Editor’s Note: As we face huge deficits and proposals to restructure government, understanding how Rhode Island arrived at its current government organization, financing and services is important. This is the first part of a five-part series by Kenneth Payne on how we got to where we are.

We Rhode Islanders are daily faced with the strong possibility that our government is sinking in a quagmire. So how did we get into this predicament? Where did the government, which we now have, come from? Maybe if we can understand that, we will have a firmer basis for acting constructively.

The 20th century commenced with 19th-century governmental arrangements. Most government services were provided at the local level, and in towns much of the work was done by local citizens. Cities were dynamic centers of wealth and economic growth, but their residents lacked political power commensurate with their numbers. State government was small. The governor had little power and did not head an administration. The General Assembly was seat of political power.

The relative scale of local and state government in Rhode Island in the late 19th century can be seen in Providence City Hall and the Old State House on Benefit Street. However, in key areas, courts, education and roads, the movement, as the century closed, was away from localism toward greater state responsibility.

Rhode Island government in 1900 was still colored by the dark shadows of the Dorr War, the brief, armed insurrection in 1842 that had sought to win greater fairness in the Rhode Island political system, including by extending manhood suffrage and by reapportioning the House of Representatives. After the Dorr War, Rhode Island electors approved a constitution that replaced the old Royal Charter of 1663. But the new “Law and Order” Constitution was not a liberal extension of political rights; it preserved the existing system of dominance by property-owning and native, mostly Protestant, men.

The state Supreme Court’s view in the 19th century was that the Rhode Island Constitution could not be overhauled by a convention but had to go through an amendment process requiring approval by two successive general assemblies and adoption by a three-fifths vote of electors, a process which, the eminent lawyer Amasa Eaton noted, frustrated efforts to make comprehensive change.

Post-Civil War amendments to the U.S. Constitution extended civil rights to all citizens. The Bourn Amendment (1888) to the state Constitution provided suffrage to U.S. male citizens who have been residents of Rhode Island for two years, “provided that no person shall at any time be allowed to vote in the election of the city council of any city, or upon any proposition to impose a tax or for the expenditure of money in any town or city, unless he shall within the year next preceding have paid a tax assessed upon his property therein, valued at least at one hundred and thirty-four dollars.”

The effect of the amendment was to allow men to vote in elections for federal officers, the state general officers, members of the General Assembly, and certain local officials, including mayors. But it was not much in terms of effective power.

The governor had few powers and was largely a ceremonial figure, and the General Assembly was malapportioned and controlled by the votes of members from rural towns. For example, Jamestown, with a population of 516 in 1885, had the same number of senators as Providence with a population of 118,070. City councils had broad powers including taxation, appropriation and adoption of ordinances. Mayors had few powers. In towns, finances were controlled by annual town meetings, and the property requirement for voting applied to financial matters. Anti-democratic provisions of the Law and Order Constitution survived into the 20th century.

STATE GOVERNMENT: Rhode Island government in the nineteenth century was “distributed into three departments: legislative, executive, and judicial.”

THE LEGISLATURE: Members of the General Assembly had one-year terms. The governor was the presiding officer of the Senate, with the right to vote in the event of a tie, and of the General Assembly in grand committee.

The rules of the Senate and the House established 7 joint committees, 10 standing committees in the Senate, and 13 standing committees in the House. Among them were a joint committee on accounts and claims; committees on judiciary, corporations, finance and education in both the Senate and the House; and a committee on special legislation in the House. These committees exist today.

A state auditor, elected by the General Assembly, managed state finances.

The Executive: The Constitution of 1843 vested the governor with “the chief executive power of the state.” The governor was commander-in-chief of the military and naval forces of the state. He could grant reprieves after convictions, fill vacancies in offices not otherwise provided for, “until the same shall be filled by the General Assembly, or the people,” and adjourn the General Assembly in cases of disagreement between the branches “respecting the time or place of adjournment.” On extraordinary occasions, he could convene special sessions of the General Assembly. But as Rhode Island Chief Justice Samuel Ames emphasized in Taylor v. Place (1856): “However great the personal influence of him who, from time to time may fill the executive chair of the state, may be, from his character and his standing, his official power amounts to nothing.”

The Judicial: The legal importance of Taylor v. Place is that it established the principle of an independent judiciary. The Royal Charter gave judicial powers to the General Assembly. After the adoption of the Constitution of 1843, the General Assembly occasionally exercised such powers. In Taylor v. Place the court ruled that a General Assembly action was unconstitutional because it conflicted with the assignment of judicial powers.

The courts at the end of the 19th century were thus a distinct branch of government, albeit one appointed by the General Assembly. The justices of the Supreme Court were elected by the General Assembly and held office at its pleasure. The Supreme Court had two divisions, an appellate division and a common pleas division, which held sessions in each county. There was no superior court. District Court judges were elected by the General Assembly to three-year terms.

In 1886, District Courts had been created to replace the old system of local “justice courts.”

A comprehensive act pertaining to the judicial branch was enacted in 1895.

Boards and commissions: State government functions, other than those of the courts, were performed at the close of the 19th century by boards, commissions and commissioners. The Rhode Island Manual for 1899-1900 and the Appropriations Act for the year ending Dec. 31, 1899, reveal how limited state government was going into the 20th century. The major state boards and commissions in 1899 were:

Commissioners of Sinking Funds, the account into which money was regularly deposited to pay the long-term debts from borrowing. The governor was a member.

State Board of Education and Board of Trustees of the State Normal School, which had the governor as a member. State aid to local schools was $120,000, and the appropriation to support the normal school, which trained teachers, was $54,000.

The Board of Managers of the Rhode Island College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, the predecessor to the University of Rhode Island, received $10,000.

The State Board of Agriculture, on which the governor served, had a budget of $20,000. There was the Commissioners of Inland Fisheries and the Commissioners of Shell Fisheries; their clerk had a stipend of $500.

The Board of Charities and Corrections, chaired by the lieutenant governor, oversaw the state institutions in Cranston, which were on a 650-acre parcel known as the State Farm and included the State Workhouse and House of Correction (with 283 inmates, 211 male and 72 female), the State Hospital for the Insane (717 residents, 356 male and 361 female), the State Almshouse (369 residents, 177 males including 30 boys and 192 females including 17 girls), the State Prison (182 inmates, 180 males and 2 females), the Providence County Jail (247 inmates, 218 males and 31 females) and the State Reform School, which had two facilities, the Sockanosset School for Boys (344) and the Oaklawn School for Girls (51). The board received a general appropriation of $240,000.

On the Board of Visitors to Institutions Where Women are Imprisoned was a woman medical doctor.

The Board of Control of the State Home and School, in Providence, received $20,000.

The State Board of Health had an appropriation of $3,500.

There were three Commissioners of Pilots and 25 pilots holding first-class licenses, and three Harbor Commissioners. The Pawtucket River had its own commissioner.

There was a Commissioner of the Providence and Worcester Railroad, a Commissioner of Railroads and a Deputy Commissioner of Railroads.

There was a State Board of Soldiers Relief, chaired by the governor, which oversaw the Rhode Island Soldiers’ Home in Bristol, established in 1889.

Control of tumult, riot and insurrection was a continuing concern. The militia was a major state government function. The governor was at its head. Armories were located around the state. The General Laws of 1896 specified, “Every town council or board of aldermen shall provide for companies within the limits of its town or city suitable armories or places to deposit for the arms, equipments and equipage furnished to such companies by the state.”

LOCAL GOVERNMENT: Towns were the fundamental structure of government in Rhode Island in the 19th century. It was from them that General Assembly members were elected and it was through them that most governmental services were provided.

While we now think of Rhode Island’s 39 cities and towns as a hardened reality, in the 19th century the configuration of local government was dynamic. Rhode Island began the 19th century with 29 towns and closed it with 37 municipalities, 32 towns and 5 cities, plus 1 municipal district.

Providence became a city in 1831, Newport in 1853. Pawtucket was established as a town in 1862, following a boundary settlement with Massachusetts; the eastern portion of North Providence was annexed to it in 1874, and Pawtucket became a city in 1885. Woonsocket was created from a portion of Cumberland in 1867; a piece of Smithfield was annexed in 1871; the town became a city in 1888. Central Falls was carved out of Lincoln in 1895 and was from the outset a city.

The boundary settlement with Massachusetts that made Pawtucket part of Rhode Island also brought East Providence into the state. Rhode Island gave up the Town of Fall River, which had been created out of the most northern portion of Tiverton in 1856.

The other major creation of towns occurred in 1871 when the large old Town of Smithfield was divided into three separate municipalities: Lincoln, Smithfield and North Smithfield. In 1870, there was one senator from Smithfield, and by 1872, there were three from the same area with essentially the same population.

The boundaries of Providence and the communities adjacent to it changed with annexation. Providence reannexed portions of Cranston in 1868, 1873 and 1892, portions of North Providence in 1873 and 1874, and a portion of Johnston in 1898.

Town government was participatory, and the town meeting was its foundation. It was at town meetings that expenditures were authorized, tax levies approved and officials elected.

The number of officials to be elected, as set forth in the General Laws of 1896, was extensive: A town moderator to preside at town meetings, a town clerk, a town council of not less than three nor more than seven members, justices of the peace, a town treasurer, a town sergeant, a town sealer of weights and measures, one or more auctioneers, not less than three or more than seven assessors of taxes, one or more collectors of taxes, one or more corders of wood, one or more packers of fish, one or more pound keepers, one sealer of leather, and as many constables, overseers of the poor, viewers of fences, gaugers of casks and all such other officers as by law are required and as each town shall have occasion for, including persons to superintend the building of chimneys and placing of stoves and stove-pipes.

The powers of town councils were broad. They could appoint additional officials, including field-drivers with the power to impound animals, inspectors of saleratus (salts used for leavening), bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar, and were required to appoint surveyors and measurers of boards, plank, timber, joist and scantlings, if such were brought into town for sale, and, importantly, surveyors of highways, whom they could remove in the case of incapacity or “any tyrannical and unwarrantable exercise” of power.

Town councils and, in cities, the boards of aldermen served as boards of health and could license and regulate “theatrical performances, rope and wire dancing and all other shows and performances”

Town and city councils could “make and ordain” ordinances and regulations “which they may deem necessary for the safety of their inhabitants from fire, firearms, fireworks, explosion of gunpowder… ; to prevent persons from standing on any footwalk, sidewalk, doorstep, or in any doorway, or riding, driving, fastening or leaving any horse or other animal or any carriage, team or other vehicle on any such footwalk, sidewalk, doorstep or doorway within such town, to the obstruction, hindrance, delay, disturbance, or annoyance of passers-by or of persons residing or doing business in the vicinity thereof; to regulate the putting up of telegraph and other wires and the appurtenances thereof; to prevent the indecent exposure of anyone bathing in any of the waters within their respective towns; against breakers of the Sabbath; against habitual drunkenness; to regulate the speed of driving horses and cattle over bridges; respecting the purchase and sale of merchandize and commodities within their respective towns and cities; to protect burying-grounds and the graves therein from trespassers; and, generally, all other ordinances, regulations and by-laws for the well-ordering, managing and directing of the prudential affairs and police of their respective towns, not repugnant to the constitution and laws of this state, or of the United States.”

Cities had the powers of towns and such other powers as might be granted to them by the General Assembly. Their charters, which were acts of the General Assembly, set forth a different structure of government. A mayor, with few powers, was the chief magistrate. The powers of the town council and the town meeting were vested in a board of aldermen and a common council, which together were the city council. The mayor presided at meetings of the aldermen and city council and could cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie.

Howard Kemple Stokes, in a careful, 1903 study of Providence government, wrote: “For a century previous to 1880 Providence had been practically free from state interference…. No law affecting the city’s interests had been passed by the General Assembly without the assent of city officials, but such laws, being permissive rather than mandatory, had left to the discretion of the city government the determination of the scope of the departments created by them and the fixing of the method of election, the term of office, the duties and the compensation of such new officers as were prescribed in the law.” The Bourn Amendment of 1888, Stokes observed, immediately made the elections in the city much closer, and in 1891, a Democrat was elected mayor for the first time in 30 years, and “for eight of the last eleven years [up to 1901] the mayor’s chair has been occupied by a Democrat. Meanwhile, however, entrenched behind the conservatism of a property qualification for the franchise, the common council and the board of aldermen have been uniformly Republican.”

Public Schools: While town government had been created in Rhode Island by the first Colonists in the 1630s, public schools were a product of the 19th century. An act of 1828 authorized towns to support schools through taxation and to appoint school committees, of not less than five no more than twenty-one members. Public schools were a permitted local activity not a legal obligation, and they were not necessarily free tuition could be charged. Attendance was not compulsory.

The Constitution of 1843 contained an article devoted to education, which declared, “The diffusion of knowledge, as well as of virtue, among the people, being essential to the preservation of their rights and liberties, it shall be the duty of the General Assembly to promote public schools, and to adopt all means which they may deem necessary and proper to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education.”

The General Assembly in 1843 authorized the governor to appoint an agent to examine the condition of schools. Governor Fenner placed Henry Barnard in the position. Following Barnard’s recommendations in 1845, the General Assembly enacted a new school law. It provided for a state commissioner of public schools appointed by the governor, an annual appropriation for school purposes, principally teacher salaries, the establishment of teacher institutes and a normal school for training teachers, certification of teachers, and a local minimum contribution equal to one third of the state aid taken by the community.

Through the middle years of the 19th century, cities and towns were still not required to establish schools; they were authorized to create school districts with taxing power to build, furnish and maintain school buildings and to employ teachers. The functions of school committees were oversight, standards, and regulation of the conduct of schools and the courses of study.

The State Board of Education was established in 1870 with “substantial supervisory and advisory rather than functional authority” over local schools. Statutory revisions in 1882 required localities to “establish and maintain” schools.

State control over education increased during the 1890s. Compulsory attendance of 80 days was established for children between ages 7 and 15. The Board of Education was given exclusive authority to issue teacher certificates in 1898.

Roads: Motivated by a desire to move goods more cost efficiently and cheaply to and from rural areas, Rhode Island, following the lead of other states, took an interest in roads. In 1892, the General Assembly established a Joint Committee to Examine the Condition of Public Roads and Highways of the State.

Rhode Island had relied on a system of local road construction and maintenance, which the Joint Committee called suitable for the time of the King Charles Charter of 1663.

Towns divided themselves into highway districts and, for each district, there was a surveyor of highways, who would watch the condition of roads in the district and order where improvements were to be made and where maintenance was to take place. Town appropriations were modest, and the local road taxes could be avoided by doing road work. Highway surveyors were district leaders, and their office was often a political reward, which created opportunities for favoritism.

The Joint Committee attributed the poor condition of roads to “the subdivision of many towns into numerous highway districts, each having its highway surveyor who manages the district after his own ideas without supervision or instruction from any more competent person. In 17 towns in the state, there is a total of 1,019 miles of highway, divided into 441 highway districts of about 2½ miles, each having its independent surveyor entirely uncontrolled in most cases, by any superintendent or commissioner, and conducting the repairs in his own way, without regard to previous experience or training.”

The General Assembly reduced the number of highway districts in each town to a maximum of four and provided money for half-mile local demonstration projects showing good road construction practices. This was just a beginning. In the early 20th century, road construction would become a major state government activity.

As the 19th century closed, Rhode Island was a wealthy place, a dynamo of industrialization and urban growth. An entrenched Republican regime controlled government in the state. U.S. Sen. Nelson W. Aldrich led the regime, and Gen. Charles R. Brayton, a lobbyist for powerful business interests and chairman of the Republican state steering committee, was its boss. On Smith Hill in Providence, a new statehouse was being built.

Kenneth F. Payne is principal of Systems Aesthetics LLC and adjunct professor of marine affairs and senior policy adviser to the College of Environment and Life Sciences at the University of Rhode Island. He has held policy positions in state, federal and local government.