Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HOME RULE: A PROPOSAL FOR A REVISION OF THE MUNICIPAL ARTICLE OF THE CONSTITUTION' LAURENCE ARNOLD TANZER THE need of home rule for the cities of the state has been amply demonstrated in the addresses delivered at the sessions of the Academy. The difficulties to be overcome in framing a constitutional grant of municipal home rule have been fully presented in Prof. McBain's paper with a wealth of material gathered from the experience of other states. It may be appropriate to consider the means of meeting those difficulties, which the Municipal Government Association of New York State has embodied in a proposed revision of the article of the state constitution relating to cities. This revision was prepared after three years' study of the subject and with reference to the experience of other states. It was presented to the legislature of 1914 in the form of a joint resolution amending the constitution, a copy of which is appended.2 It was endorsed by the New York State Conference of Mayors, the Citizens Union, the City Club and a number of authorities on the subject; it passed the assembly and narrowly failed of passage in the senate. The amendment applies not only to cities, but also to villages and to counties wholly within a city. The first difficulty?that of defining the extent of the powers granted to cities?is inherent in the nature of the subject. The advocates of home rule all agree that a city should have power over its own municipal affairs?but what are its own municipal affairs? That question is a practical political question, not one to be answered by a precise legal definition. The impossibility of framing a complete definition of this subject was pointed out by the court of appeals of this state ina case involving the question whether the acquisition b...