Administrative Reorganization in Ohio

Abstract

Administrative Reorganization in Ohio. A joint legislative committee on administrative reorganization was established in Ohio in 1919, with Senator Frank E. Whittemore as chairman. This committee organized an investigation of the existinga administrative system in Ohio, which was conducted under the general supervision of Mr. Don C. Sowers, director of the Akron Bureau of Municipal Research. The results of the investigation were published in a series of about seventy-five or eighty small pamphlets, and a summary of the recommendations involved in these separate pamphlets was embodied in a pamphlet summary. A good deal was accomplished by this investigation, and Governor Harry L. Davis made his campaign for nomination and election to the governorship in 1920, largely on the program of state administrative reorganization. When Governor Davis came into office no specific work had, however, been done upon a comprehensive single plan, and no details of a bill had been worked out. Messrs. George E. Frazer and Walter F. Dodd of Chicago, and Prof. Clarence D. Laylin of the Ohio State University, were engaged by Governor Davis and the legislative committees in charge of this matter, to assist in obtaining agreement upon a definite program and in drafting this agreement in the form of legislation. An act to establish an administrative code, embodying the results of the work outlined above, was approved by the governor on April 26, 1921. This act contains an emergency clause excepting it from the referendum, and was adopted by more than two-thirds vote of the two houses. The constitutionality of the emergency clause has been sustained by the supreme court of Ohio. The administrative code of Ohio does not touch the constitutional offices of lieutenant governor, secretary of state, auditor of state, treasurer of state, and attorney general. It does not affect what is perhaps the most serious constitutional difficulty in Ohio from the administrative standpoint, the two year term of governor. It is well recognized both in Ohio and elsewhere that the governor cannot effec-