New York’s 1915 state government was fragmented across 169 overlapping agencies

Evidence

Reorganization of the state government was not a new idea. It had been a basic reform tenet for years, and in 1915 a Bureau of Municipal Research study commissioned by a State Constitutional Convention had found no fewer than 169 separate state departments, bureaus, boards, committees and commissions, many with overlapping functions—taxes, for example, being collected by seven different agencies, public works being carried out by ten. Some agency heads were responsible to the Governor, some to the Legislature and some to officials who were themselves elected by the people and were hence not responsible to either Governor or Legislature. Some agency heads appointed by the Governor were removable only by the Legislature, and there seemed to be almost as many different procedures of removal as there were men who could be removed. His term was only two years, and the terms of some gubernatorial appointees were longer, so that each incoming Governor was forced to entrust the carrying out of some of his policies to men appointed by previous Governors, who might be politically opposed to him. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 417

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: New York state government grew more fragmented from 1915 to 1919 — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 451; The 1915 reorganization report exhaustively catalogued all 187 state agencies — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 465

Broader Connections

• New York state government grew more fragmented from 1915 to 1919 #corroborates (0.80) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 451
• The 1915 reorganization report exhaustively catalogued all 187 state agencies #complicates (0.75) — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker, 465