States and Cities

In the United States, city governments, urban school districts, and the myriad special metropolitan districts all owe their existence to the states, and, except where limited by state constitutional provisions, state legislatures have the authority to define the structures and powers of these local units. Throughout the nation's history, the states have been responsible for determining what local units of government should exist, how they should operate, and what functions they should perform.

[Page 760]Some city governments in the Atlantic seaboard states were originally creations of the British crown, having received royal charters during the colonial period. With the overthrow of British rule, however, the state legislatures assumed sovereign authority over local units, asserting the power to grant, amend, and revoke municipal charters at will. During the three decades following the American Revolution, some defenders of the existing city governments questioned the right of state lawmakers to alter the charter provisions of a municipality without the permission of that municipality. They viewed city charters as inviolable grants of privilege, sacred contracts whose provisions could not be revoked by the states.

By the second decade of the 19th century, however, the principle of state supremacy was established in American law. In Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819) Chief Justice John Marshall of the United States Supreme Court explained that grants of power to municipal corporations, unlike grants to private corporations, were not subject to the protection of the Constitution's contract clause. Legislation defining the powers of city governments was not irrevocable contracts immune from state revision or repeal. Neither the Constitution nor any notion of natural law limited the states' authority to create or restructure units of urban government. Later in the 19th century the principle of state supremacy was more fully elucidated in what became known as Dillon's Rule. In 1872 in his authoritative Commentaries on the Law of Municipal Corporations, Chief Justice John F. Dillon of the Iowa Supreme Court pronounced that municipal corporations were indeed creatures of the states and could exercise only those powers expressly granted by the states or necessarily implied from, or indispensable to, the specifically delegated powers.

During the 19th century, state legislatures were not reluctant to delegate authority to local governments. Instead, lawmakers handed out municipal charters to virtually every crossroads village and aspiring urban hub that petitioned for the privilege of self-government. In addition, states adopted general incorporation laws that specified a procedure whereby communities could obtain municipal status from county officials without having to secure state legislative sanction. Because of the permissive attitude of the states, thousands of municipalities dotted the map of America by the early 20th century. In 1910, Illinois ranked first in the number of municipalities with 1,066, whereas Pennsylvania had 880 cities and boroughs and Ohio could boast of 784 incorporated communities.

The 19th-century state lawmakers proved receptive to all manner of proposals regarding local government, rubber-stamping a sheaf of such measures at each legislative session. In many states, measures involving a single locality were referred to the legislators from that locality, and the legislature would usually accede to the will of the local delegation without dissent. If the San Francisco legislative delegation favored a measure pertaining only to that city, it would become law. In fact, many felt the state legislatures were too generous. Private interests and partisan schemers could too readily evade the will of the city council and appeal over its head to the perhaps more sympathetic city delegation in the state legislature. State legislators, however, would not necessarily defer to the local delegation if the proposed local measure affected the fortunes of either political party. If a local measure was a party measure, then legislators would vote according to their partisan loyalties. Thus, Democratic lawmakers might well ignore prevailing local sentiment and line up in favor of a municipal charter proposal that seemed to aid their party's interests and undermined the Republicans.

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