referendum and see if you have not made a promise to the people of this state, when they authorized the second hity minions of bonus, that you would have these nighways forever thereafter, for that amount of money anyway, constructed by a commission and not by the state engineer. Now you have got your Department of Public Works, and your Highway Department and your State Engineer. As a matter of fact, there are ten different distinct engineering departments in the State of New York; there are ten of them. Obviously the only thing to do is to create a Department of Engineering and put all ten of them into the one department, and have the man at the head of that department appointed by the Governor and responsible to him, so that he can in turn be responsible to the people wno elected him. There cannot be any difference of opinion about that. Now let us see, you have got seven departments in this state assessing and collecting taxes, spread out all over, and one of the fundamental weaknesses of it is that the elected constitutional heads of these state departments are always endeavoring to broaden the scope of their activities, and they don't have very much trouble explaining to the legislature that it ought to be done. Now, where would you put the collection of the Income Tax, if you had your mind on orderly business? You would put it in the Tax Department. Did it go there? No, it went to the Comptroller. Who would you have collect the Automobile Tax? Why, that ought to be in the Highway Department. Where is it? In the office of Secretary of State. You will not get any place if you are going to continue surrounding your governors with a number of elected state officials that are just as important in their own way, as he is, when they get there. And you cannot blame them; they are selected by the people the same as he is. The state engineer and surveyor this year asks for more money than was appropriated to him when he had the whole construction of the Barge Canal under his supervision. Well, he never came over to talk to me about it. A perfectly fine fellow, Frank Williams. I have to send for him and ask him about anything, and have him explain it to me. Still I am supposed to be the head of the government. Now with regard to the increased cost of the government, we must not fool ourselves about increasing appropriation bills. That is taking place all over the world. It has got to increase year after year. It is not fair to say that you can conduct any activity of this state today at the price that you conducted it nine or ten years ago. You cannot run your own house, you cannot run the smallest business in this city, at the same price that you conducted it nine or ten years ago. When we speak of the Health Department of 1910 we must compare it with the Health Department of 1919, which of course, the Senator did and understands it. With regard to our hospitals, what I have in my mind is that we are not spending enough money for the hospitals and I am going to ask the legislature to increase very materially our annual contribution for the upkeep of the institutions for the insane. It is a plain business proposition. The hospitals of the State today are over 1,000 employees short. They cannot get them. You cannot get a nurse for $55 or $60 a month; you cannot get an attendant for 28 a month. I had the manager of the Rome Custodial Asylum in the Executive Chamber the other day, and I asked him what kind of an attendant he got for $28 a month to take care of the feeble-minded children up at Rome; and he said, “Well, he is just about a little better than the children themselves." It becomes a pure matter of business. Now it is a question in my mind whether it is economy to run anything that way. I am doubtful about that from a business standpoint. I am doubtful if the State gains in the long run by trying to do a twenty or twenty-five million job with sixteen million dollars. You have got to fall short some place. The answer to it is that the people, the unfortunate people in these hospitals, who are the wards of the state, are not getting the care that they ought to get. You cannot give it to them with that amount of money. One of the dotors at Central Islip Hospital told me that for the whole summer practically, they were unable to take large batches of patients out into the open air because they had no attendants to watch them. With regard to the Highways, nobody in the state understands that situation better than Senator Sage. There is a cure for it. I will recommend it if the legislature will adopt it and the cure is this compel the counties, not only to make the initial appropriation for their share of construction, but make them pay half of the maintenance thereafter; and I will tell you what that will do. A certain amount of money is alloted to a county for roads. The Commissioner of Highways visits the county and he has a conference with the Board of Supervisors. Well, the Board of Supervisors look it over and they say, Well, what about this road here?" Well, that is a reinforced concrete road, it is very strong and it will stand the heavy truck traffic. With the money that is alloted to your county you can only get seven miles, but here is a road over here that will not stand up under the traffic and with the money alloted to your county, you can have 18 miles." The supervisors go into executive session, and they take the 18 miles on the theory that thereafter they do not have to spend a dollar to keep it up; the state has to maintain it. And that is the reason why, in sections of the state, you have roads that have been rebuilt four times already, and the bonds for their original construction have twenty years yet to run, at 42 per cent a year. Now that is a plain, ordinary, everyday business proposition. Of course, the counties are going to kick, but if we don't kick back, we are going to have, every year, this constantly growing maintenance account. The Commissioner of Highways certified to me that it requires $23,000,000 to properly reconstruct the roads in this state. When they were built, there were no 5 and 6 ton trucks running over them. How are you going to assess upon the users of the road all of the cost at the present price? I do not know, unless it may have the effect of stifling entirely that industry; that is the fear of that. Now I do not know who supplied the senator with the figures on Health Insurance. You can make anything cost money; it depends on how you do it. You have compensation for injuries applying to millions of people throughout this state. The administration of that does not cost a million; why should insurance against sickness cost eighteen millions? I am frank to say that I recommended to the legislature for them to dispose of that. I am not wedded to any particular bill; I have not got some other man's idea about it. I will go along with the legislature. I have had so much experience up there that I distinctly understand that the man who will go up there and say, "This is my bill, I want it this way or I won't take it at all," usually does without it. Now, we can get out of all this if we will only sit down together and I am one of the easiest men to sit down with. I was brought up in such a way that I cannot sit way back on the chair. I always lean over when I am talking to anybody (laughter and applause). I will do that with the Legislature and I will do it with the members and with my numerous friends throughout the State. I am well supplied with good cigars. I will bring them all over to the Capitol and sit down and talk it all out and let us get some place, but above all things, everybody that can do it, ought to make their best possible attempt to crush out the idea that nothing should be done for fear that it may revert to the credit of any individual. That is too small and it does not go. (Applause.) Now, I think I have consumed the time allowed to me, and in a loose way, have covered about what there is to say with the exception of just one thing that I want to call to your attention. One of the very good features of this program is the restriction on the Legislature of creating a new department for every new activity. Now, the Senator knows with me, we have talked it over time and time again, that if you do not have the restrictions you have to bend to the idea of some man or group of men who are interested in the particular thing that they are trying to do, and it is only human. One Legislature cannot bind another. You are not always going to have the same men in control in Albany that you have today. Next year you may get different types with different ideas about it. Now, we saw fit in this State, by our fundamental law, to put certain restrictions upon the Legislature. Written into the Constitution itself are certain things that the Legislature shall not do. The people have said so to them. They have prohibited the Legislature from changing the name of anybody by an act of the Legislature, from granting a franchise for street railways by an act of the Legislature. There is a whole page in the Constitution devoted to restrictions. It will not do any harm to put one more in there and say that hereafter new activities should be confined to the departments that are already organized and in operation; and that is good business as well as good politics. I think I have covered it all, or as much as I can today. Now, I appreciate the opportunity to come before a gathering of this kind. and have a frank and free discussion about this whole program. I repeat what I said that if there is anything about it that anybody can give me an argument on, that is not right, I can believe it in a minute if it is not all right, but I do believe that there ought to be put behind it a good, forceful, vigorous public sentiment so that at least the principles involved in it will be adopted in the interest of this State, in the interest of good government, in the interest of good business, and in the interest of orderly procedure with our State affairs, to the end that the Governor of the State may be the responsible man and that the Government may be understood by the people of the State. Back of a good deal of the discontent, not of the radical fellow that wants to be against you, that is fundamentally wrong, that was wrong in his youth, but a great deal of the discontent among the men that want to be right, is the absolute lack of understanding that they seem to have of what the government is doing and what its aims and purposes are, and one of the reasons for it in this State at least, is a general lack of understanding as to what the State can do. Everybody writes to me about everything in this State. They do not understand the orderly processes of the Government because they are too involved. The Senator and myself, sitting at the table, do not know where Spy Island is. I think that, in itself, constitutes an argument for a simplification of the government. Bring it in so that I will have a chance to look at it (laughter). Now, Mr. Chairman and members, I repeat that I am very thankful for this opportunity and I hope that when I attend your luncheon again, part of my speech will be devoted to those whose earnest and honest efforts furthered my program- not my program but the program of the Reconstruction Commission because it really belongs to them. I do not think I would be able to think all this out, myself. I would not dare claim the credit for it. It belongs to the Reconstruction Commission. They are men and women throughout the State who have absolutely no interest in politics. They were picked for that reason. They were men and women who gave their time and their energy to this country during the war, and they were called in after the war was over, to continue some of the work they were doing to help in the solution of the problems that come after war that are just as difficult of solution as the war problems themselves. THE TOASTMASTER: I think you will agree with me now that the Governor is not only popular, but also knows his job. (Applause) In behalf of the President of the Association, Mr. Morgan, I want to say that we have so thoroughly appreciated this luncheon and the gathering of these representatives from the State Legislature, the Governor, and Senator Sage, that we want to make this an annual affair, and if you will come, hope next time we will have an opportunity to hear from all of you. Before the Association of Managers of the State Charitable of it, I felt that I had one or two particular things to talk about to the Boards of Managers. I have had the honor and pleasure and opportunity of appointing a good many managers during the past year and i am going to say very frankly to you that the appointments were made pretty much on the report that came to me of how much attention the manager gave to his business in the preceding term. Now the theory on the part of the State of unpaid management of our institutions is a very excellent one because we have had it demonstrated, not only in the state but in the federal government, that you can get from public spirited citizens, without salary and without reward except the satisfaction they feel themselves of having done something for the state-just as good service as it is possible to obtain. I believe, however, that the State should encourage it to a little greater degree than we do. I have talked at some length with the Senate Finance Chairman. I have been unable to take it up as yet with the Assembly side - about some further degree of power to the Boards of Managers so they may have something to say about the fiscal control of the institutions, for the reason that I believe that too much of it is being done from Albany in a way that Albany cannot handle it because it is not in a position to have the first-hand information which the Managers have. The segregation of the budget into so much detail is a new thing. It was started in 1916 and the man who was responsible for suggesting it had for a great many years been connected with the Finance Department of the City of New York and he carried around in his mind the theory upon which the City of New York operated in its budget, and failed to have in mind that the Board of Estimate and Apportionment meets every Friday and every Monday through the whole year with the exception of July and August, and could be called together on ten minutes' notice at any time, and that the transfer of items from one place to another was easy. The attempt was made to apply that theory to the State budget, which becomes the law of the State and has to stay from the time the Legislature adiourns in May until it convenes again the following January and, under the provisions of the Constitution, no power could be invested in anybody to make any change in that budget because the Constitution clearly provides that no money can be expended except in pursuance of appropriation; that an appropriation, if had for a specific purpose, cannot be changed by anything other than the lawmaking body, because it becomes the law of the State. So that when you segregate the budget very highly the result is a large amount of money never leaves the State Treasury in some lines and deficiency appropriations are required for other lines. For instance, the doctor in charge of the Rome State School for Mental Defectives told me he was $30,000 over in the money appropriated for help, because he couldn't get it at the salary the State was paying, and that he was $22,000 short in food, because of the increased cost of everything; so that $30,000 of the money appropriated for his institution remains unexpended although appropriated in the help account, and he is obliged to come to the Fiscal Supervisor and have his quarterly allowance increased over the proportionate amount |