cratic process."
The program may be divided
roughly into three parts: training,
practice, and application. It is the
third aspect which has not yet been
completely described. The principle
of application is observed not only
in following up with local action on
bills introduced into the model legis-
lature, but also in conducting local
youth and government programs in
the counties and cities. These pro-
grams are flexible and considerable
variation is to be found from one
community to another. Some take
the form of model city and county
governments. Others stress more of
an informal examination of local
government with visits to local
officials and offices, talks and discus-
sions on local problems, and exami-
nation of certain publications of
local government, for example, the
mayor's report. In some cases the
Hi-Y clubs have cooperated with
other boys and girls clubs and with
junior and senior high schools in
carrying out these programs.
Idea Spreading
The program has not been con-
fined to New Jersey and New York.
In the last two years it has spread
to Connecticut, Maine, Maryland,
and to Wilmington, Delaware. There
are local variations to suit the indi-
vidual state. In New York and
Connecticut girls as well as boys are
elected to the model legislature. In
New York, particularly, girls' Hi-Y
clubs have long been closely con-
nected with the YMCA, and so it
was natural to include girls. Yale
University and the University of
Maryland cooperate with the pro-
grams in their respective states,
while no university is closely asso-
ciated with the program in New
York. New Jersey has been the lead-
er of the movement, however, and
has served as a model for those
adopted elsewhere.
Dr. Sly was not satisfied that
(Continued on page 294)
Intercity Cooperation Increases
Tennessee Valley communities, stimulated by great power
development, progress rapidly in joint action and self-
improvement efforts; urban-rural understanding improved.
By JAMES P. POPE
Director, Tennessee Valley Authority
A DISTRESSED world, going
^*- through cycles of economic crises
and wars, may need to look for new
bases of cooperation and stability. In
such a quest it may have a good deal
to learn from the experience of cities.
For city life has always of necessity
involved cooperative action. Needs
such as a water supply or the disposal
of wastes, while largely individual
matters in rural areas, present prob-
lems in cities that must be solved
and they can be solved only by
united effort.
There are historians who insist that
most of the great cultures of the
world have been born in cities and
that cities have been in the vanguard
of progress. It was Bagehot who said
that it is in "the crowd, the hum,
and the shock of men" that the in-
tellect is sharpened, initiative stimu-
lated, and people are aroused to
united action. However this may be,
it seems pretty clear that it was
united action, the development of co-
operative procedures, that enabled
the cities to deal with their problems
and to play an important part in
the progress of nations and peoples.
And not only have cities set the
pace for cooperation in their internal
affairs; they have in recent years
taken long steps toward intermuriici-
pal cooperation. The three Americas
have made great strides in the direc-
tion of international friendship and
cooperation at the municipal level. 1
And the pressure of common war-
connected problems is forcing cities
in the United States to band them-
selves together to achieve joint so-
lutions of region- wide municipal prob-
lems. 2 For instance, in California
twelve cities under a mutual aid plan
have placed their police forces under
one coordinator; and in the Boston
area 30 cities are interconnected by
a fire alarm system. In one region
43 airports are being operated jointly
by several cities.
In the Tennessee Valley area great
emphasis is being given to the ad-
vantages of intermunicipal coopera-
tion, and new ways have been found
for cities to work together. In this
area is located the Tennessee Valley
Authority, one of the few federal
agencies whose program is integrated
on a geographic basis. A little more
than a decade ago President Roose-
velt requested Congress to enact leg-
islation to create an agency "charged
with the broadest duty of planning
for the proper use, conservation, and
development of the natural resources
of the Tennessee River drainage ba-
sin and its adjoining territory."
The Tennessee Valley Authority
1 See "Intermunicipal Cooperation in the
Americas," by Carlos M. Moran, Public
Management, December 1943, pp. 354-356.
2 See "Administrative Organization," by
John B. Blandford, Jr., The Municipal
Year Book, 1943, p. 312.
287
288
NATIONAL MUNICIPAL REVIEW
[June
was so created and its work has gone
forward on that basis. The Tennes-
see River drainage basin and its ad-
joining territory, within which TVA
electricity is being served, comprises
a region of about 86,000 square
miles, or twice the size of Cuba. It
has more than 6,000,000 people and
108 cities (over 2,500 population).
Only four of the cities have popula-
tions of over 100,000, and eighteen
more have populations in excess of
10,000. About one-fourth of the peo-
ple of the region live in these cities,
which is well below the average for
the United States.
TVA Activities
The program of TVA is broad. It
includes generation and transmission
of electricity from a score of dams
and half-a-dozen steam plants. It
provides for the navigability of the
Tennessee River, for flood control of
the Tennessee and the lower Missis-
sippi Rivers, for the production and
distribution of improved fertilizers,
and programs in forestry, malaria
control, research, and other regional
activities.
Early in its history TVA recog-
nized that its program was dependent
upon the cooperation of the citizens,
the institutions, and governments of
the area. This conception was form-
ally expressed in the third annual re-
port: "The planning of the river's
future is entrusted to the TVA. The
planning of the Valley's future must
be the democratic labor of many
agencies and individuals, and final
success is as much a matter of gen-
eral initiative as of general con-
sent." 3
This many-sided program of TVA
has called into existence a variety of
new and significant relationships 4
relationships between TVA and
states, counties, municipalities, edu-
cational institutions, farm organiza-
tions, other federal agencies, and in-
dividuals. It has created new rela-
tionships between and among these
various agencies. None of these rela-
tionships is more significant than the
cooperation that has developed in the
region between TVA and the cities
and towns and among the municipali-
ties themselves.
In the electrical field this coopera-
tion has been developed in a remark-
able way. TVA generates and trans-
mits electricity to the city's gates.
From there on to the consumer the
city handles the distribution. TVA
sells the power at wholesale (4 mills
per kwh) to the city, which in turn
sells it to the consumer (2 cents per
kwh for home use). This operation
is carried on under a contract be-
tween TVA and the city, in which are
specified the terms as to resale rates,
taxes, and other features of opera-
tion.
More than SO municipalities have
participated with TVA in the pur-
chase of the properties of private
utility companies operating in this
area TVA buying the generating
and transmission equipment and the
cities buying the distribution facil-
ities. These cities are now furnish-
ing power to consumers within the
"Annual Report of the Tennessee Valley
Authority for the Fiscal Year Ended June
30, 1936, p. 2.
*See "Local Government and the TVA
Program," by Lawrence L. Durisch, Pub-
lic Administration Review, Summer 1941,
pp. 326-334.
1944]
INTERCITY COOPERATION INCREASES
289
boundaries of 62 other municipalities.
TVA now has contracts with 84
cities and 45 cooperatives. The co-
operation of these cities with TVA
and with each other is one of the
highlights of the Tennessee Valley
development. There are constant con-
ferences and meetings to consider the
mutual problems. Once each year
there is the annual meeting of all
the cities and towns in the TVA sys-
tem, with outside prominent speakers
and with unforgettable discussions
among themselves about their expe-
riences and their problems. These
meetings are not the result of a
formal organization, but the fulfill-
ment of the normal desire of each
other to keep abreast of develop-
ments of this rapidly expanding field
of activity in the region. At every
such meeting there comes a fresh
realization that these cities and towns
are working together in a region-
wide program of great usefulness.
Billing Cooperative
Another form of cooperation has
grown up with this system. The local
units engaged in distributing TVA
power are generally small. Fifteen
of the municipal systems have less
than 1,000 customers, and 30 units
have less than 28,000 customers. On-
ly six of the 84 municipal systems
distributing TVA power serve more
than 5,000 customers. The smaller
systems have found that routine jobs
of administration unduly extend their
overhead costs. For example, few of
the municipal systems and none of
the cooperative systems have a vol-
ume of accounts large enough to jus-
tify purchase of expensive billing
equipment. However, hand billing is
also costly.
Out of this situation has grown a
unique form of cooperation. The Cen-
tral Service Association was organ-
ized as a cooperative in 1937, its
principal purpose being to supply
machine billing services for munici-
pal and cooperative distributors of
power. The first year of operation
found the Association supplying a
billing service for one municipality
and three nearby cooperatives. By
1942 it was serving 66 municipalities
and 40 cooperatives in six states,
preparing electric bills for the most
part, but some water and gas bills
as well. It will be noted that most
of the municipalities and nearly all
the cooperatives are now cooperating
in this service.
This cooperative association has
expanded its functions along with its
membership, although it has con-
fined its operations to the utility
field. It now provides central purchas-
ing services and prepares basic statis-
tical data for its members, and it has
under consideration group insurance
and retirement plans. It is constantly
seeking to develop new services for
its members. The successful opera-
tion of this cooperative may cause
some of the smaller municipalities
to consider application of the same
principle to services outside the
utility field, on work in which unit
costs are greatly lowered as volume
of operations is increased. The Asso-
ciation has pioneered by demonstrat-
ing to the region how sometimes the
efficiency of centralization might be
combined with the advantages of
290
NATIONAL MUNICIPAL REVIEW
[June
local control. 5
Another field of cooperative effort
is rapidly coming into the picture,
that is, stream sanitation. The TVA
program of river improvement has
focused attention on problems of
stream sanitation. Domestic sewage
and industrial wastes already inter-
fere seriously with utilization of the
waterways resource. A large number
of communities are using the same
river system for industrial and dom-
estic water supply, for recreation,
and for disposal of wastes. The
growth of cities and industries along
the river is making stream pollution
more critical, and leads to a situa-
tion of growing concern to all com-
munities affected. Practices of each
city with regard to waste disposal af-
fect the river system's availability
for other uses by downstream com-
munities. Only nineteen municipal
sewage disposal systems in the Val-
ley now provide for treatment ade-
quate to prevent stream pollution.
On the basis of present studies, it
is estimated that domestic sewage in
the river would be adequately abated
by joint action of fourteen municipal-
ities in building or improving their
local disposal plants. Plans for such
action are now going forward with
the assistance of federal, state, and
local agencies concerned. Cooperative
activities by cities in the control of
stream pollution present special prob-
lems of financing the projects, since
benefits derived by each city from
the program may bear little or no
relation to the size of the local plant
""'Cooperation Pays Dividends," by M.
H. Satterfield, NATIONAL MUNICIPAL RE-
VIEW, September 1942, pp. 431-435.
investment. At the same time this
type of intermunicipal cooperation
is of vital significance to the regional
development program.
River Terminal Facilities
With the new availability of river
transportation after TVA channel im-
provements, communities on the river
realized their common interest in the
development of river terminal facili-
ties. As it is with telephones, a river
terminal has value only after other
terminals are built, and the value of
each terminal rises sharply as the
number of terminal facilities in other
communities increases. In 1940, 54
delegates from nine river cities met to
organize the Tennessee Valley Water-
ways Conference. A permanent exe-
cutive committee was formed, consist-
ing of one member from each of the
nine charter cities. The membership
is made up of business interests, al-
though the organization has the en-
dorsement of each of the municipal
governments concerned. The Confer-
ence has studied plans for a system
of river terminals and has made re-
commendations for public action. It
has also given assistance in develop-
ing barge-line services on the river.
The organization and activities of the
Conference make it an important
illustration of a type of intercity
cooperation necessary for more com-
plete utilization of a new regional
resource.
Four small cities in the Muscle
Shoals area, where TVA and private
chemical plants are clustered, recog-
nized the needs and opportunities for
planning at an early date, with in-
dustrial expansions and the Tennes-
1944]
INTERCITY COOPERATION INCREASES
291
see River development both taking
place in their midst. Each organized
a municipal planning commission.
The four planning groups soon
found they were working on common
problems of housing, stream sanita-
tion, recreational facilities, and river
terminals. They found too that joint
action on such problems was the
only way they could be success-
fully met. These and other consider-
ations led to organization of a Cen-
tral Committee, composed of three
representatives from each of the mu-
nicipal commissions, to coordinate
plans for the entire area. Intermuni-
cipal cooperation in the field of plan-
ning is developing in other parts of
the area and promises to become of
major importance.
Cooperation between cities in the
seven states wholly or partially in the
Tennessee Valley has a firm founda-
tion in state leagues of municipali-
ties. In every state efforts of muni-
cipalities to cooperate with each
other extends over a period of twenty
years. In Tennessee, however, the
present Municipal League was or-
ganized only in 1940, well after the
advent of TVA. In each state the
League is interested in and concerns
itself with state legislation concern-
ing cities. It is also interested in the
technical processes of government
and in the improvement of adminis-
tration.
The TVA has been able to cooper-
ate with cities in efforts to improve
administration. It has assisted in the
conduct of surveys of municipal gov-
ernment in Alabama, Georgia, Missis-
sippi, and Tennessee. These studies
provided the first comprehensive
surveys of municipal government in
each of these states. The TVA has
also made available studies of local
government accounting, assessments
of real property for tax purposes, and
in other ways rendered technical as-
sistance to institutions in the area
seeking to improve local government.
Cooperation between cities is one
of the most promising aspects of the
development of the region. There are
still elements of competition between
cities, of course, and some phases of
intermunicipal competition are un-
doubtedly desirable. Cities should,
for example, compete with each other
to make themselves better places in
which to live, to achieve better and
more efficient governments, and to
increase civic spirit and pride. The
important thing is that cities are
discovering new grounds of common
interest, are attacking more problems
jointly. The growth of intermunicipal
cooperation in the Tennessee Valley
augurs well for other aspects of inter-
governmental cooperation and for
better understanding between rural
and urban areas.
EDITOR'S NOTE. Reprinted from Bo-
letin de la Comision Panamericana de Co-
operation Intermunicipal.
Buy United States War Bonds and Stamps
One Man Grand Jury in Action
Michigan's unique system of exposing wrongdoers wrings
confessions of legislative corruption; citizen interest and
action again start process of legal investigation.
By WILLIAM P. LOVETT
Executive Secretary, Detroit Citizens League
A GAIN Michigan reaps rich re-
^^ wards with its unique one-man
grand jury system. More than a
score of men members of the state
legislature, lobbyists, and others
have faced enough cold evidence to
induce them to confess their part in
the game of graft: paying or accept-
ing money for votes aiming to pass
or defeat certain bills. There will be
more to follow.
Judge Leland W. Carr of the Ing-
ham Circuit court, where the state
capitol is located, is the jury. His
chief associate, Kim Sigler, was ap-
pointed by Judge Carr to be the spe-
cial prosecuting attorney for this
procedure, assisted by a staff of
trained investigators and attorneys.
The real job of clinching preliminary
inquiries with official investigation
began about six months ago; it will
continue probably a full year or
more.
By this method Homer Ferguson,
formerly circuit judge in the Detroit
area, now U. S. Senator, in three
years (1939-42) accomplished a vast
and successful warfare against syndi-
cated gamblers. This, in the opinion
of good authorities, surpassed any-
thing done in New York by Thomas
E. Dewey. From the beginning
Dewey enjoyed advantages and had
assets lacking in the work of Fergu-
son. But Ferguson even raided out
the crooks in the Detroit Police De-
partment.
Catching political grafters in a
state legislature, however, is a more
difficult task than anything done by
Dewey or Ferguson. Tangible, con-
victing evidence is hard to get, large-
ly because payments of money in-
volve too many people whose memo-
ries are bound to suffer lapses. There
is too much fear of unearthing the
powerful political sources of the
malignant growth. Not only the
briber and the bribee are concerned,
but the cause of the iniquity in some
organized group seeking to profit by
legislation somehow must be found
by legal process.
Citizen interest and action are
the foundation of this kind of job
Disgust with increasing reports ol
legislative corruption prompts citi
zens to start legal investigation.
Courage, faith, willingness to incur
personal, political, and financial
risks, must be backed by moral re-
sentment against practices which
make a mockery of the task of gov-
ernment. Fortunately, Michigan,
practically free of enduring party
machines, can trace its ethical heri-
tage back f-om Ferguson and Carr
to Pingree, of the late Ws. The
present campaign brings back the
name of Henry M. Leland, founder
of the 'Detroit Citizens League, a few
of whose leaders started both the
Ferguson and the Carr projects.
Under Michigan law one citizen
may initiate this kind of grand jury
292
ONE MAN GRAND JURY IN ACTION
293
process provided he furnishes evi-
dence Sufficient to convince some
judge, prosecuting attorney, or, as
in this case, the attorney general of
the state, that the expensive grand
jury effort is justifiable. Seven citi-
zens signed the petition which was
granted by the Wayne Circuit Court
when Ferguson began his work.
Last summer these citizens spent
several months convincing Attorney
General Rushton that the current
enterprise should be undertaken; he
knew of too many previous demands
which had stemmed largely from
selfish politics or the futile indigna-
tion of amateur reformers. His name
is Herbert, not George, and he didn't
want to have a hot "buck," with
nothing else, left in his lap by citi-
zens who liked to shake the state
capitol and then run away.
"The salvation of the state is the
watchfulness of its citizens," runs a
motto carved high above the en-
trance to the Nebraska State Capitol.
Laxity, carelessness, or plain sinful-
ness among rank-and-file citizens
must explain graft and the grand
jury necessary to unearth it. When
voters are willing to pay the price
of electing honest men to the legisla-
ture, bills will not be passed or de-
feated by the bribery method. But
the dishonesty begins outside the
halls of legislation. "Sandbag" bills
result generally after one or more
lobbyists have paid the price in
money for what they want.
The combination of money and
politics doubtless offers a major test
of character in public office. But
the majority of legislators, when
elected, mean to do nothing wrong.
Grand jury methods are adopted
as an extreme measure, after nor-
mal implements of prosecution have
failed to stop known evils. Honesty,
vigor, and independence among
prosecuting attorneys generally re-
flect a high level of citizen ethics,
public interest, and attention to
trends in governmental affairs. No
acts of government, including legal
prosecution, can make honest men
out of crooks. But even the prosecu-
tion of wrongdoing too often is not
attempted because the great majority
of citizens would rather keep out of
trouble and let politics stay dirty.
Will More Pay Help?
The financial rating on public
service explains most of our troubles
in this field. So-called successful men
think they "can't afford" to accept
public office the pay isn't large
enough to offset their business or
professional incomes. Some people
imagine that more pay for members
of the state legislature will prevent
continuance of the game of graft.
Next November Michigan will vote
on a constitutional amendment
which, if adopted, will increase this
pay from $2,000 for the biennium
to about $3,500. But others have
their doubts about the results of this
idea. Charles Edison, former gov-
ernor of New Jersey, well said:
"If our democracy is to be made
effective, this tradition that there is
honor in going to Washington, but
no honor in going to the state capi-
tol or the city hall, must be reversed."
While some citizens, including
members of the legislature, are
amazed at the facts already disclosed
by the current grand jury, it is still
to be revealed whether the choice
of a new legislature this year will
294
NATIONAL MUNICIPAL REVIEW
[June
mean a great access of new candi-
dates from those quarters known to
represent ability and honesty, as well
as high character and willingness to
endure the penalties of service in
political office.
Many believe that the one-man
jury investigation shows results su-
perior to those of multiple juries.
Especially where the political com-
plexities of legislative graft come in,
it is a larger order to get agreement
among 23 jurors than to satisfy the
legal mind of one tried-and-true judge.
The court trials which must follow
present indictments will furnish inter-
esting experience in this record.
Detroit naturally hopes that the
present activity, like that directed
by Judge Ferguson and Prosecutor
O'Hara, will go far to relieve the
black eye which this city suffered
because of the campaign against
gamblers, followed by the race riot
of last June. A low level of legisla-
tive quality from this region has not
been denied. "At least we should
have credit for cleaning up our own
door-yard," says the citizen who
knows what goes on in some other
metropolitan areas.
A sound conclusion of the whole
matter was stated fifty years ago by
George Burnham, Jr., president of
the Municipal League of Philadel-
phia, as he welcomed the delegates
to the conference in which the Na-
tional Municipal League was or-
ganized:
"I do not know, gentlemen, what
sovereign remedies you may have