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 contents   vii

9. Budget Funds Organize the Public Budget 243

Accounting Funds: Reservoirs and Flows 244
Accounting Bases: Perspectives to Define Information 252
Nonprofit Accounting Differences 254
How Accounting Concepts Help to Clarify Budget Options and Build Public Confidence 256
Study Questions 256
Note 256

10. Budget Planning: Preparing the Organization and Community to Budget 257
Organizational Planning to Meet Efficiency and Effectiveness Expectations 260
Political Planning 272
Polity Planning 278
Summary 286
Study Questions 287
Notes 288
PART III. EXPENDITURE FORMATS FOR DECISION AND CONTROL
Teaching Case: A New Mayor Mandates Performance-Based Budgeting 291

Part III Introduction: Expenditure Formats for Decision and Control 299

11. Line-Item (Object Code) Budgeting 303

Origins and Purpose 308
Characteristics of Line-Item Budgeting: Base, Incrementalism, and Fair Share 309
Line-Item Behavior and Techniques 311
Advantages and Disadvantages of Line-Item Budgeting 319
Conclusion 320
Study Questions 320
Note 321

12. Planning, Programming, Budgeting System (PPBS) Format 323

Origins and Purpose of Program Budgeting 323
Example of PPBS: Community Corrections 325
Key Elements of Program Budgeting 326
Organizing Objectives into a Program 335
Program Budget Exercise 338
Advantages and Disadvantages of Program Budgeting 338
Study Questions 344
Notes 344

13. Performance Budgeting 345

The Technique of Performance Budgeting 346
Historical Perspective on Performance-Based Budgeting and Governance 356
Redeeming Performance from Ideology: What Local Governments Can Do to
Make Performance Budgeting Successful 365
Advantages and Disadvantages of Performance Budgeting 371
Conclusion 375
Study Questions 375
Notes 376
viii   contents

14. Public-Sector Innovation and Zero-Base Budgeting 377

Zero-Base Budgeting: A Format to Incentivize Innovation 378
The Origins and Purpose of Zero-Base Budgeting 379
Zero-Base Budget Example 380
Key Elements of Zero-Base Budgeting 388
Ranking Approaches 395
ZBB Exercise Guidelines 396
Summary: Strengths and Weaknesses of Zero-Base Budgeting 396
Study Questions 400
Note 400

Part III Summary: The Comparative Strengths of Budgeting Formats and Their
Contributions to Democratic Governance 401

PART IV. EXECUTIVE PRIORITIES, BUDGET ADOPTION,

AND IMPLEMENTATION

Teaching Case: Negotiations with City Unions Threaten to Disrupt the Budget Process 411

Teaching Case: County Board Consideration of a Capital Project That Could

Jeopardize the County Credit Rating 417

15. Executive Budget Preparation and Legislative Body Approval 421

Summary Overview: Balancing Competing Tensions 422
Social Role Behavior of Budget Decision Makers and Participants 424
Executive Control of Budget Compilation 426
Executive Oversight of Organizational-Level Issues 433
External Financial Pressures: Employee Benefit Costs 443
Executive Framing of Budget Decisions for Legislative Adoption 446
Legislative Body Consideration and Adoption 448
Nonprofit and Community Budget Adoption 451
Summary 453
Study Questions 454
Notes 454

16. Capital Budgeting and Financing 455

Capital Budget Policies 457
Inventorying Existing Capital Assets 459
Identifying Capital Needs 461
Evaluating and Prioritizing Projects 462
Determining Capital Financing Options and Potential 464
Making Capital Plan and Budget Decisions 468
Summary 470
Study Questions 470

17. Budget Execution 471

Financial Management Policies 472
Monitoring and Controlling Spending 473
Budget and Performance Status Reports 474
 contents   ix

Budget and Plan Adjustments 484

Financial and Performance Evaluation 487
Network and Community Budget Execution and Performance 489
Summary 491
Study Questions 491

18. Audit and Performance Evaluation 493

The Year-End Close Out and Financial Reporting Process 494
Annual Financial and Performance Reporting 496
Audits of Local Governments 502
Summary 508
Study Questions 508

19. Local Budgeting for the Common Good 509

Major Themes Revisited 509
Aligning the Purposes of a Local Public Budget with Its Political Function 512
The Budget Is a Policy Document That Defines the Public Good 513
Polity Budgeting: A Jurisdictional Versus a Community-Centered
Approach to Budgeting 519
Concluding Message 526
Study Questions 526
Notes 527

Glossary 529
Bibliography 555
Index 579
About the Authors 594
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 Preface and
Acknowledgments

This text on local public budgeting draws on our several decades of instructional experience,
scholarship, and professional practice focused on the improvement of local public service. We are
grateful that much of our experience has been acquired through our work in the Mark O. Hatfield
School of Government’s Center for Public Service (previously known as the Executive Leadership
Institute) at Portland State University. The Center for Public Service (CPS) serves as a two-way
transfer station that integrates the practical knowledge of public service professionals with the
academic research and knowledge generated by the university. CPS has provided a fertile ground
where practitioners and academics come together to coproduce better public service knowledge
and practices through joint engagement in applied research, leadership development, and techni-
cal assistance. This book is both a product of this coproduction process and a testimonial to the
important role that such a partnership plays in improving public service practices. We have sought
to capture the lessons we have learned from this experience and pass them on to our students who
wish to devote their lives to public service in local nonprofit and governmental organizations. In
the sections that follow, we summarize the role of this text in preparing students for careers in
local public service.

Focus of Text

This text is aimed especially at graduate students in master’s degree programs in public policy,
public administration, urban planning, nonprofit management, political science, health, social
work, and public affairs. Since these programs vary widely in the background of their students
and in the priority they give to courses in local government and budgeting, we have tried to be
mindful of this diversity in writing the text.
In some programs, public budgeting is the first introductory course in a public finance sequence;
in other programs, budgeting is a second course following an introductory course in accounting and
management control. In some programs, public budgeting is a mandatory core course; in others,
it is an elective. Students tend to enter public budgeting classes with a broad array of technical
skill levels and backgrounds. Within this diversity, however, there is a common denominator:
Most students have limited backgrounds in statistics and analytic methods, economics, and an
understanding of the public policy process, especially at the local level of government. To make
this text accessible to students and practitioners at all levels, we have kept the mathematics, com-
putations, and accounting to the basic level of first-year college algebra and analytic geometry.
And we have increased our emphasis on local government structures and processes of governance.
Other available public budgeting texts provide effective content and instruction at a higher analytic
level. Furthermore, we have assumed a minimum level of understanding of the local public policy
process and the varieties of models that seek to make sense out of local governing processes.

xi
xii   Preface and Acknowledgments

A large portion of students enrolled in public budgeting courses work at the local government
level. This book makes a special effort to take into account the variety of experiences these students
have in all forms of county, city, and special districts. Another large portion of students who are
typically enrolled in public budgeting courses work for nonprofit organizations and foundations.
Again, the text makes a special effort to take into account the wide variety, size, and complexity of
nonprofit organization, ranging from the smallest micro nonprofits providing social services with
one part-time administrator and volunteers, to major hospitals, universities, and intermediaries with
budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars. While there are important differences, nonprofit
administrators are faced with many of the same budget process requirements and challenges as
their peers in local government. Nonprofit budgeting includes planning and accounting for revenue
generation, expenditure development, account balancing, and the political aspects of budget adop-
tion through an executive director and board. For these reasons, we attempt throughout the text to
discuss the applicability of the material and budgeting principles to nonprofit organizations. But
this coverage falls short of what nonprofit managers need to know in order to be fully successful
in performing their fiduciary roles. We encourage faculty and students with a primary interest in
nonprofit finance to consult other, more advanced texts.
The variation in course requirements among graduate public administration programs also re-
flects inconsistent mandatory degree requirements. Many topics closely related to public budgeting
are covered in elective courses. A public budgeting course may provide students with their only
exposure to strategic planning, contracting and procurement, management control and accounting,
nonprofit finance, performance measurement, or public finance. We have provided foundational
summaries of these topics as they link to the public budgeting process.

Core Themes

Most public budgeting texts focus on the federal budgeting process despite the fact that local
governments are by far the most important unit of government in the lives of most citizens. Local
government units throughout the United States number about 87,500. This text is organized around
the following four local government themes, which are more fully developed in chapter 1:

• Local governments play a central role in building and sustaining the trust of American citizens
in democratic governance.
• Local government career administrators play a critical role in making the local budgeting
process work successfully.
• The common good at the local level is the product of collaboration between government,
nonprofit service providers, private market-sector organizations, and other community
partners.
• The reality of severe resource constraints faced by most local governments for the foresee-
able future increases the urgency of taking what we call a polity-centered approach to local
public budgeting.

Organization of Text

We have divided the text into four parts or sections, each of which opens with a demonstrative
teaching case. The purpose of each case is to illustrate the core themes of the section and to
provide students with an opportunity to test the practicality of what they have learned in the sec-
tion chapters. Part I establishes the context of local public budgeting within the larger historical
framework of American government. It defines the purposes of public budgeting and establishes
the importance of governance as the driving force behind government and community budgeting.
 Preface and Acknowledgments   xiii

The section then reviews the major actors in the government budgeting process and introduces
the budget process cycle.
A familiarity with revenue sources is critical to understanding the potential for spending and
program services delivery. Part II of the text reviews the sources of public revenues, explains the
role of property tax and retail sales tax in detail, reviews methods for forecasting revenues, and
provides an overview of nonprofit revenues and community governance of tax expenditures and tax
rebates. It then reviews budget funds and basic accounting concepts that play an important role in
defining the parameters and standards for measuring the success of local public budgeting systems.
Students need to understand these concepts to fully understand the public budget documents they
read. This part of the book closes with an important chapter on budget process planning.
Part III of the text focuses on department- and program-level budget preparation. We devote a
chapter to each of the following four traditional approaches to local government budgeting: line-
item budgeting; the planning, programming, budgeting system (PPBS); performance-oriented
budgeting; and zero-base budgeting (ZBB) and priority-based budgeting. The goal of these chap-
ters is to illustrate the following four types of accountability that are important for measuring the
success of local public budgeting:

• Line-Item Budgeting → Financial Accountability

• Planning, Programming, Budgeting System → Effectiveness Accountability
• Performance Budgeting → Efficiency Accountability
• Zero-Base and Priority Budgeting → Innovation Accountability

The order of discussion for the format-focused chapters in Part III is based on the historical
evolution of various systems of accountability. However, the chapters are written as independent,
stand-alone essays, thus allowing instructors to sequence the discussions to accommodate the
goals and purposes of a given course.
Part IV of the text reviews the processes for the development of an integrated executive bud-
get and its adoption by the legislative body. The section begins with a chapter on the process for
budget approval, which is composed of budget assembly by the central budget office, review and
approval by the executive, and finally, review and adoption by the elected or appointed council or
board. Part IV also includes a chapter on capital budgeting. A primary outcome of the budgeting
process is its actual application over the fiscal year or biennium. With this in mind, the section
explains the procedures that are used as part of the budget execution process, including monthly
reporting and cash flow management adjustments. Finally, Part IV provides an overview of the
post-budget auditing process.
Our teaching experiences have confirmed the benefit of having a series of prepared technical
exercises and datasets to support the topics presented in the course text. To this end, we have pro-
vided the following series of laboratory exercises that can help students gain a basic understand-
ing of key concepts and budgeting techniques. The website at www.pdx.edu/cps/budget-book
provides exercises and data for:

• Revenue forecasting
• Budget fund accounting
• Line-item budgeting
• PPBS budgeting and performance budgeting
• Zero-base budgeting
• Making the department budget request
• Budget integration and balancing
• Capital budgeting
xiv   Preface and Acknowledgments

We have included an extensive glossary at the end of the book for all terms that have technical
or special meaning to those in the professional budgeting community. All boldface terms in the
text can be found in the Glossary.

Acknowledgments

We would very much like to thank those students who reviewed the text and laboratory exercises
over the years. The Oregon State Fiscal Association provided the initial grant that supported the
development of our precursor text, Handbook on Public Budgeting. We also wish to acknowledge
the support, advice, and suggestions of Jon Yunker, Drew Barden, David Jarvis, Mary Gruss, Susan
Walker, Cathy Huber Nickerson, Cece Clitheroe, Mary Ripp, Sandra Reese, and Mark Sayler. In
particular, we would like to thank Rick Mogren, our production coordinator, who has performed
stellar work in bringing this finished product to the final production stage; our executive editor,
Harry Briggs; and the editorial staff at M.E. Sharpe, for their continued enthusiastic and high-
quality editorial support. Finally, we would like to thank Ron Tainmen, Director of the Hatfreld
School in Government, for financial support in the preparation of this manuscript.
 Part I
General Concepts
of Local Public
Budgeting
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 Teaching Case
A Case of Drastically
Falling Nonprofit Revenues
Case Narrative

Sonia Albertson, executive director of the nonprofit Upper Cascade Women’s Support Project
(hereafter referred to as the Support Project) sighed as she reviewed the numbers and then looked
over at her finance officer, Brenda Johnson.1 As usual, Brenda had reduced the ever-changing flow
of contracts, grants, major donations, and fees for service into a reality of hard, clear numbers.
Several of the revenue sources that the Support Project had come to rely on were being discon-
tinued. Revenues for the coming year’s budget would be much lower than they had been in recent
years, and the organization would need to make major changes to adapt. Next year’s budget would
have to become the blueprint for defining and making these radical changes.
It was now mid-September, and Sonia needed to present a proposed budget to the Support
Project’s board of directors by November 15. This would allow sufficient time for debate by the
board and for the adoption of a new budget by January 1, which was the beginning date of the
new fiscal year. Fortunately, Brenda had organized a budget process for the organization. Budget
preparation instructions had been sent out to each major program in late July, and the staff analysts,
program directors, and division directors were currently completing the technical groundwork for
their budget requests. Brenda had provided them with the best possible forecasts of the different
revenue sources, but revenues were falling steadily from the forecast levels. The directors and staff
were scrambling to make adjustments and still meet their October 1 due date for budget request
submission. By this time, Brenda was working closely with the different programs to develop
cutback packages. This was a whole new experience for Sonia, Brenda, the program directors,
and the staff, but the Support Project simply could not go on in its current form.
Sonia and Brenda had hoped that the local community foundation would supply several
emergency grants to help offset the loss in state government and country grant revenues, but a
recent telephone call from the foundation’s director had convinced Sonia there was no chance of
receiving any new funds. In past years, government grants had funded about 65 percent of the
project’s programs and staff. Sonia and Brenda would need to use the proposed budget to sketch
out major reductions in programs, staff, and the elimination of two grants to partner organizations.
The Support Project would likely maintain its strategic direction and program goals but respond
to community and client needs in a much smaller way.
Sonia turned to Brenda and said, “I will schedule a large block of time at our October board
meeting to lay out the situation. This will allow us time to provide a briefing and informa-
tion session before the budget presentation at the November board meeting. It will give the
board members time to process the situation before decisions are required. In the meantime,
I’ll update the board chair, and we will need to brief each of the other board members ahead
of time.” “As soon as we have an organization level proposal,” she went on, “we will need to
hold a staff family meeting to discuss the situation and the likelihood of layoffs. At that point,
you will need to contact the Shelter and Respite House and the Youth Response Project and
explain the situation.” Both Sonia and Brenda knew that this would be a challenging month
with devastating news for everyone.
3
4   General Concepts of Local Public Budgeting

Sonia Albertson had been the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Upper Cascade Women’s
Support Project for the past nine years. Over those years, the organization had grown from a small
women’s crisis hotline and shelter service to a multiservice organization with more than 120
employees. The project had taken on new grants from the local community foundation and two
regional community intermediary nonprofits.2 These nonprofit-sector grants complemented several
major contracts from county and state social service agencies. The Support Project continued to
provide telephone crisis intervention and safe shelter services for battered and threatened women
and their families, but it also now provided a range of other social and support services to women
and their families. The Support Project shelter could provide emergency and short-term shelter
for 20 single women and three women with children. Through a state human services grant, the
Support Project had established a drug and alcohol group treatment program for both women and
men, and using a county grant it had established a small mental health services program. The
Support Project provided a counseling and referral service to help women identify and access
services. To assist women in their efforts to gain and retain employment, the Support Project
established a business clothes bank, employment preparation counseling, and child care services
for toddlers through kindergarten. The Support Project’s board had carefully reviewed each new
program for strategic conformance with the organization’s mission—to help women in need), and
for its financial ramifications. Sonia was proud of the organization’s growth and its steady and
increasing service to the community.
As the Support Project organization grew, attention to administrative services had lagged. After
utilizing the services of a succession of bookkeepers and outside financial service providers, Sonia
and the board realized that the organization had grown to the point that it needed a chief financial
officer (CFO). Brenda Johnson was hired to bring order to a chaos of budgets, grant requirements,
audits, and limited professional staff capacity. In filling the CFO position, the board sought a candi-
date who could develop complex financial systems and internal controls, lead budget development,
bring consistency and quality to procurement and contracting, and improve the organization’s
performance.3 Brenda applied for the position as a CPA with extensive nonprofit experience. She
had successfully grown into the other aspects of the position. Brenda reported directly to Sonia
as the chief executive and was an important member of the executive team. Additionally, through
her continued presence and quality work, Brenda had developed strong credibility with the board
members. Brenda maintained a direct relationship with the board, especially on financial matters.
She managed this relationship carefully, most often closely coordinating with Sonia but, on occa-
sion, advocating independent opinions to the board chair and board members.
Brenda and Sonia had worked especially hard to diversify the organization’s revenues between
private grants, state agency and local government contracts, smaller charitable donations, and
client user fees. This formula had worked well up until the recent major economic downturn.
The Support Project had consistently covered expenses and put away a small reserve for tough
times. But the severe economic recession of the last year had overwhelmed these carefully laid
plans and strategies.
Brenda had pushed Sonia to follow the development of the economic recession over the last
year and a half. A sputtering national economy and the downturn of the stock market had stalled
business hiring. Faced with employment uncertainty, consumers had put off purchasing new cars
and other large discretionary capital purchases. Another major outcome of the recession was
severely limited tax revenues to the state government: Reduced purchasing by consumers and
businesses resulted in reduced retail sales tax revenues. Automobile use taxes and transfer fees,
and lodging and entertainment sales taxes were also down considerably. Caution by businesses
had led to increased unemployment. Weak employment and reduced business activity led to a
strong reduction in state income tax revenues.
The reduced revenues had left the state government with revenue shortfalls of over $800 mil-
 Teaching Case   5

lion. With state revenues so severely depressed, the legislature would be forced to reduce revenue
sharing and grants to counties and local governments. These intergovernmental revenues were the
primary source of funds for many of the Support Project’s programs.
Early in the previous December, following state constitution requirements, the governor had
presented a balanced budget filled with extensive cuts and program reductions. The balanced
budget responded to the $800 million revenue shortfall with major cuts to numerous programs.
The governor could have shifted the timing of expenditures, used one-time monies, emptied the
rainy day fund, and/or borrowed short-term funds to soften the blows, but she relied on her budget
office analysts to present a truthful picture without gimmicks. This approach forced the legislature
to make the policy and spending decisions that would respond to the reality of reduced revenues.
The structure of the state budget, however, greatly limited what the governor could modify. Over
70 percent of the state budget was protected by constitutional requirements to fund K–12 schools,
public safety, and the state police. Other required spending included matching funds to obtain fed-
eral grants and debt service payments on funds borrowed by the state. The difficulty of the state’s
revenue situation was demonstrated by calls to close both a youth corrections camp and the least
efficient unit of the adult state prison system. But because social services were not constitution-
ally protected, the deepest cuts fell on health and social service programs. About 10,000 clients
would be left ineligible for the state health plan, thus freeing up $150 million in savings. Secure
crisis residential centers for youth were eliminated in favor of lower cost residential service for
$9.4 million in savings. Nursing home reimbursement rates under the state’s Medicaid program
were reduced by 5 percent, yielding another $46.2 million savings in both state and federal dollars.
Funding for mental health services was reduced by $30.5 million. And the general assistance to
unemployable adults and alcohol and drug addiction treatment funds were cut by $160 million.
Though it was balanced, even the governor publicly lamented that the budget was unjust.
Sonia and Brenda had followed the governor’s budget—and the subsequent legislative action
on it—quite closely. In January, the state legislature had convened for a general session, a pri-
mary task of which was to prepare a new biennial budget. Committee hearings in the state house
and state senate laid out the issues. The quarterly state revenue forecast told of further revenue
shortfalls. But analysts from the state’s service caseload forecasting team predicted strongly in-
creasing needs for social services, job training, and postsecondary education services because of
the poor economy. Sonia had gone to the state capital and testified before the House Health and
Social Services Appropriations Subcommittee on the growing need for services. Other nonprofit
executives and county commissioners had testified before state senate committees. Social service
advocates and lobbyists had worked the halls and delivered constituent communications as best
they could. While the lawmakers had blunted the worst cuts in the governor’s budget, the fiscal
realities resulted in about a $325 million reduction spread across emergency housing, low-income
health, mental health, drug and alcohol recovery, developmental disabilities, juvenile services,
and job training programs.
Just after the legislature convened in January, the Upper Cascadia County Commission also
began its work on a budget for the coming fiscal year. As executive director of the Support Project,
Sonia kept in close contact with the county director of community and social services. At every
chance, Sonia stressed the continuing need for crisis services, shelter services, and treatment
services for mental health, drug abuse, and alcohol addiction. The county director was quick to
recognize the growing service demand and caseload but was also quick to caution that if funding
from the state fell drastically, so would the county programs and service contracts.
By late April, the county executive released his proposed budget: Community and social
services would take a 10 percent reduction. County-delivered programs would be reduced by
7 percent. Major existing service contracts for housing, veterans, mental health, children’s and
family services, and developmental disabilities would continue, but without an inflation escala-
6   General Concepts of Local Public Budgeting

tion in payments. This matched the minimal inflation rate across the regional economy. But most
important, several drug and alcohol treatment, mental health, and homeless services contracts
would be wound down and not renewed. The number of new service contracts in community and
social services was reduced to near zero.
Sonia and Brenda worked through the county executive’s proposed budget in detail and winced
at many of the cuts. These cuts would be devastating to their organization and to their clients.
Sonia contacted the county director of community and social services to explain the situation and
its implications. The county citizen budget advisory committee met in early May to review the
executive’s proposed budget. Sonia requested, and was granted, a slot to testify before the com-
mittee to explain the implications of the combined cuts. The county commission then held three
public hearings on the proposed budget. Again, Sonia requested a slot, and she was granted five
minutes at the second public hearing. In her presentation, Sonia explained the implications of the
reductions on women in the community and on the nonprofit partners that carried out county and
state programs. The commissioners listened, but one politely reminded Sonia of the major cuts
in state funding to the county, and of flat and declining property and sales tax revenues. Another
commissioner was more blunt and asked Sonia how she would apportion a $2.5 million cut to
social services to minimize the impact on clients.
By early June, the commissioners understood the full impact of state funding reductions and
adjusted the worst of the reductions through amendments to the county executive’s proposed bud-
get, but in the end reduced services for alcohol and drug treatment, homelessness, mental health
issues, the elderly, and children by 15 percent. The county commission adopted a balanced annual
budget in mid-June—in time for the new fiscal year, which would begin on July 1.
The reductions in government funding were difficult enough, but Sonia and Brenda’s com-
munications with the local community foundation presented another challenge. The economic
downturn had rocked the stock market and created uncertainty in the foundation’s other endowment
investments. Personal charitable giving had also dropped off because of the economic insecurity.
The community foundation completed its budget cycle in late August, which allowed it to follow
and react to decisions by the state and county governments in their budgets. In early August, the
foundation’s chair had convened a meeting with its nonprofit grantees, contractors, and partners.
Sonia and Brenda attended that meeting and related the difficulties the Support Project was facing
because of reductions in government funding. The community foundation chair and chief executive
officer could only empathize and report that the foundation, too, would be cutting its grants and
contracts to service providers. The foundation would examine all components of its programs and
strategically adjust its grants to prioritize and support services, and where possible, compensate
for the reductions in government funding. The Support Project would benefit from some of these
adjustments, but the larger message was that the foundation was going to significantly reduce
grants to its service delivery partners. These developments knocked another leg out from under
the Support Project’s revenue sources.
The impacts of the drastic government and foundation cuts would hit the Support Project in
the next fiscal year. The new budget had to reflect major structural changes in the organization’s
programs. Preliminary scenarios indicated that about 40 percent of the programs would need to
close, and staff layoffs would follow a proportional reduction. The two grants with partner orga-
nizations would need to be terminated if the Support Project’s budget were to remain balanced.
The dire revenue situation caused Sonia and Brenda to go back and reconsider their organiza-
tion’s mission and purpose. The Support Project had been established to empower and support
women in the community as they gained personal stability and self-sufficiency. This mission still
seemed highly relevant and appropriate, but the current program goals of comprehensive services
and annual objectives of well-developed service delivery—though once appropriate—were now
lofty and overstated. Resizing and restating the goals and objectives would be a critical task in
 Teaching Case   7

developing a new budget. Sonia and Brenda agreed that the board and the staff would need to
be involved in such an effort, even though the budget schedule left very limited time for such an
effort.
Brenda stated that she could quickly convene the department and program directors and the
budget analysts to conduct a downsizing exercise. The group would take on the details of reduc-
ing all programs and then develop a series of alternative budget scenarios with 30, 20, and 15
percent reductions. Brenda quickly outlined a meeting agenda. Sonia would convene the group
and explain the overall revenue and strategic situation. Brenda would then give a more detailed
look at the reduced funding levels for each of the major programs. Next, she would break the
leadership team into small groups and give each one a program area for analysis. A paper ex-
ercise would follow with the required reductions to reach a balanced budget. At the end of the
day, the group would reflect on their exercise results and develop recommendations to Sonia
and to the board of directors.
Sonia paused a moment over whether to follow Brenda’s suggestion. Should the staff take the
lead in defining major program reductions and reorganizations? The department directors and
staff analysts were well into the alternative development process as part of the budget prepara-
tion task. The budget process would allow the board a full chance to review the situation and to
evaluate any proposed reductions and reorganizations, but should she focus first on the board and
let them give initial guidance on alternatives? She was sure that she could “sell” staff-developed
alternatives and a recommended course of action, but would it be better to let the board provide
strategic guidance and program priorities on how best to transform the organization and its pro-
grams? Allowing the board to take the lead would allow the board members to make contact with
the Support Project’s service delivery partners and subcontractors, key donors, advocacy groups,
community leaders, clients, and even staff. Sonia turned to Brenda and asked, “Would you please
hold off on convening a staff work group until I consult with our board chair and we can figure
out our next steps forward?”

Case Analysis

The Upper Cascade Women’s Support Project case opens up the subject of public budgeting on
numerous levels. At least three major levels stand out in the scenario: (1) the networked delivery
of services and issues of community governance and responsibility; (2) the structuring effects
of the public budgeting process; and (3) the contrasting values and success criteria of political
actors and professionals.
First, the Support Project has defined itself as a comprehensive, one-stop service delivery
agency, but providing such a program depends on numerous sources of revenue and the support
of several major benefactors. These supports include state social service and health agencies,
county government departments and social service programs, community foundations, and com-
munity intermediary nonprofits. Each of these contributors is an independent organization, even if
they have partial reliance on each other for funding or policy direction. For example, state social
service agencies may contract with county governments for service provision. The county may
deliver programs with in-house staff or may partner and contract with nonprofit organizations
like the Support Project. The Support Project is, however, an independent provider—it receives
funding from multiple sources and answers to its own board of directors. It follows county or
state government direction only to the degree required in its contracts, and out of common policy
intention and goodwill. The Support Project, in turn, contracts with two subgrantees or subcon-
tractors to deliver part of its services. These subcontractors are again independent organizations.
The service providers in this community are interlinked in a complex network of resource and
service organizations. The network arrangement may be beneficial for performance effectiveness
8   General Concepts of Local Public Budgeting

and resilience, for building a competitive vendor community, and for nurturing civic capacity and
civil society. But the diffusion of authority and responsibility over the network can be problematic.
Who governs the network and sets its strategic direction to benefit the community and its needs?
And, as we have seen in this case, who takes final responsibility to ensure that sufficient resources
are budgeted and channeled to meet client needs? Once services are provided, who reviews the
efficiency and effectiveness of the service program? Governance of the network raises additional
issues. Should governance of the network generate from community energy and local relationships,
or should network leadership and decision making draw from a larger funding organization that
can enforce performance and resource allocation? In this case, should the Support Project as the
primary service delivery group closest to the ground have primary responsibility, or should the
community foundation, or a major community intermediary, or the county have responsibility as
a primary donor? More defined and effective network governance might provide a more focused
answer to these issues.
Second, the case demonstrates that public budgeting follows a well-defined process. We explain
the generic budget cycle and the major budget process steps in detail in chapter 5, and the budget
actors who use the process in chapter 4. The case, however, offers glimpses of the state govern-
ment, county government, and nonprofit organization budget procedures. The case demonstrates
that while these governmental and nonprofit organizations may be in very different political and
economic contexts, the budget development procedures have many features in common. A budget
cycle will typically begin with a planning phase initiated by the executive, followed by a budget
request preparation phase by agency, department, or program staff. The organization executive, a
governor, county executive, mayor, special district executive, or nonprofit executive then presents
a proposed consolidated organization budget to a legislative group for evaluation, public review,
likely modification, and final adoption. Legislative groups include state legislatures, city councils,
county commissions, special district boards, or nonprofit boards. Once the budget is adopted, the
organization will implement it and spend its resources over a single fiscal year or fiscal biennium
of two years. When the fiscal year or biennium ends, an audit phase reviews the agency’s financial
and organizational performance. But the case demonstrates a complexity specific to public budget-
ing: The timing of cycles used by different governments and nonprofits does not always mesh.
For example, the county government was trying to build a budget at the same time that the state
legislature was undecided on funding for state grants to counties for social services. This made
it hard for county and other local governments to plan and budget effectively. The community
foundation recognized this timing mismatch and scheduled its budget process to follow the adop-
tion of the government budgets. The foundation’s retrospective approach allowed it to prioritize
its funding allocations to partially compensate for government funding shortfalls.
Third, the case gives some indication of the many actors involved in the public budgeting process.
Each actor has a different perspective on the process, along with different criteria for demonstrating
successful participation. Professionals in the process—as modeled by Brenda Johnson, the Support
Project’s department and program directors, and the staff analysts—judge their success by profes-
sional standards and by legal compliance with state regulations and rules. For finance professionals
and analysts, the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA 2000) distinguished budget
presentation criteria; professional accounting and auditing standards (see chaps. 9 and 18) provide
such criteria. For program professionals, designing, funding, and conducting responsive, effective
programs to meet client needs and professional expectations stand as the success criteria. In con-
trast, executives and elected officials face a less sufficiently defined and more politically tangled
set of success criteria. Budgeting must be of special help to these actors as they respond to political
pressures, communicate with activists outside the organization, and connect with the community
and its many groups. The budget process provides an important communication path for execu-
tives, legislatures, councils, commissions, and boards building confidence in government and its
 Teaching Case   9

ability to deliver services. These two conflicting perspectives, the professional and the political,
raise tensions throughout the budget process. As the closing moment in our case demonstrates,
professional standards and efficiency may often need to give way to the political needs of building
support for action and governance agreement.

Notes

1. Though hypothetical, this instructional case is drawn and integrated from real-world events and condi-
tions. As examples of major nonprofit service provider cutbacks, see VanderHart (2010); state government
reductions (State of Washington 2008, 18–20, 2009); and county government reduction (Hannah-Jones 2011).
For an example of a social service delivery nonprofit with state and government grants, see the Cascadia
Behavioral Healthcare website at www.cascadiabhc.org/ (accessed January 19, 2014).
2. Intermediary nonprofit organizations (chap. 3, 8; glossary) raise money from a broad number of
sources and then partner and contract with service provider organizations to deliver programs and services.
An intermediary typically does not engage in service provision, but might provide community leadership
planning and coordination services. Widely known community and regional intermediary organizations include
regional and local United Way chapters, as well as religious affiliated service providers that draw donations
from member churches, parishes, and synagogues (e.g., Catholic Charities Community Services; Lutheran
Community Services). Rather than identify specific organizations, we use the generic term of intermediary
nonprofit throughout the book. Community foundations play a similar role, but through a slightly different
mechanism. A foundation is a type of intermediary nonprofit. Foundations may use collected revenues for
making direct grants to service providers and groups, but foundations often collect money from donors to
feed an investment endowment. Income generated from the investments provides revenue for grants to service
providers and community groups.
3. The responsibilities of this position are similar to those handled by the finance director of a small- or
medium-sized city or special district. A clerk of a small town would have similar duties, but on a smaller
scale.
This page intentionally left blank
    1 Local Public Budgeting
and the Challenges
of Decentralized
Governance

Three Scenarios

Scenario 1: The Complexity of Local Government and

the Need for Interjurisdictional Cooperation

Following several unsuccessful attempts to pass local property tax levies to finance public services,
four separate governing jurisdictions took action: They initiated a strategic planning process and
enlisted help from their local university to assist in creating a tax levy plan and citizen outreach
strategy for funding local services. The four governing units (a unified school district, a county, a
city, and an independent parks and recreation district) realized that citizens were confused about
how local services were funded and believed that too many governments were making too many
requests for increased taxes. The goals of the strategic planning process were (1) to generate a
better understanding of the priorities citizens placed on the separately funded public services; (2)
to educate citizens on the mutual needs and funding sources of the various entities; and (3) to
create a plan for property tax revenue requests by the four independent entities.
In the face of growing urbanization, government leaders in this large urban area were struggling
to meet increased service demands without dramatically increasing property taxes or compromis-
ing the existing property tax base upon which the various jurisdictions relied for funding. The
major governing entities in the region agreed to create a joint task force to develop governance
options. Ultimately, the task force recommended the creation of a new regional government and
the transfer of regionwide functions to the new entity (e.g., regional land-use and growth plan-
ning, management of the zoo and the Exposition Center, solid waste disposal, and parks and open
space), with the taxing authority to fund these functions. Citizens and government leaders alike
supported the recommendations of the task force.

Scenario 2: The Financial Fragility of Local Governments

On average, 40 percent of the funding for services provided at the local level comes as transfers
from the state and federal government (Tax Policy Center 2008). Since the economic downturn
of 2007–2009, 46 states plus the District of Columbia have initiated major budget cuts. These
cuts resulted in the reduction of health care (31 states), services to the elderly and disabled (29
states and the District of Columbia), K–12 education (34 states and the District of Columbia),
and higher education (43 states) (Johnson, Oliff, and Williams 2011). These cuts are occurring at
a time when local debt has risen by more than 76 percent between 2000 and 2008 (U.S. Census
Bureau 2003, 2012b).

11
12   General Concepts of Local Public Budgeting

Scenario 3: The Creative Governance Role of Career

Administrators in Local Public Budgeting

Unable to fund the growing social service needs of its citizens, county administrative leaders
facilitated a community envisioning process with citizens and stakeholders. The exercise served
to identify shared aspirations and map existing resources in the nonprofit, business, religious, and
governmental communities that might be better coordinated and leveraged to meet these unmet
social service needs. The county created a new 501(c)(3), called the Vision Action Network, to
serve as the holding company for addressing these needs, and it committed to using this new
network as the governing entity for dispersing county-funded social service activities.
Struggling to find ways of replacing seriously undermaintained old buildings, a local school
district entered into a partnership agreement with the Boys and Girls Club, the city, the develop-
ment commission, and the private sector to develop a new mixed-income residential community
large enough to require a new school. The new school includes a community and recreation center,
which is partly owned and operated by the Boys and Girls Club and the city parks department. The
school has full use of the athletic facilities for all of its school functions but only pays for a share
of the total costs. Because the new development includes neighborhood businesses located within
the new community and is built within a low-income area of the city, the development qualifies
for low-interest federal loans. The old school building and land have been donated to the city in
exchange for the land in the new community development.
We begin this book with these three scenarios to illustrate why local public budgeting deserves
special attention. Budgeting is not simply a technical exercise about how best to expend the
revenues collected from citizens through fees, charges, taxes, and other sources. It is ultimately
about determining what the community values and generating the support necessary to fund these
values. The support is reflected not only in dollars but in patterns of relationships that have been
developed through time and have acquired institutional status. The local school, library, Boys
and Girls Club, chamber of commerce, rotary club, friends group, community center, or a long-
enduring citizen group may symbolize this institutional role. While the national and state budgeting
processes are greatly influenced by well-financed lobbyists speaking on behalf of well-organized
interest groups, this is not the case in most of the 88,657 local government jurisdictions in the
United States (see Exhibit 1.1). Instead, the budgeting process is shaped by deeply embedded
local institutional entities that have a vested interest in how government officials use the process
to promote the common good of the community. This makes the budgeting process political, but
it is a different kind of politics than the interest group model used to explain what happens at the
state and federal levels of government.
Most books on public budgeting focus on the federal and, to a lesser extent, state budgeting
processes. Moreover, most of these books view budgeting more narrowly as an interest-based
lobbying activity that determines how various revenue sources will be allocated to support what
government does. This model is less applicable to the state and especially local levels of government
(Carroll and Johnson 2010). The reasons are an artifact of a legal and political structure that gives
local citizens large amounts of control over the discretionary authority of elected officials to collect
various kinds of revenue and to expend those revenues to support what government does.
We have organized this book around four core themes that, taken together, explain why
government budgeting at the local level deserves to be given special attention. First, there are
88,657 local governments (see the aforementioned Exhibit 1.1) in the United States. These lo-
cal governments are responsible for providing services that matter most to the average citizen,
including those related to schools, land-use planning, public safety, water, sewer, transportation,
and mental health. The complexity of this arrangement creates the need for cooperation across
organizational and jurisdictional boundaries and provides a multitude of opportunities for the
Exhibit 1.1

Number of Governmental Units by Type, 1952–2007

%
Year Change4
Type of Government 19521 1962 1967 1972 1977 1982 1987 1992 1997 2007 (1952–2007)
Total, All Types 116,807 91,237 81,299 78,269 79,913 81,831 83,237 85,006 87,504 89,272 –23
U.S. Government 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0
Native American Tribes2 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a 564
State Governments 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 50 0
Local Governments 116,756 91,186 81,248 78,218 79,862 81,780 83,186 84,955 87,453 88,657 –24
Counties 3,052 3,043 3,049 3,044 3,042 3,041 3,042 3,043 3,043 3,033 –0.60
Municipal 16,807 18,000 18,048 18,517 18,862 19,076 19,200 19,279 19,372 19,492 16
Townships and Towns 17,202 17,142 17,105 16,991 16,822 16,734 16,691 16,656 16,629 16,519 –4
School Districts3 67,355 34,678 21,782 15,781 15,174 14,851 14,721 14,422 13,726 14,561 –78
Special Districts 12,340 18,323 21,264 23,885 25,962 28,078 29,532 31,555 34,683 35,052 84
Sources: U.S. Census Bureau, 2002, Census of Governments, Vol. 1, No. 1, Government Organization, Series GC02(1)-1, Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 2002; and U.S. Census Bureau 2007a.
1
1952 adjusted to include units in Alaska and Hawaii, which adopted statehood in 1959.
2
The U.S. Census Bureau does not track the number of Indian tribes. As of May 2013, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) listed 566 tribal entities as eligible for
funding and services from the BIA by virtue of their status as Indian tribes. The basic legal framework for tribal sovereignty was established by Chief Justice John
Marshall in a trilogy of cases adjudicated in the 1830s and affirmed by more recent courts. See Johnson v. McIntosh, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat.) 543, 5 L. Ed. 681 (1823);
Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 30 U.S. (5 Pet.) 1, 8 L. Ed. 25 (1831); Worcester v. Georgia, 31 U.S. (6 Pet.) 515, 8 L. Ed. 483 (1832) and United States v. Wheeler,
435 U.S. 313, 98 S. Ct. 1079, 55 L. Ed. 2d 303 (1978). For a list of federally recognized tribes, see U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs, http://
bia.gov/cs/groups/public/documents/text/idc1-023762.pdf (accessed February 4, 2014).
3
Includes dependent school districts, which are under the control of the state, county, or other governing body.
4
Calculation of percent change does not include Native American tribes.
   13
14   General Concepts of Local Public Budgeting

exercise of creative leadership on the part of career public administrators as they carry out their
local budgeting responsibilities.
A second reason for giving special attention to local public budgeting is that for the foresee-
able future, local jurisdictions will be facing a financial crisis that requires the invention of new
approaches to local service delivery and civic engagement strategies to enlist the support and
confidence of the local community. Because local governments are the legal creatures of the state
within which they exist, they operate within a more constrained environment than do their federal
and state counterparts. Despite this constrained environment, we argue that local administrators
have opportunities to exercise creative leadership that are not as readily available to those with
budget responsibility at the state and federal levels of government.
Policy decisions for most local governments are made by part-time and unpaid elected officials
who depend on their career administrators for innovative problem solving. This is a third reason
we believe local public budgeting deserves separate consideration.
Finally, local governments in the future will be increasingly responsible for what we call polity
budgeting—that is, a concern for how the community’s assets across the nonprofit, for-profit, and
government sectors can be identified and mobilized to make the highest and best contribution to
the community’s common good. This goes beyond the traditional jurisdiction-centered concern
for using the budget process to preserve the delivery of high-quality government services, even
in the face of diminishing resources. In the future, we believe local governments will increasingly
use their soft power of influence rather than relying on their smaller sphere of constrained hard
power and formal legal authority in the local public budgeting process.
In the sections that follow, we will elaborate more fully on each of the four core themes of the
book, summarized here:

• the unique role of local governments in building democratic legitimacy;

• the perfect financial storm, a transformational opportunity;
• the unique politics of local public budgeting; and
• polity budgeting and the rebuilding of local communities.

The Unique Role of Local Governments

in Building Democratic Legitimacy

In the United States, local governments play a decisive but legally subordinate role in build-
ing and maintaining the legitimacy of democratic government. The Tenth Amendment to the
U.S. Constitution makes explicit that “the powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to
the people.” The states, in turn, have delegated their powers down to a wide variety of local
governing bodies that provide the services about which the majority of citizens care most. This
legal arrangement reflects the historical reality that many local governments existed prior to
statehood, but it also embodies a conundrum: On the one hand, local governments play a sig-
nificant, practical role in making democratic governance work; on the other, they are legally
subordinate to their parent state authority. This conundrum will be explored more fully in the
sections that follow.

The Practical Importance of Local Governments in the United States

In his travels across the United States in the mid-1830s, the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville
was struck by the high levels of decentralization of governmental authority and the advantages
this provided in building the trust of America’s citizens in their public officials:
 Challenges of Decentralized Governance   15

What I admire most in America are not the administrative effects of decentralization, but the
political effects. . . . Often the European sees in the public official only force; the American
sees in him right. . . . As administrative authority is placed at the side of those whom it
administers, and in some way represents them, it excites neither jealousy nor hatred. . . .
Administrative power . . . does not find itself abandoned to itself as in Europe. One does
not believe that the duties of particular persons have ceased because the representative of
the public comes to act. (Tocqueville 1835–1840/2000, 90)

If Tocqueville were to travel across the United States today, he would likely be even more im-
pressed by the extraordinary expansion of the process of decentralization that has occurred over
the past two centuries. As of the 2007 Census there were, 88,657 separate local governmental
entities in the United States, each levying taxes or charging fees to deliver services to the citizens
it serves. Exhibit 1.1 provides a summary overview of the kinds and growth of these governing
bodies over the past 50 years. During this time, special districts have increased by more than 143
percent, growing from 12,340 in 1952 to 35,052 in 2007 (U.S. Census Bureau 2002, 2007a). In
contrast, school districts have undergone a dramatic consolidation and contraction.
While all local governments in the United States are the legal creatures of the state within which
they exist, the long-standing American tradition of bottom-up governance has resulted in the cre-
ation of a rich array of models that set local governments off from their counterparts around the
world. First, there is a very large degree of discretionary authority at the local levels of the system,
resulting in a wide variety of governing structures and processes. Neither the central government
nor a controlling political party dictates how the majority of money raised from local citizens shall
be spent by local government officials. This is not the case in many single party systems or in
countries like France, whose local governing bodies are the administrative agencies of the central
government. While local officials are elected in countries like France, Japan, South Korea, and
Italy, their discretionary authority is severely limited in comparison to local government officials
in the United States. For example, in Japan and South Korea, local government officials have very
limited taxing authority. This is also the case for European democratic states like France and Italy,
where local governing bodies have limited powers to collect taxes for services like public safety,
transportation, waste collection, and street lighting. In these centralized governments, most of
the revenue flows downward through the central ministries to local offices. This contrasts with
the United States, where local governments exercise significant discretionary authority over the
collection and expenditure of taxes (Tax Policy Center 2008).
Most Americans are surprised to learn that so many local budgeting entities hold the author-
ity to levy taxes, charge fees, and borrow money to pay for the services they provide. A typical
citizen may be a taxpayer of up to a dozen local jurisdictions: city, county, borough, township,
state, school district, fire district, water district, soil conservation district, library district, hospital
district, parks and recreation district, just to mention a few of the more common possibilities. One
of the authors of this book resides in a county with 33 separate governing jurisdictions and pays
taxes to six separate entities. This complexity of the local government landscape creates unique
budgeting and revenue issues both for citizens and for elected officials, which we will discuss in
more detail in the section that follows.

The Legal Subordination of Local Governments

to Their Parent State: Dillon’s Rule1

Each state defines by statute the types and kinds of local jurisdictions that can exist within its
borders. This enabling authority is codified in state statutes, for which a dizzying array of models
exist.2 For example, the state of Pennsylvania organizes its local government code authority by
16   General Concepts of Local Public Budgeting

county, subdividing each county into cities, class 1 townships, class 2 townships, and boroughs.
By contrast, the state of South Carolina organizes its code authority by counties (Title 4), mu-
nicipal corporations (Title 5), and Local Government Provisions Applicable to Special Purpose
Districts and Other Political Subdivisions (Title 6). The state of Washington represents the extreme
in specification of local government authority. It provides separate code authority for cities and
towns (Title 35, which provides for the creation of class 1 cities, class 2 cities, and towns), home
rule jurisdictions (Title 35A), counties (Title 36), library districts (Title 27), fire protection districts
(Title 52), port districts (Title 53), public utility districts (Title 54), sanitary districts (Title 55),
and water-sewer districts (Title 57).
Along the eastern seaboard of the United States, many local governments predated those of the
states. These small governmental bodies provided the milieu for cultivating significant degrees
of local autonomy—as well as direct and indirect democratic governance—decades in advance
of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. A U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental
Relations report (1993, hereafter referred to as ACIR report) observed that during the colonial
and revolutionary periods, “the custom and practice of local self-government was strong and
pervasive,” and local institutions exhibited varied forms and functions (1993, 28–29). Most
commonly known are the New England town governments, which operated under colonial town
laws and practiced direct democratic governance. However, local governments in other colonies
also exercised considerable “local privilege,” manifested in many instances through independent
democratic decision processes, and in some cases were even empowered to send delegates with
instructions to their colonial legislatures (1993, 27–30).
With the ratification of the U.S. Constitution came some drastic changes to the power structure
at the local level. This dominant, national legal doctrine set forth the supreme laws of the land and,
in general, treated local governments as mere creatures of the states—as products of the reserve
powers ceded to the states under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. Technically, local
governments in the United States are not even “guaranteed a republican form,” as the Constitution
requires of the state governments in Article IV. The states, it is held, provide for the establishment
of local governments, and they delegate authority to local governing bodies that otherwise hold
no independent authority.
The tidy legal doctrine just described is now commonly referred to as Dillon’s Rule, after
John Forest Dillon, a jurist from Iowa who had served on both state and federal courts and who
articulated the doctrine in an 1868 Iowa case (Clinton v. Cedar Rapids and the Missouri River
Railroad, 24 Iowa 455 [1868]). Dillon derived his analysis in part from Chief Justice John Mar-
shall’s (served 1801–1835) jurisprudence as expressed in cases such as Fletcher v. Peck (10 U.S.
87 [1810]) and Dartmouth College v. Woodward (17 U.S. 518 [1819]), and from Federalist legal
commentaries such as James Kent’s 1827 treatise on American law. In the Fletcher and Dartmouth
College cases, Marshall—holding to strong Federalist views—outlined a theory of contract and
property rights that favored centralized governmental interventions and policy to spur economic
development over local self-determination. He deemed local governments a strong source of
parochial interests that would likely do more to retard economic development than encourage
it. For this reason, it was important that state governments possess strict authority over local
governing entities as creatures of their own making. However, Marshall’s jurisprudence did not
preclude limited protection by state and federal courts of local initiatives that did spur economic
development or that established important mediating institutions for socializing and educating
local citizenry. Marshall thus left at least an opening for local governments to play their own role
in these affairs (see Barron 1999, 506).
Judge Dillon narrowed this thinking in the 1860s and1870s. Basing his jurisprudence in part on
the popular laissez-faire and classical liberal doctrines of the late nineteenth century, he asserted
that governments were constitutionally obliged to play strictly neutral roles over private civic and
 Challenges of Decentralized Governance   17

economic development. He proffered a bright-line distinction between public and private spheres
of life, and state governments were obliged to strictly control local governments toward that end
(Barron 1999, 507–509). If state legislatures failed in this effort, then “enlightened state judges
would enforce the private boundary that public politics would likely breach” (509).
Though Dillon’s Rule is still considered authoritative, it is not the only legal doctrine recog-
nized in statutes and case law. Thomas Cooley, a highly regarded state supreme court jurist from
Michigan, immediately attacked the Dillon doctrine, arguing in his then-influential Treatise on
Constitutional Limitations (1868, see also his concurring opinion in a Michigan case, People v.
Hurlbut, 24 Mich 44 [1871]):

It is axiomatic that the management of purely local affairs belongs to the people concerned,
not only because of being their own affairs, but because they will best understand and be most
competent to manage them. The continued and permanent existence of local government is
therefore assumed in all the state constitutions, and is a matter of constitutional right, even
when not in terms expressly provided for. It would not be competent to dispense with it by
statute. (emphasis added, Cooley 1868, 378)

As indicated, Cooley did not rest his defense of local autonomy on specific constitutional or
statutory language, but rather “on a more general assertion of basic, unwritten constitutional norms”
that derived from a more “organic approach to constitutionalism”—an approach associated with
the Jacksonian common law perspective popular in that era (Barron 1999, 512, 518–519; see also
Carrington 1997; Kahn 1992; Jones 1987; Paludan 1975; Siegel 1984; and Williams 1986). This
amounts to a kind of inherent constitutional power, though a very limited one. Cooley “sought
at once to embrace and to tame popular rule” by envisioning a “local constitutionalism in which
public municipal corporations—such as towns and cities—would be responsible for imparting
important values to the public in much the same manner that Marshall had previously imagined
private civic corporations such as Dartmouth College would” (Barron 1999, 511–512). Cooley
viewed the Constitution “not [as] a privatizing charter that protected individuals from government,”
but as “a publicizing document that protected the community from self-interested public officials,
corrupted by powerful private interests” (Barron 1999, 512). Living as he did in the Gilded Age
(the late nineteenth century) of massive corporate monopolies and urban political machines, this
twist on constitutional purpose was neither surprising nor uncommon, especially among reformers
(ironically, a group with whom Cooley was not then associated; see Barron 1999, 509–520).
Cooley wanted to shelter local governments from powerful private interests that were often
protected by state politicians as they perverted the public interests of communities for private gain.
He witnessed this dynamic firsthand through cases involving railroad monopolies—a problem he
took on more directly upon being appointed head of the Interstate Commerce Commission a few
years later (see Rohr 1986, chap. 7). With Jacksonian fervor, Cooley championed the “autonomy
and liberty of persons to order their own affairs, subject to general laws which do not create favored
or disfavored classes of citizens” (quoted in Barron 1999, 514).
Cooley believed that local governments played a vital role in preserving Jacksonian conceptions
of democratic equality; such theories allowed for the socialization of local people into public life
via civic and entrepreneurial associations, and enabled them to participate in local self-governance.
Cooley’s organic view of constitutions as facilitating the evolution of governing principles in
the same way the common law does—through accreted habits, customs, lived experiences, and
“common thoughts of men”—acknowledged the “from-the-ground-up” aspects of local gover-
nance and community life that the dominant, more positivistic jurisprudence ignored. From this
perspective, he conceived a “structural defense of the practice of local self-government” (Barron
1999, 516–518):
18   General Concepts of Local Public Budgeting

Local political institutions provided the fora through which people could engage in the
practice of constitutionalism for themselves. The practice of local self-government would
directly inculcate constitutional values in the public sphere by affording the local citizenry
an opportunity to practice democracy with constitutional limitations. Through the practice
of public politics at the local level, citizens would be forced in a direct and immediate way
to determine for themselves which decisions would serve the “public” interests of their own
communities and which would not. That experience would provide citizens with a greater
understanding of what it meant to govern themselves in accord with constitutional limita-
tions that would be possible under a regime of either centralized state legislative control or
judicial supremacy. (518)

Cooley’s structural defense of local constitutionalism failed to become a more prominent legal
doctrine for local governments in the United States. Dillon’s Rule imposes an arid legal standard
on local entities—a standard that fails to account for their rich and varied nature and leaves them
quite vulnerable to the vagaries of state legislative meddling. In effect, it forces them to govern
their own affairs with one hand tied behind their backs. The ACIR report strongly recommended
that a more balanced and consistent relationship between state and local governments was needed,
and the report specifically cited Cooley’s doctrine as an important legal element in “refocusing
the debate over how to balance state control and local autonomy” (1993, 7). The dominance of
the Dillon Rule, however, has not been absolute. The organic or “from-the-ground-up” aspects of
local self-determination and governance could not help but manifest themselves in law as well as
in political life, and thus have been recognized in a more tenuous form through the adoption of
home rule charters and related legislation.
Some scholars locate American precedents for home rule in the colonial and revolutionary
eras (ACIR report 1993, 32–34), but Cooley’s doctrine clearly gave the home rule movement
more impetus. “Although Cooley’s views were unequivocally adopted only in Indiana, Nebraska,
Iowa, Kentucky, and Texas, they articulated a resurgence of values that would soon be embodied
in institutional reforms designed to widen the scope of local choice” (1993, 34). These included
the insertion of ripper clauses and more general state constitutional provisions against “special
legislation,” which was commonly used to interfere with local powers and prerogatives relating
to social and economic development in their jurisdictions. Ripper clauses specifically forbade
state legislatures from delegating powers of interference in municipal functions to special com-
missions, private corporations or associations, or any other entities that would work on behalf of
private interests over local public interests. “By 1880, 28 of 38 states had incorporated similar
restrictions in their constitutions” (ACIR report 1993, 35).
Going beyond self-imposed legislative restraints, states also began thinking in terms of “em-
powering local citizens with the ability to articulate their preferences over institutional forms and
functional powers within their communities” (ACIR report 1993, 41). Missouri first experimented
with what later came to be called home rule provisions, a term originally associated with local or
regional self-determination movements in Ireland and England, and then eventually around the
world. The Missouri Constitutional Convention of 1875 conferred charter-making power on the city
of St. Louis, though it was hedged about with many conditions and restrictions. Charter-making
power was considered to be strictly a sovereign power of state legislatures, so this broke new
legal ground. Discussion in the state convention centered on two concerns—curbing the extensive
“corruption and favoritism by the state legislature in the management of the affairs of the city,”
and recognizing “the principle of local self-government” (ACIR report 1993, 41).
These arguments notwithstanding, the Missouri legislature retained essential prerogatives and
asserted its authority over St. Louis in clear language that subsequent state court decisions would
strictly enforce. This set a pattern among states—one that remains largely in place to this day—of
 Challenges of Decentralized Governance   19

legislatures conferring various types of autonomy on specific local governments (or in general to
all cities/towns of certain classifications), but retaining powers of express and implied preemption
that state courts would often interpret strictly. States such as Illinois, New Jersey, and California
have mandated liberal construction by state judges of municipal powers under law in the attempt
to reverse the impact of Dillon’s Rule, but the judges have not always acted accordingly.
Beyond the conferral of chartering power, however limited it was in the Missouri Constitu-
tion, another key provision granted “the power to act without prior authorization by the state
legislature”—as long as those actions were authorized in the local charter, “did not conflict with
a statute, and did not run afoul of a constitutional prohibition” (quoted in ACIR report 1993, 42).
This caught on in many states as cities grew in number and size to the point that state legislatures
could no longer maintain the degree of control they once exerted. Cities needed to exercise their
own initiative on many local matters without constantly seeking legislative authorization. This
developmental imperative led to the formulation of a “devolved powers” model of home rule,
which provides for “a general grant of powers subject to enumerated restrictions” (ACIR report
1993, 44).
Frank Johnson Goodnow (1895/2008) had articulated an early version of this model, and, sig-
nificantly, used English and Prussian models of organization, departing “from ‘the cross-checks
and intersecting lines of divided responsibility’ of the federal idea in favor of ‘a simple pyramid’
of efficient, rationalized functional administration” (quoted in ACIR report 1993, 44). This model’s
influence became widespread and contributed to the development of the council-manager model
of local government during the Progressive reform era. It was used by University of Pennsylvania
Law School dean Jefferson Fordham in 1953 as the basis for the American Municipal Association’s
model home rule provision, and has since been referred to as the Fordham Rule.
Finally, a Supreme Court case arose from a dispute over a diverse structure of courts provided
for in the Missouri Constitution of 1875. In Missouri v. Lewis (101 U.S. 22 [1879]), the court
unanimously asserted each state’s “full power to make for municipal purposes political subdivi-
sions of its territory and regulate their local government, including the constitution of courts, and
the extent of their jurisdictions” (30). In sweeping language, the court affirmed states’ rights to
adopt diverse legal systems, processes, forms, and institutions for carrying out municipal functions
within its jurisdiction, even to the point of grafting foreign legal systems and practices into a part
of the state (the example of Mexico was used in this case; see Missouri v. Lewis 1879, 32).
Ironically, the Missouri Constitution’s home rule provision for St. Louis required a form of
government based on the federal constitutional model, with a “chief executive and two houses
of legislation, one of which shall be elected by general ticket” (quoted in ACIR report 1993, 41).
Few cities would follow this lead as Populist and Progressive reforms ensued. Indeed, as they
developed over the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries, cities have cultivated even more di-
verse forms of operation, largely out of a need for more extensive interlocal cooperation in order
to leverage resources as federal and state governments pare back their support. As the 1993 ACIR
report indicated, local governments must now address “such matters as dissolution and annexation,
consolidation and separation, joint participation in common enterprises, interlocal cooperation
and [new forms of] intergovernmental relations,” while “clarify[ing] rules concerning the forma-
tion, operation, and dissolution of special districts” (46). The report notes with emphasis the shift
that has occurred over many decades “from a preoccupation with conflict to a recognition of the
pervasive collaboration through contractual arrangements that [can be obtained] in modern state
and local government” (46).
In general, states are embracing diversity in forms of local government institutions; however,
as local governments try to adapt to changing conditions, states’ treatment of local autonomy and
self-determination remains mixed at best. Over the twentieth century, the spheres of local autonomy
have alternately expanded and contracted, though it is safe to say that since the nineteenth century,
20   General Concepts of Local Public Budgeting

they have expanded more than they have contracted. They possess a limited variety of taxing and
other revenue powers, eminent domain powers, and contracting powers typically associated with
sovereignty, while never enjoying sovereign status. State legislatures still meddle and courts still
invoke Dillon’s Rule from time to time, with the result that local governments continue to exist
in an uneasy relation with their state masters. They continue to govern with one hand tied behind
their backs.
In the sections that follow, we will summarize the major types and kinds of local government
jurisdictions and forms of government, pointing out the wide variability from state to state with
respect to the legal authority extended to the same types of governmental units. It is important
for those who have budgeting responsibility to know what kind of authority and budget duties
they have under their state statutes. The general summary of the types of local governments and
their forms of governance in the following two subsections is not a substitute for knowing this
more specific information.

Types of Local Government

There are six basic types of local government in the United States: counties and parishes; cities
and towns; townships; boroughs; school districts; and special districts. Each will be discussed in
greater detail in the sections that follow.

Counties and Parishes

All states except for Rhode Island and Connecticut have county units of government. Louisiana
and Alaska subdivide the state into parishes and boroughs, respectively, instead of counties. While
states rely heavily on counties to provide services, they vary widely in the power and functions
delegated to them. In New England, counties serve as judicial court districts and provide sheriffs’
services. In the mid-Atlantic and midwestern states, counties provide a broader range of services,
including courts, public utilities, libraries, hospitals, public health services, parks, roads, law en-
forcement, and jails. Counties in western and southern states have even broader authority, including
the provision of public housing, child/family/elder services, airports/recreation/convention centers,
zoos, health clinics, museums, welfare/mental and public health services, animal control, veterans’
assistance services, probation/parole supervision, historic preservation, food safety regulation,
and environmental health services.
Counties vary widely in the number and kind of elected offices used for county leadership.
Most counties provide for a county registrar, recorder, or clerk (the exact title varies). The clerk
collects vital statistics, holds elections (sometimes in coordination with a separate elections office
or commission), and prepares or processes certificates of births, deaths, marriages, and dissolu-
tions (divorce decrees). The county recorder normally maintains the official record of all real
estate transactions. Other key county officials may include the district attorney, coroner/medical
examiner, treasurer, assessor, auditor, and controller.
In New England, regional councils have been formed to fill the void left by the abolition
of county governments. The regional councils’ authority is far more limited than that of a
county government. For example, regional councils have no taxing authority or authority to
issue permits; the aforementioned powers are delegated to the town governments. However,
the regional councils do have authority over infrastructure and land-use planning, distribution
of state and federal funds for infrastructure projects, emergency preparedness, and limited law
enforcement duties.
Counties vary widely not only in their authority and the number and kinds of officials who
are elected to office but also in their governance structures (Berman 1993; Coppa 2000; Jeffrey,
Another random document with
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 DANCE ON STILTS AT THE GIRLS’ UNYAGO, NIUCHI

Newala, too, suffers from the distance of its water-supply—at least

the Newala of to-day does; there was once another Newala in a lovely
valley at the foot of the plateau. I visited it and found scarcely a trace
of houses, only a Christian cemetery, with the graves of several
missionaries and their converts, remaining as a monument of its
former glories. But the surroundings are wonderfully beautiful. A
thick grove of splendid mango-trees closes in the weather-worn
crosses and headstones; behind them, combining the useful and the
agreeable, is a whole plantation of lemon-trees covered with ripe
fruit; not the small African kind, but a much larger and also juicier
imported variety, which drops into the hands of the passing traveller,
without calling for any exertion on his part. Old Newala is now under
the jurisdiction of the native pastor, Daudi, at Chingulungulu, who,
as I am on very friendly terms with him, allows me, as a matter of
course, the use of this lemon-grove during my stay at Newala.
 FEET MUTILATED BY THE RAVAGES OF THE “JIGGER”
(Sarcopsylla penetrans)

The water-supply of New Newala is in the bottom of the valley,

some 1,600 feet lower down. The way is not only long and fatiguing,
but the water, when we get it, is thoroughly bad. We are suffering not
only from this, but from the fact that the arrangements at Newala are
nothing short of luxurious. We have a separate kitchen—a hut built
against the boma palisade on the right of the baraza, the interior of
which is not visible from our usual position. Our two cooks were not
long in finding this out, and they consequently do—or rather neglect
to do—what they please. In any case they do not seem to be very
particular about the boiling of our drinking-water—at least I can
attribute to no other cause certain attacks of a dysenteric nature,
from which both Knudsen and I have suffered for some time. If a
man like Omari has to be left unwatched for a moment, he is capable
of anything. Besides this complaint, we are inconvenienced by the
state of our nails, which have become as hard as glass, and crack on
the slightest provocation, and I have the additional infliction of
pimples all over me. As if all this were not enough, we have also, for
the last week been waging war against the jigger, who has found his
Eldorado in the hot sand of the Makonde plateau. Our men are seen
all day long—whenever their chronic colds and the dysentery likewise
raging among them permit—occupied in removing this scourge of
Africa from their feet and trying to prevent the disastrous
consequences of its presence. It is quite common to see natives of
this place with one or two toes missing; many have lost all their toes,
or even the whole front part of the foot, so that a well-formed leg
ends in a shapeless stump. These ravages are caused by the female of
Sarcopsylla penetrans, which bores its way under the skin and there
develops an egg-sac the size of a pea. In all books on the subject, it is
stated that one’s attention is called to the presence of this parasite by
an intolerable itching. This agrees very well with my experience, so
far as the softer parts of the sole, the spaces between and under the
toes, and the side of the foot are concerned, but if the creature
penetrates through the harder parts of the heel or ball of the foot, it
may escape even the most careful search till it has reached maturity.
Then there is no time to be lost, if the horrible ulceration, of which
we see cases by the dozen every day, is to be prevented. It is much
easier, by the way, to discover the insect on the white skin of a
European than on that of a native, on which the dark speck scarcely
shows. The four or five jiggers which, in spite of the fact that I
constantly wore high laced boots, chose my feet to settle in, were
taken out for me by the all-accomplished Knudsen, after which I
thought it advisable to wash out the cavities with corrosive
sublimate. The natives have a different sort of disinfectant—they fill
the hole with scraped roots. In a tiny Makua village on the slope of
the plateau south of Newala, we saw an old woman who had filled all
the spaces under her toe-nails with powdered roots by way of
prophylactic treatment. What will be the result, if any, who can say?
The rest of the many trifling ills which trouble our existence are
really more comic than serious. In the absence of anything else to
smoke, Knudsen and I at last opened a box of cigars procured from
the Indian store-keeper at Lindi, and tried them, with the most
distressing results. Whether they contain opium or some other
narcotic, neither of us can say, but after the tenth puff we were both
“off,” three-quarters stupefied and unspeakably wretched. Slowly we
recovered—and what happened next? Half-an-hour later we were
once more smoking these poisonous concoctions—so insatiable is the
craving for tobacco in the tropics.
Even my present attacks of fever scarcely deserve to be taken
seriously. I have had no less than three here at Newala, all of which
have run their course in an incredibly short time. In the early
afternoon, I am busy with my old natives, asking questions and
making notes. The strong midday coffee has stimulated my spirits to
an extraordinary degree, the brain is active and vigorous, and work
progresses rapidly, while a pleasant warmth pervades the whole
body. Suddenly this gives place to a violent chill, forcing me to put on
my overcoat, though it is only half-past three and the afternoon sun
is at its hottest. Now the brain no longer works with such acuteness
and logical precision; more especially does it fail me in trying to
establish the syntax of the difficult Makua language on which I have
ventured, as if I had not enough to do without it. Under the
circumstances it seems advisable to take my temperature, and I do
so, to save trouble, without leaving my seat, and while going on with
my work. On examination, I find it to be 101·48°. My tutors are
abruptly dismissed and my bed set up in the baraza; a few minutes
later I am in it and treating myself internally with hot water and
lemon-juice.
Three hours later, the thermometer marks nearly 104°, and I make
them carry me back into the tent, bed and all, as I am now perspiring
heavily, and exposure to the cold wind just beginning to blow might
mean a fatal chill. I lie still for a little while, and then find, to my
great relief, that the temperature is not rising, but rather falling. This
is about 7.30 p.m. At 8 p.m. I find, to my unbounded astonishment,
that it has fallen below 98·6°, and I feel perfectly well. I read for an
hour or two, and could very well enjoy a smoke, if I had the
wherewithal—Indian cigars being out of the question.
Having no medical training, I am at a loss to account for this state
of things. It is impossible that these transitory attacks of high fever
should be malarial; it seems more probable that they are due to a
kind of sunstroke. On consulting my note-book, I become more and
more inclined to think this is the case, for these attacks regularly
follow extreme fatigue and long exposure to strong sunshine. They at
least have the advantage of being only short interruptions to my
work, as on the following morning I am always quite fresh and fit.
My treasure of a cook is suffering from an enormous hydrocele which
makes it difficult for him to get up, and Moritz is obliged to keep in
the dark on account of his inflamed eyes. Knudsen’s cook, a raw boy
from somewhere in the bush, knows still less of cooking than Omari;
consequently Nils Knudsen himself has been promoted to the vacant
post. Finding that we had come to the end of our supplies, he began
by sending to Chingulungulu for the four sucking-pigs which we had
bought from Matola and temporarily left in his charge; and when
they came up, neatly packed in a large crate, he callously slaughtered
the biggest of them. The first joint we were thoughtless enough to
entrust for roasting to Knudsen’s mshenzi cook, and it was
consequently uneatable; but we made the rest of the animal into a
jelly which we ate with great relish after weeks of underfeeding,
consuming incredible helpings of it at both midday and evening
meals. The only drawback is a certain want of variety in the tinned
vegetables. Dr. Jäger, to whom the Geographical Commission
entrusted the provisioning of the expeditions—mine as well as his
own—because he had more time on his hands than the rest of us,
seems to have laid in a huge stock of Teltow turnips,[46] an article of
food which is all very well for occasional use, but which quickly palls
when set before one every day; and we seem to have no other tins
left. There is no help for it—we must put up with the turnips; but I
am certain that, once I am home again, I shall not touch them for ten
years to come.
Amid all these minor evils, which, after all, go to make up the
genuine flavour of Africa, there is at least one cheering touch:
Knudsen has, with the dexterity of a skilled mechanic, repaired my 9
× 12 cm. camera, at least so far that I can use it with a little care.
How, in the absence of finger-nails, he was able to accomplish such a
ticklish piece of work, having no tool but a clumsy screw-driver for
taking to pieces and putting together again the complicated
mechanism of the instantaneous shutter, is still a mystery to me; but
he did it successfully. The loss of his finger-nails shows him in a light
contrasting curiously enough with the intelligence evinced by the
above operation; though, after all, it is scarcely surprising after his
ten years’ residence in the bush. One day, at Lindi, he had occasion
to wash a dog, which must have been in need of very thorough
cleansing, for the bottle handed to our friend for the purpose had an
extremely strong smell. Having performed his task in the most
conscientious manner, he perceived with some surprise that the dog
did not appear much the better for it, and was further surprised by
finding his own nails ulcerating away in the course of the next few
days. “How was I to know that carbolic acid has to be diluted?” he
mutters indignantly, from time to time, with a troubled gaze at his
mutilated finger-tips.
 Since we came to Newala we have been making excursions in all
directions through the surrounding country, in accordance with old
habit, and also because the akida Sefu did not get together the tribal
elders from whom I wanted information so speedily as he had
promised. There is, however, no harm done, as, even if seen only
from the outside, the country and people are interesting enough.
The Makonde plateau is like a large rectangular table rounded off
at the corners. Measured from the Indian Ocean to Newala, it is
about seventy-five miles long, and between the Rovuma and the
Lukuledi it averages fifty miles in breadth, so that its superficial area
is about two-thirds of that of the kingdom of Saxony. The surface,
however, is not level, but uniformly inclined from its south-western
edge to the ocean. From the upper edge, on which Newala lies, the
eye ranges for many miles east and north-east, without encountering
any obstacle, over the Makonde bush. It is a green sea, from which
here and there thick clouds of smoke rise, to show that it, too, is
inhabited by men who carry on their tillage like so many other
primitive peoples, by cutting down and burning the bush, and
manuring with the ashes. Even in the radiant light of a tropical day
such a fire is a grand sight.
Much less effective is the impression produced just now by the
great western plain as seen from the edge of the plateau. As often as
time permits, I stroll along this edge, sometimes in one direction,
sometimes in another, in the hope of finding the air clear enough to
let me enjoy the view; but I have always been disappointed.
Wherever one looks, clouds of smoke rise from the burning bush,
and the air is full of smoke and vapour. It is a pity, for under more
favourable circumstances the panorama of the whole country up to
the distant Majeje hills must be truly magnificent. It is of little use
taking photographs now, and an outline sketch gives a very poor idea
of the scenery. In one of these excursions I went out of my way to
make a personal attempt on the Makonde bush. The present edge of
the plateau is the result of a far-reaching process of destruction
through erosion and denudation. The Makonde strata are
everywhere cut into by ravines, which, though short, are hundreds of
yards in depth. In consequence of the loose stratification of these
beds, not only are the walls of these ravines nearly vertical, but their
upper end is closed by an equally steep escarpment, so that the
western edge of the Makonde plateau is hemmed in by a series of
deep, basin-like valleys. In order to get from one side of such a ravine
to the other, I cut my way through the bush with a dozen of my men.
It was a very open part, with more grass than scrub, but even so the
short stretch of less than two hundred yards was very hard work; at
the end of it the men’s calicoes were in rags and they themselves
bleeding from hundreds of scratches, while even our strong khaki
suits had not escaped scatheless.

NATIVE PATH THROUGH THE MAKONDE BUSH, NEAR

MAHUTA

I see increasing reason to believe that the view formed some time
back as to the origin of the Makonde bush is the correct one. I have
no doubt that it is not a natural product, but the result of human
occupation. Those parts of the high country where man—as a very
slight amount of practice enables the eye to perceive at once—has not
yet penetrated with axe and hoe, are still occupied by a splendid
timber forest quite able to sustain a comparison with our mixed
forests in Germany. But wherever man has once built his hut or tilled
his field, this horrible bush springs up. Every phase of this process
may be seen in the course of a couple of hours’ walk along the main
road. From the bush to right or left, one hears the sound of the axe—
not from one spot only, but from several directions at once. A few
steps further on, we can see what is taking place. The brush has been
cut down and piled up in heaps to the height of a yard or more,
between which the trunks of the large trees stand up like the last
pillars of a magnificent ruined building. These, too, present a
melancholy spectacle: the destructive Makonde have ringed them—
cut a broad strip of bark all round to ensure their dying off—and also
piled up pyramids of brush round them. Father and son, mother and
son-in-law, are chopping away perseveringly in the background—too
busy, almost, to look round at the white stranger, who usually excites
so much interest. If you pass by the same place a week later, the piles
of brushwood have disappeared and a thick layer of ashes has taken
the place of the green forest. The large trees stretch their
smouldering trunks and branches in dumb accusation to heaven—if
they have not already fallen and been more or less reduced to ashes,
perhaps only showing as a white stripe on the dark ground.
This work of destruction is carried out by the Makonde alike on the
virgin forest and on the bush which has sprung up on sites already
cultivated and deserted. In the second case they are saved the trouble
of burning the large trees, these being entirely absent in the
secondary bush.
After burning this piece of forest ground and loosening it with the
hoe, the native sows his corn and plants his vegetables. All over the
country, he goes in for bed-culture, which requires, and, in fact,
receives, the most careful attention. Weeds are nowhere tolerated in
the south of German East Africa. The crops may fail on the plains,
where droughts are frequent, but never on the plateau with its
abundant rains and heavy dews. Its fortunate inhabitants even have
the satisfaction of seeing the proud Wayao and Wamakua working
for them as labourers, driven by hunger to serve where they were
accustomed to rule.
But the light, sandy soil is soon exhausted, and would yield no
harvest the second year if cultivated twice running. This fact has
been familiar to the native for ages; consequently he provides in
time, and, while his crop is growing, prepares the next plot with axe
and firebrand. Next year he plants this with his various crops and
lets the first piece lie fallow. For a short time it remains waste and
desolate; then nature steps in to repair the destruction wrought by
man; a thousand new growths spring out of the exhausted soil, and
even the old stumps put forth fresh shoots. Next year the new growth
is up to one’s knees, and in a few years more it is that terrible,
impenetrable bush, which maintains its position till the black
occupier of the land has made the round of all the available sites and
come back to his starting point.
The Makonde are, body and soul, so to speak, one with this bush.
According to my Yao informants, indeed, their name means nothing
else but “bush people.” Their own tradition says that they have been
settled up here for a very long time, but to my surprise they laid great
stress on an original immigration. Their old homes were in the
south-east, near Mikindani and the mouth of the Rovuma, whence
their peaceful forefathers were driven by the continual raids of the
Sakalavas from Madagascar and the warlike Shirazis[47] of the coast,
to take refuge on the almost inaccessible plateau. I have studied
African ethnology for twenty years, but the fact that changes of
population in this apparently quiet and peaceable corner of the earth
could have been occasioned by outside enterprises taking place on
the high seas, was completely new to me. It is, no doubt, however,
correct.
The charming tribal legend of the Makonde—besides informing us
of other interesting matters—explains why they have to live in the
thickest of the bush and a long way from the edge of the plateau,
instead of making their permanent homes beside the purling brooks
and springs of the low country.
“The place where the tribe originated is Mahuta, on the southern
side of the plateau towards the Rovuma, where of old time there was
nothing but thick bush. Out of this bush came a man who never
washed himself or shaved his head, and who ate and drank but little.
He went out and made a human figure from the wood of a tree
growing in the open country, which he took home to his abode in the
bush and there set it upright. In the night this image came to life and
was a woman. The man and woman went down together to the
Rovuma to wash themselves. Here the woman gave birth to a still-
born child. They left that place and passed over the high land into the
valley of the Mbemkuru, where the woman had another child, which
was also born dead. Then they returned to the high bush country of
Mahuta, where the third child was born, which lived and grew up. In
course of time, the couple had many more children, and called
themselves Wamatanda. These were the ancestral stock of the
Makonde, also called Wamakonde,[48] i.e., aborigines. Their
forefather, the man from the bush, gave his children the command to
bury their dead upright, in memory of the mother of their race who
was cut out of wood and awoke to life when standing upright. He also
warned them against settling in the valleys and near large streams,
for sickness and death dwelt there. They were to make it a rule to
have their huts at least an hour’s walk from the nearest watering-
place; then their children would thrive and escape illness.”
The explanation of the name Makonde given by my informants is
somewhat different from that contained in the above legend, which I
extract from a little book (small, but packed with information), by
Pater Adams, entitled Lindi und sein Hinterland. Otherwise, my
results agree exactly with the statements of the legend. Washing?
Hapana—there is no such thing. Why should they do so? As it is, the
supply of water scarcely suffices for cooking and drinking; other
people do not wash, so why should the Makonde distinguish himself
by such needless eccentricity? As for shaving the head, the short,
woolly crop scarcely needs it,[49] so the second ancestral precept is
likewise easy enough to follow. Beyond this, however, there is
nothing ridiculous in the ancestor’s advice. I have obtained from
various local artists a fairly large number of figures carved in wood,
ranging from fifteen to twenty-three inches in height, and
representing women belonging to the great group of the Mavia,
Makonde, and Matambwe tribes. The carving is remarkably well
done and renders the female type with great accuracy, especially the
keloid ornamentation, to be described later on. As to the object and
meaning of their works the sculptors either could or (more probably)
would tell me nothing, and I was forced to content myself with the
scanty information vouchsafed by one man, who said that the figures
were merely intended to represent the nembo—the artificial
deformations of pelele, ear-discs, and keloids. The legend recorded
by Pater Adams places these figures in a new light. They must surely
be more than mere dolls; and we may even venture to assume that
they are—though the majority of present-day Makonde are probably
unaware of the fact—representations of the tribal ancestress.
 The references in the legend to the descent from Mahuta to the
Rovuma, and to a journey across the highlands into the Mbekuru
valley, undoubtedly indicate the previous history of the tribe, the
travels of the ancestral pair typifying the migrations of their
descendants. The descent to the neighbouring Rovuma valley, with
its extraordinary fertility and great abundance of game, is intelligible
at a glance—but the crossing of the Lukuledi depression, the ascent
to the Rondo Plateau and the descent to the Mbemkuru, also lie
within the bounds of probability, for all these districts have exactly
the same character as the extreme south. Now, however, comes a
point of especial interest for our bacteriological age. The primitive
Makonde did not enjoy their lives in the marshy river-valleys.
Disease raged among them, and many died. It was only after they
had returned to their original home near Mahuta, that the health
conditions of these people improved. We are very apt to think of the
African as a stupid person whose ignorance of nature is only equalled
by his fear of it, and who looks on all mishaps as caused by evil
spirits and malignant natural powers. It is much more correct to
assume in this case that the people very early learnt to distinguish
districts infested with malaria from those where it is absent.
This knowledge is crystallized in the
ancestral warning against settling in the
valleys and near the great waters, the
dwelling-places of disease and death. At the
same time, for security against the hostile
Mavia south of the Rovuma, it was enacted
that every settlement must be not less than a
certain distance from the southern edge of the
plateau. Such in fact is their mode of life at the
present day. It is not such a bad one, and
certainly they are both safer and more
comfortable than the Makua, the recent
intruders from the south, who have made USUAL METHOD OF
good their footing on the western edge of the CLOSING HUT-DOOR
plateau, extending over a fairly wide belt of
country. Neither Makua nor Makonde show in their dwellings
anything of the size and comeliness of the Yao houses in the plain,
especially at Masasi, Chingulungulu and Zuza’s. Jumbe Chauro, a
Makonde hamlet not far from Newala, on the road to Mahuta, is the
most important settlement of the tribe I have yet seen, and has fairly
spacious huts. But how slovenly is their construction compared with
the palatial residences of the elephant-hunters living in the plain.
The roofs are still more untidy than in the general run of huts during
the dry season, the walls show here and there the scanty beginnings
or the lamentable remains of the mud plastering, and the interior is a
veritable dog-kennel; dirt, dust and disorder everywhere. A few huts
only show any attempt at division into rooms, and this consists
merely of very roughly-made bamboo partitions. In one point alone
have I noticed any indication of progress—in the method of fastening
the door. Houses all over the south are secured in a simple but
ingenious manner. The door consists of a set of stout pieces of wood
or bamboo, tied with bark-string to two cross-pieces, and moving in
two grooves round one of the door-posts, so as to open inwards. If
the owner wishes to leave home, he takes two logs as thick as a man’s
upper arm and about a yard long. One of these is placed obliquely
against the middle of the door from the inside, so as to form an angle
of from 60° to 75° with the ground. He then places the second piece
horizontally across the first, pressing it downward with all his might.
It is kept in place by two strong posts planted in the ground a few
inches inside the door. This fastening is absolutely safe, but of course
cannot be applied to both doors at once, otherwise how could the
owner leave or enter his house? I have not yet succeeded in finding
out how the back door is fastened.

MAKONDE LOCK AND KEY AT JUMBE CHAURO

 This is the general way of closing a house. The Makonde at Jumbe
Chauro, however, have a much more complicated, solid and original
one. Here, too, the door is as already described, except that there is
only one post on the inside, standing by itself about six inches from
one side of the doorway. Opposite this post is a hole in the wall just
large enough to admit a man’s arm. The door is closed inside by a
large wooden bolt passing through a hole in this post and pressing
with its free end against the door. The other end has three holes into
which fit three pegs running in vertical grooves inside the post. The
door is opened with a wooden key about a foot long, somewhat
curved and sloped off at the butt; the other end has three pegs
corresponding to the holes, in the bolt, so that, when it is thrust
through the hole in the wall and inserted into the rectangular
opening in the post, the pegs can be lifted and the bolt drawn out.[50]

MODE OF INSERTING THE KEY

With no small pride first one householder and then a second

showed me on the spot the action of this greatest invention of the
Makonde Highlands. To both with an admiring exclamation of
“Vizuri sana!” (“Very fine!”). I expressed the wish to take back these
marvels with me to Ulaya, to show the Wazungu what clever fellows
the Makonde are. Scarcely five minutes after my return to camp at
Newala, the two men came up sweating under the weight of two
heavy logs which they laid down at my feet, handing over at the same
time the keys of the fallen fortress. Arguing, logically enough, that if
the key was wanted, the lock would be wanted with it, they had taken
their axes and chopped down the posts—as it never occurred to them
to dig them out of the ground and so bring them intact. Thus I have
two badly damaged specimens, and the owners, instead of praise,
come in for a blowing-up.
The Makua huts in the environs of Newala are especially
miserable; their more than slovenly construction reminds one of the
temporary erections of the Makua at Hatia’s, though the people here
have not been concerned in a war. It must therefore be due to
congenital idleness, or else to the absence of a powerful chief. Even
the baraza at Mlipa’s, a short hour’s walk south-east of Newala,
shares in this general neglect. While public buildings in this country
are usually looked after more or less carefully, this is in evident
danger of being blown over by the first strong easterly gale. The only
attractive object in this whole district is the grave of the late chief
Mlipa. I visited it in the morning, while the sun was still trying with
partial success to break through the rolling mists, and the circular
grove of tall euphorbias, which, with a broken pot, is all that marks
the old king’s resting-place, impressed one with a touch of pathos.
Even my very materially-minded carriers seemed to feel something
of the sort, for instead of their usual ribald songs, they chanted
solemnly, as we marched on through the dense green of the Makonde
bush:—
 “We shall arrive with the great master; we stand in a row and have
no fear about getting our food and our money from the Serkali (the
Government). We are not afraid; we are going along with the great
master, the lion; we are going down to the coast and back.”
With regard to the characteristic features of the various tribes here
on the western edge of the plateau, I can arrive at no other
conclusion than the one already come to in the plain, viz., that it is
impossible for anyone but a trained anthropologist to assign any
given individual at once to his proper tribe. In fact, I think that even
an anthropological specialist, after the most careful examination,
might find it a difficult task to decide. The whole congeries of peoples
collected in the region bounded on the west by the great Central
African rift, Tanganyika and Nyasa, and on the east by the Indian
Ocean, are closely related to each other—some of their languages are
only distinguished from one another as dialects of the same speech,
and no doubt all the tribes present the same shape of skull and
structure of skeleton. Thus, surely, there can be no very striking
differences in outward appearance.
 Even did such exist, I should have no time
to concern myself with them, for day after day,
I have to see or hear, as the case may be—in
any case to grasp and record—an
extraordinary number of ethnographic
phenomena. I am almost disposed to think it
fortunate that some departments of inquiry, at
least, are barred by external circumstances.
Chief among these is the subject of iron-
working. We are apt to think of Africa as a
country where iron ore is everywhere, so to
speak, to be picked up by the roadside, and
where it would be quite surprising if the
inhabitants had not learnt to smelt the
material ready to their hand. In fact, the
knowledge of this art ranges all over the
continent, from the Kabyles in the north to the
Kafirs in the south. Here between the Rovuma
and the Lukuledi the conditions are not so
favourable. According to the statements of the
Makonde, neither ironstone nor any other
form of iron ore is known to them. They have
not therefore advanced to the art of smelting
the metal, but have hitherto bought all their
THE ANCESTRESS OF
THE MAKONDE
iron implements from neighbouring tribes.
Even in the plain the inhabitants are not much
better off. Only one man now living is said to
understand the art of smelting iron. This old fundi lives close to
Huwe, that isolated, steep-sided block of granite which rises out of
the green solitude between Masasi and Chingulungulu, and whose
jagged and splintered top meets the traveller’s eye everywhere. While
still at Masasi I wished to see this man at work, but was told that,
frightened by the rising, he had retired across the Rovuma, though
he would soon return. All subsequent inquiries as to whether the
fundi had come back met with the genuine African answer, “Bado”
(“Not yet”).
 BRAZIER

Some consolation was afforded me by a brassfounder, whom I

came across in the bush near Akundonde’s. This man is the favourite
of women, and therefore no doubt of the gods; he welds the glittering
brass rods purchased at the coast into those massive, heavy rings
which, on the wrists and ankles of the local fair ones, continually give
me fresh food for admiration. Like every decent master-craftsman he
had all his tools with him, consisting of a pair of bellows, three
crucibles and a hammer—nothing more, apparently. He was quite
willing to show his skill, and in a twinkling had fixed his bellows on
the ground. They are simply two goat-skins, taken off whole, the four
legs being closed by knots, while the upper opening, intended to
admit the air, is kept stretched by two pieces of wood. At the lower
end of the skin a smaller opening is left into which a wooden tube is
stuck. The fundi has quickly borrowed a heap of wood-embers from
the nearest hut; he then fixes the free ends of the two tubes into an
earthen pipe, and clamps them to the ground by means of a bent
piece of wood. Now he fills one of his small clay crucibles, the dross
on which shows that they have been long in use, with the yellow
material, places it in the midst of the embers, which, at present are
only faintly glimmering, and begins his work. In quick alternation
the smith’s two hands move up and down with the open ends of the
bellows; as he raises his hand he holds the slit wide open, so as to let
the air enter the skin bag unhindered. In pressing it down he closes
the bag, and the air puffs through the bamboo tube and clay pipe into
the fire, which quickly burns up. The smith, however, does not keep
on with this work, but beckons to another man, who relieves him at
the bellows, while he takes some more tools out of a large skin pouch
carried on his back. I look on in wonder as, with a smooth round
stick about the thickness of a finger, he bores a few vertical holes into
the clean sand of the soil. This should not be difficult, yet the man
seems to be taking great pains over it. Then he fastens down to the
ground, with a couple of wooden clamps, a neat little trough made by
splitting a joint of bamboo in half, so that the ends are closed by the
two knots. At last the yellow metal has attained the right consistency,
and the fundi lifts the crucible from the fire by means of two sticks
split at the end to serve as tongs. A short swift turn to the left—a
tilting of the crucible—and the molten brass, hissing and giving forth
clouds of smoke, flows first into the bamboo mould and then into the
holes in the ground.
The technique of this backwoods craftsman may not be very far
advanced, but it cannot be denied that he knows how to obtain an
adequate result by the simplest means. The ladies of highest rank in
this country—that is to say, those who can afford it, wear two kinds
of these massive brass rings, one cylindrical, the other semicircular
in section. The latter are cast in the most ingenious way in the
bamboo mould, the former in the circular hole in the sand. It is quite
a simple matter for the fundi to fit these bars to the limbs of his fair
customers; with a few light strokes of his hammer he bends the
pliable brass round arm or ankle without further inconvenience to
the wearer.
SHAPING THE POT

SMOOTHING WITH MAIZE-COB

CUTTING THE EDGE

 FINISHING THE BOTTOM

LAST SMOOTHING BEFORE

BURNING

FIRING THE BRUSH-PILE

 LIGHTING THE FARTHER SIDE OF
THE PILE

TURNING THE RED-HOT VESSEL

NYASA WOMAN MAKING POTS AT MASASI

Pottery is an art which must always and everywhere excite the
interest of the student, just because it is so intimately connected with
the development of human culture, and because its relics are one of
the principal factors in the reconstruction of our own condition in
prehistoric times. I shall always remember with pleasure the two or
three afternoons at Masasi when Salim Matola’s mother, a slightly-
built, graceful, pleasant-looking woman, explained to me with
touching patience, by means of concrete illustrations, the ceramic art
of her people. The only implements for this primitive process were a
lump of clay in her left hand, and in the right a calabash containing
the following valuables: the fragment of a maize-cob stripped of all
its grains, a smooth, oval pebble, about the size of a pigeon’s egg, a
few chips of gourd-shell, a bamboo splinter about the length of one’s
hand, a small shell, and a bunch of some herb resembling spinach.
 Nothing more. The woman scraped with the
shell a round, shallow hole in the soft, fine
sand of the soil, and, when an active young
girl had filled the calabash with water for her,
she began to knead the clay. As if by magic it
gradually assumed the shape of a rough but
already well-shaped vessel, which only wanted
a little touching up with the instruments
before mentioned. I looked out with the
MAKUA WOMAN closest attention for any indication of the use
MAKING A POT. of the potter’s wheel, in however rudimentary
SHOWS THE a form, but no—hapana (there is none). The
BEGINNINGS OF THE embryo pot stood firmly in its little
POTTER’S WHEEL
depression, and the woman walked round it in
a stooping posture, whether she was removing
small stones or similar foreign bodies with the maize-cob, smoothing
the inner or outer surface with the splinter of bamboo, or later, after
letting it dry for a day, pricking in the ornamentation with a pointed
bit of gourd-shell, or working out the bottom, or cutting the edge
with a sharp bamboo knife, or giving the last touches to the finished
vessel. This occupation of the women is infinitely toilsome, but it is
without doubt an accurate reproduction of the process in use among
our ancestors of the Neolithic and Bronze ages.
There is no doubt that the invention of pottery, an item in human
progress whose importance cannot be over-estimated, is due to
women. Rough, coarse and unfeeling, the men of the horde range
over the countryside. When the united cunning of the hunters has
succeeded in killing the game; not one of them thinks of carrying
home the spoil. A bright fire, kindled by a vigorous wielding of the
drill, is crackling beside them; the animal has been cleaned and cut
up secundum artem, and, after a slight singeing, will soon disappear
under their sharp teeth; no one all this time giving a single thought
to wife or child.
To what shifts, on the other hand, the primitive wife, and still more
the primitive mother, was put! Not even prehistoric stomachs could
endure an unvarying diet of raw food. Something or other suggested
the beneficial effect of hot water on the majority of approved but
indigestible dishes. Perhaps a neighbour had tried holding the hard
roots or tubers over the fire in a calabash filled with water—or maybe
an ostrich-egg-shell, or a hastily improvised vessel of bark. They
became much softer and more palatable than they had previously
been; but, unfortunately, the vessel could not stand the fire and got
charred on the outside. That can be remedied, thought our
ancestress, and plastered a layer of wet clay round a similar vessel.
This is an improvement; the cooking utensil remains uninjured, but
the heat of the fire has shrunk it, so that it is loose in its shell. The
next step is to detach it, so, with a firm grip and a jerk, shell and
kernel are separated, and pottery is invented. Perhaps, however, the
discovery which led to an intelligent use of the burnt-clay shell, was
made in a slightly different way. Ostrich-eggs and calabashes are not
to be found in every part of the world, but everywhere mankind has
arrived at the art of making baskets out of pliant materials, such as
bark, bast, strips of palm-leaf, supple twigs, etc. Our inventor has no
water-tight vessel provided by nature. “Never mind, let us line the
basket with clay.” This answers the purpose, but alas! the basket gets
burnt over the blazing fire, the woman watches the process of
cooking with increasing uneasiness, fearing a leak, but no leak
appears. The food, done to a turn, is eaten with peculiar relish; and
the cooking-vessel is examined, half in curiosity, half in satisfaction
at the result. The plastic clay is now hard as stone, and at the same
time looks exceedingly well, for the neat plaiting of the burnt basket
is traced all over it in a pretty pattern. Thus, simultaneously with
pottery, its ornamentation was invented.
Primitive woman has another claim to respect. It was the man,
roving abroad, who invented the art of producing fire at will, but the
woman, unable to imitate him in this, has been a Vestal from the
earliest times. Nothing gives so much trouble as the keeping alight of
the smouldering brand, and, above all, when all the men are absent
from the camp. Heavy rain-clouds gather, already the first large
drops are falling, the first gusts of the storm rage over the plain. The
little flame, a greater anxiety to the woman than her own children,
flickers unsteadily in the blast. What is to be done? A sudden thought
occurs to her, and in an instant she has constructed a primitive hut
out of strips of bark, to protect the flame against rain and wind.
This, or something very like it, was the way in which the principle
of the house was discovered; and even the most hardened misogynist
cannot fairly refuse a woman the credit of it. The protection of the
hearth-fire from the weather is the germ from which the human
dwelling was evolved. Men had little, if any share, in this forward
step, and that only at a late stage. Even at the present day, the
plastering of the housewall with clay and the manufacture of pottery
are exclusively the women’s business. These are two very significant
survivals. Our European kitchen-garden, too, is originally a woman’s
invention, and the hoe, the primitive instrument of agriculture, is,
characteristically enough, still used in this department. But the
noblest achievement which we owe to the other sex is unquestionably
the art of cookery. Roasting alone—the oldest process—is one for
which men took the hint (a very obvious one) from nature. It must
have been suggested by the scorched carcase of some animal
overtaken by the destructive forest-fires. But boiling—the process of
improving organic substances by the help of water heated to boiling-
point—is a much later discovery. It is so recent that it has not even
yet penetrated to all parts of the world. The Polynesians understand
how to steam food, that is, to cook it, neatly wrapped in leaves, in a
hole in the earth between hot stones, the air being excluded, and
(sometimes) a few drops of water sprinkled on the stones; but they
do not understand boiling.
To come back from this digression, we find that the slender Nyasa
woman has, after once more carefully examining the finished pot,
put it aside in the shade to dry. On the following day she sends me
word by her son, Salim Matola, who is always on hand, that she is
going to do the burning, and, on coming out of my house, I find her
already hard at work. She has spread on the ground a layer of very
dry sticks, about as thick as one’s thumb, has laid the pot (now of a
yellowish-grey colour) on them, and is piling brushwood round it.
My faithful Pesa mbili, the mnyampara, who has been standing by,
most obligingly, with a lighted stick, now hands it to her. Both of
them, blowing steadily, light the pile on the lee side, and, when the
flame begins to catch, on the weather side also. Soon the whole is in a
blaze, but the dry fuel is quickly consumed and the fire dies down, so
that we see the red-hot vessel rising from the ashes. The woman
turns it continually with a long stick, sometimes one way and
sometimes another, so that it may be evenly heated all over. In
twenty minutes she rolls it out of the ash-heap, takes up the bundle
of spinach, which has been lying for two days in a jar of water, and
sprinkles the red-hot clay with it. The places where the drops fall are
marked by black spots on the uniform reddish-brown surface. With a
sigh of relief, and with visible satisfaction, the woman rises to an
erect position; she is standing just in a line between me and the fire,
from which a cloud of smoke is just rising: I press the ball of my
camera, the shutter clicks—the apotheosis is achieved! Like a
priestess, representative of her inventive sex, the graceful woman
stands: at her feet the hearth-fire she has given us beside her the
invention she has devised for us, in the background the home she has
built for us.
At Newala, also, I have had the manufacture of pottery carried on
in my presence. Technically the process is better than that already
described, for here we find the beginnings of the potter’s wheel,
which does not seem to exist in the plains; at least I have seen
nothing of the sort. The artist, a frightfully stupid Makua woman, did
not make a depression in the ground to receive the pot she was about
to shape, but used instead a large potsherd. Otherwise, she went to
work in much the same way as Salim’s mother, except that she saved
herself the trouble of walking round and round her work by squatting
at her ease and letting the pot and potsherd rotate round her; this is
surely the first step towards a machine. But it does not follow that
the pot was improved by the process. It is true that it was beautifully
rounded and presented a very creditable appearance when finished,
but the numerous large and small vessels which I have seen, and, in
part, collected, in the “less advanced” districts, are no less so. We
moderns imagine that instruments of precision are necessary to
produce excellent results. Go to the prehistoric collections of our
museums and look at the pots, urns and bowls of our ancestors in the
dim ages of the past, and you will at once perceive your error.
MAKING LONGITUDINAL CUT IN
BARK

DRAWING THE BARK OFF THE LOG

REMOVING THE OUTER BARK

 BEATING THE BARK

WORKING THE BARK-CLOTH AFTER BEATING, TO MAKE IT

SOFT

MANUFACTURE OF BARK-CLOTH AT NEWALA

To-day, nearly the whole population of German East Africa is
clothed in imported calico. This was not always the case; even now in
some parts of the north dressed skins are still the prevailing wear,
and in the north-western districts—east and north of Lake
Tanganyika—lies a zone where bark-cloth has not yet been
superseded. Probably not many generations have passed since such
bark fabrics and kilts of skins were the only clothing even in the
south. Even to-day, large quantities of this bright-red or drab
material are still to be found; but if we wish to see it, we must look in
the granaries and on the drying stages inside the native huts, where
it serves less ambitious uses as wrappings for those seeds and fruits
which require to be packed with special care. The salt produced at
Masasi, too, is packed for transport to a distance in large sheets of
bark-cloth. Wherever I found it in any degree possible, I studied the
process of making this cloth. The native requisitioned for the
purpose arrived, carrying a log between two and three yards long and
as thick as his thigh, and nothing else except a curiously-shaped
mallet and the usual long, sharp and pointed knife which all men and
boys wear in a belt at their backs without a sheath—horribile dictu!
[51]
Silently he squats down before me, and with two rapid cuts has
drawn a couple of circles round the log some two yards apart, and
slits the bark lengthwise between them with the point of his knife.
With evident care, he then scrapes off the outer rind all round the
log, so that in a quarter of an hour the inner red layer of the bark
shows up brightly-coloured between the two untouched ends. With
some trouble and much caution, he now loosens the bark at one end,
and opens the cylinder. He then stands up, takes hold of the free
edge with both hands, and turning it inside out, slowly but steadily
pulls it off in one piece. Now comes the troublesome work of
scraping all superfluous particles of outer bark from the outside of
the long, narrow piece of material, while the inner side is carefully
scrutinised for defective spots. At last it is ready for beating. Having
signalled to a friend, who immediately places a bowl of water beside
him, the artificer damps his sheet of bark all over, seizes his mallet,
lays one end of the stuff on the smoothest spot of the log, and
hammers away slowly but continuously. “Very simple!” I think to
myself. “Why, I could do that, too!”—but I am forced to change my
opinions a little later on; for the beating is quite an art, if the fabric is
not to be beaten to pieces. To prevent the breaking of the fibres, the
stuff is several times folded across, so as to interpose several
thicknesses between the mallet and the block. At last the required
state is reached, and the fundi seizes the sheet, still folded, by both
ends, and wrings it out, or calls an assistant to take one end while he
holds the other. The cloth produced in this way is not nearly so fine
and uniform in texture as the famous Uganda bark-cloth, but it is
quite soft, and, above all, cheap.
Now, too, I examine the mallet. My craftsman has been using the
simpler but better form of this implement, a conical block of some
hard wood, its base—the striking surface—being scored across and
across with more or less deeply-cut grooves, and the handle stuck
into a hole in the middle. The other and earlier form of mallet is
shaped in the same way, but the head is fastened by an ingenious
network of bark strips into the split bamboo serving as a handle. The
observation so often made, that ancient customs persist longest in
connection with religious ceremonies and in the life of children, here
finds confirmation. As we shall soon see, bark-cloth is still worn
during the unyago,[52] having been prepared with special solemn
ceremonies; and many a mother, if she has no other garment handy,
will still put her little one into a kilt of bark-cloth, which, after all,
looks better, besides being more in keeping with its African
surroundings, than the ridiculous bit of print from Ulaya.
MAKUA WOMEN