counties, and vary so
widely as to jeopardize business profits
here and there and in some instances
to threaten bankruptcy.
For instance, in one county the total
taxes paid by the cotton mills amount
to $2.49Ver spindle. In another county
the total taxes amount to one and a
' quarter cents per pound of cloth. In
another county the tax drops to fifty-
six cents per spindle, or three-fifths of
a cent per pound of clotn.
So the cotton mills, tobacco factories
and furniture plants will, if they are
wise, work hand in hand with the farm
ers- for tax equities and business
L. .........t-B/M-icio Blit
efficiencies in courthouse offices. But
it is up to the farmers-farmers every
where, in every state—to lead the way
out of county government chaos.-
E. C. Branson, in The Country Gentle
man, September 1926.
UNITED ON TAX ISSUE
After surveying the field, we have
.eached the conclusion that there is .
one issue on which everybody in this
state is agreed, and that is, thete
should be a more equitable distribution
of tax burdens, and that can be brought
about only by equitable assessment of
property. Alexander farmers and Poe
farmers; business men and manufactur
ers; bankers and laborers and every
body so far as we have heard from,
want something done about property
assessments and^taxes. At this stage,
it looks as though the legislature could
do something along that line without in
curring opposition. It is about the only
thing that has practically the unanimous
support of all people of all classes.
There will probably be some who will
complain if an equalization is made, be
cause it would necessarily mean more
taxes for those who are notnow bearing
their share. But those who don’t mind
doing their part, if they know it is their
fair part, will welcome some method of
securing an equitable distribution of
the tax burden according to a definite
standard , of assessment. — Durham
Herald.