The Struggle for Local Self-Government
The Post-Intelligencer defends Seattle’s municipal independence against territorial legislative overreach.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Michigan legislature only attempted an invasion of the administrative department of the Detroit city government. Our legislature attempts an invasion of the legislative department of our city government. To administer ordinances made by our own representatives is one thing; to appoint legislators for us, not subject to our control nor responsible to us as their constituents, is quite another thing. If the attempt to do the former gave warmth to the denunciations of the calm and dignified Judge Cooley, how would the latter have influenced his just indignation? While a municipality is in one sense an agency in government, it is in a larger and fuller sense a corporation with the right to sue and be sued and the right to acquire, hold and transfer property. As a corporation, the city of Seattle has and owns a large amount of property. The ordinances under which taxes were levied were enacted by representatives uncontrolled and elected by the members of the corporation. The officers elected by the corporation are but its agents to guard its welfare, enforce its by-laws or ordinances, and to protect and preserve its property. Now it needs no argument to show that the appointment of agents and officers in the corporation by an outside power is not only a violation of the plainest principles of justice, but is in direct conflict with all of the settled principles of corporation law.
“The Council is the judge, and the sole judge, of the election and qualification of its members. Let it with that firmness and dignity becoming its situation as the guardian of the rights and interests of this city, deny the right to take seats of these Legislative appointees.”
This editorial captures a fundamental tension in Seattle’s history: the battle between local municipal autonomy and the power of the state (or territory) legislature. Today, this conflict continues to echo in debates over how much control the state of Washington should exercise over Seattle’s local policy-making and zoning decisions.
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