THE GREEN BAG
412
THE
PUBLIC
SERVICE NEW
COMMISSIONS
ACT
OF
YORK
By Travis H. Whitney. OF the Public Service Commissions Act, the most comprehensive constructive legislation of the first year of Governor Hughes' administration, the president of the street railway system of Buffalo, who was the leader in an eleventh-hour attempt to create public sentiment against it, made this astonishing statement: "Never until now has it been proposed to say to any man that his business, his property or himself, shall be subject to the order of another without right to question or review in court the justice of such order. Man's property, like man's liberty, should be taken from him only by due process of law and not by arbitrary orders where his accuser sits as final judge." Yet a careful examination of the measure discloses that it follows closely the Inter state Commerce Act and is founded upon principles of public control and supervision that have been sustained by Federal and State courts, and that as to many important subjects is either a re-enactment of existing New York law or a reassignment of duties already imposed upon important state commissions. For example, the important functions as to new transit lines in New York City heretofore exercised by the Rapid Transit Commission are transferred to the Commission of the First District, and the Rapid Transit Act which defines these functions is not changed in the slightest extent. Furthermore, the provisions as to gas and electrical corporations are, with slight changes, those contained in the act of 1905 creating the State Gas and Elec tricity Commission with jurisdiction over corporations supplying those public ser vices. As a matter of fact, the measure is one that is calculated to restore in large measure the proper relations between the
public and the public service corporations, and, taken in connection with the Governor's vetoes of the two-cents-a-mile and the three-brakemen bills, it indicates that the Commissions, the Governor's appointees, will have quite as much regard for the rights of the corporations as for the rights of the public. The commissions and officers abolished and superseded are the State Railroad Com mission, the State Gas Commission, the State Inspector of Gas Meters, and the Rapid Transit Commission. The first Rapid Transit Commission was created in 1875 and reorganized in 1891. This one, by an act of 1894, was superseded by a Commission for cities of over one mil lion, composed of the mayor, comptroller, president of the Chamber of Commerce, and five others named in the act. Vacancies were to be filled by the remaining mem bers. This Commission, in 1900, signed a contract for New York's first subway, just twenty-five years after the first Commis sion was created. Two years later a con tract was signed for a subway to Brooklyn, but the most vexatious delays, unexpected and inexplicable to the public, have hindered the completion of all of this subway save the small section from City Hall to the Battery, which was finished in record time. It happens that this portion was needed as a part of the existing subway by the Bel mont interests, who had the contract for construction and operation. The self-per petuating feature of the act of 1894, the provisions that construction and operation must be let to the same contractor, and that franchises might be let in perpetuity, com bined to create a public opinion determined upon a change in the law. Consequently, after three years of effort and in spite of
