Battle for ‘good government’ spurred early charter reform
Weak council springs from effort to end corruption
By Cameron McWhirter / The Detroit News
DETROIT — Today’s ineffective city council is an unintended result of a hard-fought battle for “good government” that took place nearly a century ago in Detroit.
Back in the 1890s and early part of the 20th century, Detroit had a council of aldermen who were elected to represent political wards. But by all accounts the system was a cesspool of fraud and vice.
The corruption spurred civic leaders, including editors of The Detroit News, to join the Progressive movement, which was sweeping the country at the time, aimed at cleaning up city governments.
“You had just profound levels of corruption in Detroit city government,” said Lyke Thompson, urban politics professor at Wayne State University. “It was Detroit’s and Michigan’s attempt to clean things up.”
The widely popular Hazen Pingree, mayor from 1890 to 1896 and later governor, made his career in part by exposing corruption. But graft and bribery persisted.
By 1910, Detroit had 18 wards, each with two elected aldermen. The Common Council, as it was then called, was an unfocused confederacy of saloon-keepers and machine politicians who were chiefly out for their own financial gain.
Like other major cities, Detroit was run by politicians who consolidated power through payoffs, bribes and favors. The aldermen controlled voting in their wards and awarded lucrative city contracts to favorites. One of the most powerful among them was Eddie Schreiter, clerk of the Common Council.
In 1912, a local businessman, Andrew Green, spent $10,000 of his own money to hire detectives to catch aldermen in a bribery scandal. Each alderman was invited into an office in the Ford Building. With hidden dictographs—early recording devices—planted in the room, the men were offered bribes by private detectives, ostensibly to vote for a specific contract. After exiting into the hallway, those who had accepted bribes were arrested by waiting police.
On July 27, 1912, the day after the arrests, The News ran a front-page editorial entitled “The Lovers of Good Government,” which praised Green for funding the sting.
“Let Detroit citizens show their appreciation, their gratitude, by coming together and, with small contributions and large, repay the cost of trapping and catching the betrayers of their interests,” the editorial urged.
The immediate results of the sting ran against Green and his backers. Twenty-six of the city’s 36 aldermen were arrested and charged with taking bribes. However, because of questions of entrapment, only one alderman — Council President Tom Glinnan — ever went to trial. In his 1914 trial, a jury found that Glinnan, too, had been a victim of entrapment. He was acquitted. An effort to revise the city charter in 1914 failed.
Nonetheless, the bribery scandal proved a watershed for Detroit. Momentum from the trial and the newspaper coverage encouraged “good government” leader John C. Lodge and civic groups to campaign for a new city charter written by Detroiters. Previous city charters had been written by the state legislature.
In 1918, voters approved a new charter that destroyed the political machine. The ward system was abolished, and members of the new city council were to be elected at large. The council was reduced to nine from 42 (two aldermen from each of the city’s then 21 wards). And the new charter specified a nonpartisan ballot.
The 1918 charter was designed to weaken the authority of the city council while retaining a strong mayor. This plan differed from the reform plans in other cities, according to Wayne State’s Thompson. The new council was intended to become mostly a policy-setting body, handling less of the day-to-day operations of government.
Thompson said Detroit civic leaders wanted reform but believed a strong mayor would still be important because the city was growing dramatically, with migrants and immigrants coming to work in the burgeoning auto industry. “You needed a strong mayor to manage all the conflicts arising for the different ethnic groups in the city,” Thompson said.
The 1918 charter has since been amended hundreds of times. It was substantially revised in 1974 and in 1994 (by law now it must be revised every 20 years). But the basic framework — a weak city council focused on broad policy, with a strong mayor handling day-to-day management — hasn’t changed.
Recent efforts to get Detroit voters to reconsider how their council members are elected and whom they represent have failed, partly because of aggressive opposition by sitting council members.
You can reach Cameron McWhirter at (313) 222-2072 or
cmcwhirter@detnews.com .
