GOVERNMENT

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A-to-Z Guide to Greater Cincinnati:
"Best Place to Live in North America"

Model of efficiency, not always efficient

There was a time when the basic unit of government in Cincinnati was the saloon.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Cincinnati politics and government flowed from the taps of the city's neighborhood taverns. Saloon-keepers held the council seats, ruled the ward clubs and generally called the shots in Cincinnati's rough-and-tumble body politic.

Then came the 1920s and the reform movement that left the saloon-keepers face down on the barroom floor and gave Cincinnati a non-partisan, professionally-managed form of city government that has for decades been a model of clean-and-efficient municipal government for the rest of the nation.

The darkest days of Cincinnati's political history, most historians agree, was the period from the 1880s to the 1920s when the heavy-handed politics of George Barnsdale Cox - ''Boss Cox'' - and his successors ruled the city.

Mr. Cox, an orphaned son of English immigrants, grew up on the streets of the downtown 18th ward, working as a boot-black, butcher boy, and look-out for a gambling joint before setting in as a saloon-keeper.

In 1879, the young man was elected to the only office he ever held - the 18th Ward council, which he used as a base to build himself into the unchallenged boss of Cincinnati's Republican machine.

Rudolph ''Rud'' Hynicka, a Cox Lieutenant, took over the machine after Cox gave up the reins of power in 1912. Hynicka ruled city hall, but most often from long distance - he spent most of his time in New York City, managing a string of burlesque houses.

Life was never easy for the Republican machine. Three times, the Cox machine was ousted from city hall and three times it returned.

By the 1920s, with Cox dead and Hynicka in charge, personal corruption on the part of machine politicians was only half the problem. The city was nearly bankrupt: garbage piled in the streets and whole blocks burned because of a lack of firefighting equipment.

When the nearly bankrupt city put a tax increase on the 1923 ballot, a young reform-minded Republican lawyer named Murray Seasongood campaigned against it, with the help of an anti-machine organization called the Cincinnatus Association.

The campaign worked; the tax levy was defeated. Soon a coalition of Democrats, reform Republicans, and supporters of Progressive presidential candidate Robert LaFollette formed the Charter Committee.

In 1924, Charter pushed for passage of a sweeping reform package - a complete city charter, eliminating the old ward system and replacing it with a nine-member, at-large city council and a professional city manager. Voters approved the package by a better than 2-to-1 margin.

In 1925, Seasongood was elected to council and named as the first mayor. C.D. Sherrill became the first city manager.

The Charter Committee remained as a major player, fielding slates of council candidates and controlling council off and on over the years.

Proportional representation - the weighted voting system for city council where voters ranked their candidates in order of preference - lasted until voters replaced it in 1957 with a system where the top nine finishers in a field race for council are elected.

In 1987, voters approved a ballot issue changing the way the mayor is selected. Mayors had been chosen by council itself, but, since 1987, the top vote-getter in the council campaign has become mayor.

In 1995, voters rejected a business-sponsored initiative that would have replaced the current form of government with a ''strong mayor'' form, in which the mayor would have broad executive powers.