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198 11 A Crash and a Bang We have had a long personal acquaintance with Ashbel P. Fitch and while having been opposed to him for several years politically we know . . . that he is one of the best, brightest and most fearless of city officials and political leaders. He is a Democratic leader and has a large and devoted following in the party and at the same time has many friends and admirers among Republicans. While a typical American he has a remarkably strong influence among the Germans. —North Adams Transcript, July 23, 1896 The first budgeting season for the Democratic controller and the Republican-reform administration of Mayor Strong began before the election. Accompanying press reporting of the Board of Estimate meetings were headlines1 such as “High Price of Reform,” “Want Six Millions,” “1896 Budget Grows,” “Millions For Schools,” “Waring Wants More,” and “Vast Sums Apportioned,” all of which dampened the spirit of reform. The New York Times tried again to set a positive tone with an editorial headed “Give Them What They Need.” The Times argued that “what the people of this city want is not cheap government but good government at an honest cost,”2 an idea that may have misjudged New York’s high regard for well-established budgetary laws and practices. Neither Strong nor the Times seemed to understand how or why the city’s finances had been stabilized twenty-five years before. Fitch was undeterred. At the Board of Estimate, he “scrutinized the Police Department figures remorselessly.”3 At the next week’s meeting, Fitch complained “that the [Department of Public Works] estimates were not accompanied with an itemized statement so as to enable the board to make comparisons. He therefore refused to vote for an increase from $214,837 to $231,735 for the care and maintenance of the aqueduct. The other members overruled him on a vote.” The comptroller , smiling grimly, “remarked that they could not put anything in his budget without his vote.”4 Just as he appeared to be predictably negative, the Board of Education arrived in the mayor’s office. Fitch declared, “I have been supplied with a detailed statement of the Board of Education’s estimate for 1896. I have gone through it carefully. A Crash and a Bang | 199 Nothing could have been more business-like than the way in which the estimate has been drawn up, and I am free to say that I shall vote for every item on the estimate. Mayor Strong leaned back in his chair in astonishment,”5 again failing to grasp the Finance Department’s reliance upon consistency and process. When the estimate was presented, corporation counsel Scott moved that it be adopted as the provisional estimate. Fitch said he would vote for it. Strong responded, “Well I am not prepared to vote that way. I have had no chance to go over it except in a cursory way.”6 So just before the election of 1895, the reform mayor was publicly resisting expenditures on education while the “Tammany” controller was promoting consistency , sound budgeting, and money for education. While the election proved the unpopularity of reform, for the men who managed New York, Strong, Fitch, Roosevelt and Waring, for example, it was difficult to see any change. Fitch was “holding up some bills for work authorized by the heads of some departments on the ground that they violated either the spirit or the letter of the law that provides that work which will amount to $1,000 or over must be let by bids.”7 He refused to pay certain rapid transit workers because they “didn’t pass a civil service examination,”8 and he withheld payment of printing bills for a lack of documentation. Not all budget hearings were contentious. Fitch gave Waring an increase he asked for, going out of his way to note that he was making an exception to his own rule opposing increases. “I am as anxious for clean streets as anybody” he said. “I have been reading [old] newspapers. . . . All the Democratic [Tammany] commissioners during my memory have insisted that the money given them was insufficient and they have asked for more. . . . Every one of these people was denounced, attacked in the sharpest language for their failure to keep the streets clean. . . . I am very glad to vote for every dollar that the other gentlemen of the Board conclude is the proper amount of money to give Mr. Waring.”9 Waring admitted that “for...

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