Author: Frederic B. Garver

Publisher: Forgotten Books

Published: 2015-07-15

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 9781331827962

Excerpt from The Subvention in the State Finances of Pennsylvania: A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Literature in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy; Department of Political Economy It is a fundamental principle of the distribution of powers within the several states of the federal union that local governments, such as the city, county, township and school-district, have no sphere of action that they may Claim as their own and upon which the state may not encroach. Local governments are the creatures of the state.l Their dependence upon constitutional provisions or upon enactments of the state legislature for their very existence gives rise to wide variations In the amount of power and in the number of functions that they exercise. It also makes readjustments in the division of powers between state and locality both easy and rapid. If the legislature decides, for example, that the counties are caring inadequately for the insane it may remove the service to the realm of state administration one year and return it to the counties or school-districts the next. Or, if a new service is created, such as the provision of free industrial education, it is possible for the legislature either to require one of the subordinate governmental units to assume it or to provide for direct state administration. In short, the local governments are completely at the mercy of the state legislature with respect to the functions they may exercise. The legislature may, however, be restrained by the constitution of the state from interfering too extensively in local affairs, and it is not unusual to find in state constitutions grants of power directly to the local units. Moreover, a less tangible but equally significant restraint is exercised by political custom and by the ingrained opinions of the people as to what are local, and what state affairs. Public opinion would not, in the United States, permit complete centralization, nor, on the other hand, complete decentralization. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.