Reorganization of State Government in Oregon1

The establishment of the system of direct government in Oregon—the initiative and referendum, the direct primary, and the recall of officers—has been followed by several important movements for the reorganization of representative government in all three departments.The centralization of the state administration is involved in one of the earliest, as it is in the latest, of these movements. In 1909 and 1911 W. S. U'Ren and others of the People's Power League published a proposal for the “concentration of responsibility and power for the enforcement of the laws as nearly as practicable in one public servant,” as it was expressed, by reducing the number of elective officers to two—the governor and the auditor (besides the three proposed “people's inspectors”), and making most of the other state officers as well as the sheriffs and district attorneys both the appointees and the actual subordinates of the governor. The plan was advocated as the means of securing responsibility for the enforcement of the law, economy in administration, and relief from the burden of the ballot. But the proposal was generally condemned by the press as creating “a monster political machine,” a “monarchical” form of government. In view of this opposition and of the fact that the League was at the same time urging radical changes in the legislative department of the state government, the proposal was not submitted to the people.