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185. The Legislative Committee of Inquiry

Owing to the complexity of the problems which the modern legislature is compelled to meet, it has become a common practice to appoint special committees to investigate specific problems and report either suggestions for legislation or complete laws covering certain topics. This practice is illustrated by these extracts from a report of a joint committee appointed in New York to inquire into the subject of highway improvement:

To the Senate and Assembly:

The Joint Committee of the Senate and Assembly, appointed pursuant to a concurrent resolution duly adopted May 29, 1907, submits the following report:

The resolution directed the Committee

to inquire into the subject of the methods of construction of improved highways and the maintenance and repairs of all highways in the State, together with the general subject of a proper development of the whole system of highway improvement in the State, and whose duty it shall also be to revise and amend the highways laws, and to report to the next Legislature on or before February 15, 1908, the result of said investigation, and revised Highway Law, together with any other bills necessary to carry into effect the recommendations of the general committee.

The Committee organized July 24, 1907, by electing Jotham P. Allds as chairman, Charles R. Hotaling as sergeant-at-arms, Mrs. J. L. Murray a stenographer, and authorized the employment of Frank D. Lyon and Frank B. Gilbert to assist in the revision and codification of the Highway Law and also voted to dispense with counsel other than the employment of the assistants upon the revision and codification.

Creation zation of the

and organi

committee.

authorities

The Committee began its public hearings at the council chamber Local in the city of Buffalo upon October 14, 1907, and closed its hear- at the ings in the city of New York on December 30th, having held hearings. hearings at Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Watertown, Albany, Newburgh, and New York, and having given to the clerk and chairman of the board of supervisors of each county in the

The present law on highways examined.

The laws of other states

State due notice of the time of the several hearings and having offered an opportunity to be heard to the public officials of each county in the State, other than those whose whole territory was within the limits of a city. The committee was attended upon by the county representatives, including the chairman of the board, and county engineer, where the same existed, and the chairman of the committee on good roads. In many instances the full board of supervisors of the respective counties were present and all of the counties affected by the subject were heard in person except that in a few instances they communicated with the Committee in writing and in two instances only were the counties not represented owing to the fact that the address of the clerk of the board of supervisors was defective and the notice of the hearing in that locality was later returned to the chairman of the Committee by the post office department as undelivered.

Before commencing its public hearings, the Committee consulted with the State Engineer and Surveyor as to his views of the present condition of the Highway Law in this State so far as the same related to the general repairs of all the highways of the State and also as to the working of the present statutes for the improvement of main highways and the maintaining of the same and he not only expressed to us his views as to the general plan and scope of hearings, but at several hearings we were attended by a representative of his office and thereby received many valuable suggestions.

The joint resolution requires your Committee first, to investigate investigated. and report upon the methods of a proper development of the whole system of highway improvement; second, to provide for construction and maintenance, and third, to completely revise and codify the present Highway Law. We therefore felt it incumbent upon us to secure the fullest expression of the views of the local officers of every section of the State; to examine the statutes so as to determine the methods adopted in European countries and in the sister States of this country and, finally, we determined to obtain the views of the State Grange and secure the testimony of the

chairman of the highway commissions of Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey as to the practical workings of the respective statutes in those States because a large amount of work has been done in each of these commonwealths and these three have each a different system. That of Massachusetts being the centralized system, Connecticut the town system, and New Jersey may be characterized somewhat more properly as the co-operative system. It is not the intention, within the limits of this report, to discuss the great variety of views which have been presented to your Committee. Two volumes of testimony have been taken and a careful digest of other State and foreign laws has been made and carefully examined by the Committee. A digest has been made of the testimony taken to enable the Committee to form an intelligent impression of what may fairly be said to be the consensus of opinion with reference to the larger matters of policy which had to be determined by the Committee before it could make a recodification of the Highway Law. Your Committee believes that the plan and details of the revised code herewith submitted fairly represent the average judgment of the local officers combined with the experience of adjoining States.

186. The Legislative Reference Bureau

These paragraphs from an interesting article in the Review of Reviews by Professor J. R. Commons describe the establishment of an important institution in Wisconsin to assist legislators in securing information on problems coming before them for solution.

A digest of

evidence

and a com

plete law

submitted.

tion of

On his appointment in 1901 Dr. McCarthy, the legislative The colleclibrarian, did a very sensible thing. He started a clipping-bureau. literature. He collected all of the pamphlets, bulletins, reports of commissions, magazine articles, and the like that he could get free. He accumulated as many duplicates as possible for free distribution. He classified them and arranged them under proper headings, paying special attention to the subjects that he knew would come up at the next legislative session. He searched the libraries of

Assistance offered to legislators.

Work for legislative committees.

the several State departments and brought over whatever he thought would be an aid to the legislature. By the time the session met in 1903 he had, not what would be called a library but an up-to-date, live set of aids to law-makers.

But this was preliminary. As soon as the elections had been held he sent to all the members of the incoming legislature a cir cular, telling them something of what he had on hand, and offering to assist them by furnishing information, copies of laws enacted or bills introduced in other States, etc., on any measure that they proposed to bring before the legislature. Over one hundred requests came in, and he forwarded by mail his clippings, pamphlets, and bills. When the legislature assembled he moved his collection to a room on the same floor. He circulated among the members, brought them to his library, and showed them what he had. He learned what they wanted and, if he did not have it on hand, he immediately wrote or wired to all parts of the country to get it.

When the committees were appointed and began their work he helped them in the same way. He sent hundreds of copies of their bills to experts, commissions, lawyers, and informed citizens in Wisconsin and other States, asking for criticisms, improvements, and accounts of whatever experience they might have had on the points involved. If a lobbyist made statement before a committee, he would have replies . . . within a day or two . . . from the parties who knew the facts. The chairman of the Committee on Claims has given several instances where these replies saved the State hundreds and even thousands of dollars. Other committees were aided in a similar way. The committees on railway legislation, primary elections, and civil-service reform at the sessions of 1903 and 1905 had before them. . . the bills introduced in other States, the hearings on those bills, arguments of counsel, the best pamphlets and magazine articles, besides pertinent letters from the best-informed men of the country.

187. The Evils of Over-legislation

In an important address before the American Bar Association, Judge Alton B. Parker discussed the problem of hasty and prolix legislation in the American states.

Few questions have been more discussed during recent years than the increasing tendency of legislative bodies to propose and to enact new laws. Scarcely any agitation of a public or a moral question is so unimportant that it does not produce, in nearly half a hundred state capitols, a series of bills supposed to represent it in all its varied and shifting phases. It has become far more common to look for a new law for the punishment of an old offense or for defining anew the relations of individuals to each other than it is to invoke those powers or remedies by which, over many centuries, while law has been gradually taking fixed form, men have been able to punish crimes against society or to settle their own differences.

The zeal for

new laws.

Few new principles

for victims.

And yet every man who has had occasion to study the question, even in its narrower bearings, has been forced to conclude that but adopted. a small percentage of proposed new enactments involves a new principle, or even a new policy. It rarely happens that an offense is committed for which no proper punishment has been provided, and it is a long time since any real question has arisen between men to demand legal settlement impossible under existing law. . . . Legislation of this order is promoted in many ways. One of The clamor the most efficient agencies is popular clamor. This may be produced by the demagogue, whose interest it is to make the part appear to be the whole. It may be started by the robbery of a savings bank, or by adulteration on the part of some manufacturer, or dishonesty by the head of a business corporation, or in any one of a hundred different ways. Such an agitation will naturally be encouraged by sensational newspapers, and by the oftentimes scarcely less sensational pulpit. As it goes on it gathers force until it passes into one or the other of the many forms of that hysteria which demands nothing so much as a victim. In

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