Suchergebnisse

AbstractUse of initiative, referendum and recall in California municipalities aids in extension of principles to state.

Canadian local-government institutions have been influenced by those of both Great Britain and the United States, yet they retain a distinctly Canadian character. Few residents of the United States have been acquainted with Canada's internal governmental problems, because there has been relatively little information available. Canada's top political leaders have been pre-occupied with making Canada a nation, one prepared to take its place in world affairs. But what of the governments within the Dominion? The Rowell-Sirois Commission hearings and its reports in 1939 brought to the attention of many people the problems of dominion-provincial relations. More recently, the Goldenberg report in British Columbia brought attention to certain provincial-local relationships. During the 1930's, many persons in the United States became interested in the Canadian provincial boards of municipal affairs because those boards seemed to offer a means for disciplining improvident municipalities and maintaining good fiscal standards. Viewed in their full perspective, however, these boards and the departments of municipal affairs in Canadian provinces illustrate vital developments in central-local relations. Within the past forty-five years, Canadians have moved rapidly in developing the vast natural resources of the country and in building cities, towns, and villages.

Direct legislation has returned to excite considerable interest after a quiet period of a few years in which the traditional legislative processes were allowed to operate undisturbed in the states and cities. Old age pension plans put before the voters by initiative petitions in Colorado, California, and Ohio have excited more inspection of direct legislation procedures than at any time in their history. Several studies have been made of the laws governing the initiative and referendum, and also of their operation in the states. No less significant than state-wide initiatives and referenda have been the anti-picketing and labor regulating initiatives in Los Angeles; ordinances in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Oakland, California, requiring two operators on street cars; attacks upon proportional representation in New York by petitions; attempts by labor organizations in Detroit to set policies regarding working conditions on the city's street railways by initiative ordinances; or the attempts by firemen and police in many cities to obtain civil service and pension systems through the same device. Several of these cities now have approximately thirty-five years of experience with municipal direct legislation.Numerous factors in American municipal politics have combined within the past fifty years to develop a sentiment for laying upon the electorate a portion of the responsibility for determining local policy. The idea that the voters of the municipality should be allowed, to decide certain policies was developed chiefly by the home rule movement.

Out of the period at the beginning of this century in which revolt and revision of the lines of established political control produced the Progressive movement, the initiative was developed as a means for amending state constitutions. It may not be said with accuracy, however, that the initiative was a product solely of the Progressive movement. Men such as Dr. John R. Haynes of California and W. S. U'Ren of Oregon were urging the initiative in their respective states before the Progressive movement crystallized. Nevertheless, the initiative was a tool much to the Progressives' liking, and most of the states that adopted it as a method of amending their constitution did so during the time in which the Progressives were at the height of their effectiveness as a party group.

AbstractThe story of the untiring devotion and leadership of the man most responsible for the adoption and retention of the initiative, referendum, and recall in California.

AbstractThe state has recently begun to recognize the problem caused by the construction of highways into and through cities and accordingly to take over such streets or sharestate‐collected motor vehicle taxes.