The CHAIRMAN. It is a very, very serious question, Doctor, and one of the things I hoped to have discussed before we concluded these hearings.

This District differs from any other city that I know of in that the Government of the United States is the most populous resident and owns the greatest volume of property and now contributes, my recollection is, $6,000,000 a year.

Plans have been attempted to work out a more equitable basis. I think the Overton plan was by far preferable.

I have never thought the Federal Government contributed its proper share to the District, though that is only a personal view. But the Federal Government is the largest taxpayer-or should beso that there must be a place where that question is solved somewhere along the line, as long as we form this charter, as you have chosen to call it. It is a serious question.

Dr. JACOBSTEIN. Yes, sir; because the city council in drawing up its budget for the District for the year is going to be seriously handicapped. They won't know what tax rate should be levied until they know what the Congress is going to appropriate. Perhaps a formula could be worked out and inserted into this charter to the effect that the Federal Government shall appropriate in accordance with the land values that it owns in the District.

I think that just prior to the war the Federal Government owned close to 20 percent of the land of the District by value, and if they own 20 percent of the value they ought to pay 20 percent of the taxes. The CHAIRMAN. The Overton study was a very comprehensive and thorough study, I thought, and I thought the solution worked out by Senator Overton had a lot of merit to it.

Dr. JACOBSTEIN. I have not gone into it, but I call your attention to the absence of any financial provisions in this proposed charter, and this makes the problem difficult for the city council.

The CHAIRMAN. Exceedingly so.

Senator BURTON. Mr. Chairman, Dr. Jacobstein omitted a number of points, and thereby I believe tacitly approves them in the bill, but I would like to ask him questions to make sure that is so, and also for the benefit of having them in the record, because we are fortunate in having him here.

Would you comment on the length of term of members of the council? It is provided for 2 years; for everybody to be elected at the same time. Dr. JACOBSTEIN. I certainly would not have all of them elected at one time. I think that is a mistake. There ought to be carry-overs.

In order to do that, with a council of seven or perhaps nine, the term would have to be changed. I have not worked it out mathematically.

The CHAIRMAN. You would have staggered terms?

Dr. JACOBSTEIN. You would have to stagger the terms.

Senator BURTON. Do you have a recommendation on the 2-year term?

Dr. JACOBSTEIN. I myself prefer a rather longer term. I think one of the things that compelled me to a decision to retire from Congress was the fact I had to run for election every 2 years. I spent half of my time getting myself reelected. At any rate, answering your question, I would prefer a 3-year term for the council. If, how ever, you had councilmen at large, it might be arranged to have them

serve for 4 years and the district or ward councilmen either 2 or 3 years.

Senator BURTON. You have touched briefly on the fact of having some at large.

Dr. JACOBSTEIN. Yes.

Senator BURTON. And I was not quite clear in your final answer to Mr. Wender whether you would recommend some at large and also some by districts. You would not recommend them all at large, would you?

Dr. JACOBSTEIN. No. If that was the question then I did not make myself clear.

I think we ought not to elect all the councilmen at large. Some of them should be selected by districts or wards, especially in Washington. Each district here, or area, or ward, has its own special problems or interests (and I am not thinking of color either). I like to think a councilman representing an area would devote his attention to the problems of that area. Then there are problems and interests that are District-wide, over the whole District.

Senator BURTON. I agree with you on that. I think when you get a city-wide problem such as a public utility or a city sewer, or some other District-wide problem, they need the background of the electoral area as a whole behind the man.

You spoke about leaving off any party designation, and therefore having it a nonpartisan ballot. There is a provision that whoever runs must receive a clear majority of the votes cast, and if there is not a majority of votes cast in the first election then the highest two run it off. What is your opinion about that?

Dr. JACOBSTEIN. I am sure that I do not want a party election. I want nonpartisanship in city government. That however may involve us in having too many candidates. A man might be elected a councilman with only 30 percent of the votes of his district if chosen by the plurality system.

Senator BURTON. This provides for a majority either on the first or the second run.

Dr. JACOBSTEIN. I prefer the majority idea, even though we have a run-off.

Senator BURTON. I think that is absolutely final. If you have a man in office who is elected by a minority of his constituents, everything goes wrong.

Dr. JACOBSTEIN. That is right.

Senator BURTON. He has the majority against him and not a majority for him.

Dr. JACOBSTEIN. I agree.

Senator BURTON. You did indicate this is quite separable from the matter of representation in the Congress, and you think it is quite appropriate that we proceed separately on this matter? Dr. JACOBSTEIN. Yes, sir.

Senator BURTON. Suppose you had a city council in the District of Columbia, you had a president of the council and also had a city manager; naturally they would be contacting the chairman of the District Committee of the Senate; they would be contacting the District Committee of the House and they would in a sense be the liaison officers between our city government and the Congress.

The CHAIRMAN. With reference to councilmen at large, or commissioners at large, or whatever you want to call them, it has been suggested that seven would be elected from wards, and two would be at large. This thought struck me: That the two at large instead of being elected might be appointed. Remember we have got the Executive of the Government here in the District as well as the Congress; the whole Government of the United States is here. If the two at large were appointed by the President, and one of the two at large designated by the President should be chairman of the Board, it would set the executive branch of the Government in to some extent. I would not want to give him any more authority than to be chairman of the Board. Dr. JACOBSTEIN. But the seven or nine elected councilmen would possibly prefer to have one of their own members act as chairman or president of the common council.

The CHAIRMAN. That is probably true. The other thought is, would you have the council elect its own chairman? That is another thought. Dr. JACOBSTEIN. I got the thought from Senator Burton that we ought to retain the interest of the President in the District government and maintain connections with the Chief Executive by having him also represented in the local government, and we can do it by having him appoint one or more of the councilmen at large.

In

Now he appoints the Commissioners. Well, he might appoint two of the councilmen at large, or three, or whatever you want to have. that case you retain that connection between the White House and the city council.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, that is just thought.

Dr. JACOBSTEIN. Thank you, Senators.
The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. Finch, will you come forward.

STATEMENT OF WILBUR S. FINCH, CHAIRMAN OF LOCAL SUFFRAGE COMMITTEE OF THE FEDERATION OF CITIZENS ASSOCIATIONS

The CHAIRMAN. I wish to say Mr. Finch has been exceedingly gracious in his helpfulness to this committee in times past and has given us the benefit of his study over the years, and has shown his interest in this community in many ways, and we are very glad to have him here. Mr. FINCH. Thank you very much.

First of all I want to apologize for my voice. I have been sick with a bad cold and I am afraid I won't last very long on the stand. The CHAIRMAN. Are you perhaps now guarding yourself against cross-examination?

Mr. FINCH. Oh, no. I will stay here if I die in the attempt, Senator. The wind has been taken out of quite a number of my sails by the very excellent opening statement by the chairman of this committee, who has made it unnecessary for me to touch upon the question of a constitutional amendment and the separability of that question from the one now before us, and also by the very excellent testimony of Dr. Jacobstein, who seems either to have written the report of the Suffrage Committee or to have read it some way. It seems that, without having discussed it between us, we see almost eye to eye on all these proposed amendments. There may be one or two statements he made with which I do not agree, but I think we can agree with practically everything Dr. Jacobstein said.

The Federation of Citizens Associations, of which I happen to be chairman of its local suffrage committee, is not made up of men expert in municipal affairs. We are voluntary civic workers in the District who are anxious for some measure of self-government and who to the best of our ability have studied the so-called home rule bill introduced by the chairman and have a few modest suggestions to make. Some of them, as I said, have already been made by Dr. Jacobstein.

The first one is that we ought to call the members of the governing body "councilmen" rather than "commissioners." We were a little but confused in reading the bill. First we thought by calling them commissioners that we were continuing a commission form of government, which the bill honestly is not attempting to do, so that amendment I think is quite necessary.

The second amendment the federation had in mind was the increase in the number of councilmen. This provides that they shall act on a more or less part-time basis and that their salary be decreased according to the amount of time they put in, and also that provision shall be made for at least three councilmen elected in a city-wide election.

As to the number of members of the governing body I would like to state here what I said once before before another committee of Congress. You see for around 70 or 75 years the people of the District have not had participation in their local government. The city has been divided voluntarily by the citizens into various neighborhoods or communities. I think both Senators here present are familiar with the neighborhood citizens' associations. We have boundaries of those various communities. Each one of them has a certain amount of interests which are peculiar to their own community and we believe that a city council with a larger representation, that will be more representative of these various communities, might be more helpful. Seven is perhaps a little too small.

In my own individual case, under the ward system as set up here, I would be in ward 5, but that ward would go across the boundary lines of three or four more or less distinct communities so that the representative from my community would be representing people 2 or 3 miles away over in the Petworth section, a section with which our own representative would not be particularly familiar. So we feel there ought to be a little wider community participation in this council, and of course there will be that opportunity if the Commissioners are simply councilmen and operating on a part-time basis

at a nominal fee for that service.

The CHAIRMAN. You used the term "nominal fee," "nominal emolument." You don't really mean that, do you?

Mr. FINCH. I do not think it should come anywhere near the $8,000 a year. I should say something around $1,500 or $2,000 a year would be ample.

The idea in this city council proposal, as I see it, is to get men (and women too, I hope) in the council who are not interested particularly in the salary but are interested in the community and are willing to devote some of their time to the community. There are a great many people in the District now who are doing considerably more work than a city councilman would do and are not getting anything. It seems to me it is that class of individual who would get in our council.

The CHAIRMAN. But the trouble is that when you come to an election in the District the very people who are devoting so much time to this work now, and getting nothing, would probably be defeated overwhelmingly by someone who had never given it any thought at all. You have to have something there that will attract the type of individual who can give the greater part of his time and study, at least his study, to municipal questions.

The "nominal salary" proposition may have merit to it, but it just does not appeal to me.

Mr. FINCH. We are simply throwing out these ideas, Senator.
The CHAIRMAN. That is all right.

Mr. FINCH. We feel about the bill the same as you do, that you can probably hit upon three or four solutions for practically every section in there.

The CHAIRMAN. That is right.

Mr. FINCH. This is only an idea we are throwing out to you, and naturally we will abide by any decision the committee makes after thorough hearings.

Mr. SOURWINE. May I ask a question for clarification?

Mr. FINCH. Yes.

Mr. SOURWINE. Is it your thought that in increasing the number of councilmen, the districts or wards should be set up along lines very closely paralleling the somewhat inchoate boundaries of the present citizens associations?

Mr. FINCH. No; you could not do that because there are too many citizens' associations. You would have to have several citizen association boundaries included in one ward.

Mr. SOURWINE. You mentioned it would cut across, and I thought there was an implication that you thought that was bad.

Mr. FINCH. I was attempting to show how this particular ward took in too much territory.

Senator BURTON. But you would wish to emphasize its importance in bringing up wards or districts to follow natural groupings so far as you possibly can?

Mr. FINCH. That is right.

Senator BURTON. For instance, if you have a gulley or division in the ward you have two sides of the gulley. You cut up that local section from its natural community interest; you not only want the contact from the point of view of the majority, and while perhaps you cannot quite follow the natural grouping of your neighborhood group, you could follow the natural grouping as much as possible, so that when you do elect a representative he will represent really that entire group that has this same point of view on that general subject.

Mr. FINCH. Yes; that is true. I simply mentioned the citizens' association boundaries to show that there was one ward here that took in too much territory. Obviously you cannot follow the citizens' association boundaries completely. Some of them may be desirable; I do not know.

The federation also suggests that there should be the election of a president or mayor of the governing body by a city-wide election by a majority vote. That was the action by the federation itself, that this officer who is to be the presiding officer of the city council should be elected. Of course that will also give us one member of the council who is elected at large. We felt that if the election of these city coun