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Why is all territory within the state of New Jersey considered by the state to be within an incorporated municipality?
Summary: municipalities are a localized and standardized form of government. Initially, the State made the mistake of letting communities create and amend their own municipalities, but when things got out of control in the 19th century, the state cracked down between 1900 and 1950 by creating a standardized but flexible system of local governance.
What are Municipalities?
If you live in the United States, different entities provide you with different services. The Federal Government, for instance, is in charge of managing and printing the currency that you use and declaring war. The State Government issues your license and conducts elections.
Things get more complicated at the local level, because there's more variation across states. In New Jersey, people have decided that entities called municipalities will provide people services at a local level.
Municipal government is pretty cool, since it's closely tied to the everyday citizen. The line to present ideas to your Senator is probably pretty long. The line to present ideas to the President is even longer. But I doubt most people in New Jersey have as difficult a time getting in touch with the head of their municipality (Mayor, Council, etc.).
Every square foot of New Jersey is part of exactly one municipality, so if you're in a particular location, you're following the set of local rules laid out by one administrative body. New Jersey has 565 municipalities, which each fall in only one county. Municipalities come in different shapes and sizes. New Jersey has:Boroughs: most common form in New Jersey, run by a mayor and six council-members; this is seen as a good form of government for small, contiguous, developed municipalities.
City: these can range from small hamlets to what we consider big cities, and are run by a mayor and a seven-member council. These were a big thing in the late 19th century, but since city laws weren't revised that often, they became obsolete until the late 20th century, when the "form" of the city was revamped.
Town: a more modern type of municipality which relies on a mayor and eight councilmen; these came about in the 1880s and 1890s and were redefined, like cities, in 1988.
Township: an old, unusual, because these are run by the township committee, which serve both executive and legislative functions (in most municipalities, the mayor is in charge of executive functions); this is the traditional "town meeting" type of government;
Village: kind of like the way a club is operated, villages have five-member Board of Trustees, which select a president and a treasurer from their members. New Jersey doesn't have many municipalities these days.
Miscellaneous: some places can operate under different forms of government, established by the Faulkner Act. We'll get to this later.So, what's weird about the municipalities? Most states have unincorporated areas that aren't governed locally but instead "skip a step" and are governed by some larger administrative region, such as the state or county.
New Jersey municipalities, on the other hand, are incorporated. People are guaranteed somewhat of a local "voice," and the voice of the local government (powers, rights, duties) is the same across the state.
So, what we have here is a pretty uniform and egalitarian system, where people have old-school town-hall meetings and voice their grievances about the playground, the pothole, or the people littering in the park.
So how did this all start?
The first Europeans who formed a government in New Jersey were the Dutch. The Dutch West India Company, which formed "Holland" (not that one -- the one in the United States) in 1621, came to the New York / New Jersey area to make money.
Shit happened, the English encroached, and control over the area started to go back and forth between the Dutch and the English. Eventually, the Westminster Treaty gave the land to the English, and they split present day Jersey into East and West Jersey in 1676.
East and West Jersey: Source: Wikipedia, "West Jersey"
The Puritans were in the East, and ran things based on a traditional New England town organization. West Jersey was more standardized, and things were split up on a system of geographic division called "tenths." Both areas merged in 1702 to form the royal colony of New Jersey. Now, places would become part of New Jersey based on royal charter (i.e., a letter from the King).
First formal division: Township Act of 1798
At this point, there was still a legislative body, but since municipalities would now have to be more "official", they tried to come up with a standard general system of government on a local basis. This resulted in the Township Act, which created the original 104 townships in New Jersey.
The Township Act of 1798 is the backbone of the way local government was run in New Jersey from thereon out. At the time that it was created, there was this idea of local annual town meetings, and participation at a lower level since there wasn't an established state or federal government. This characteristic was retained as the act was amended in 1846.
Post-Civil War to the Great Depression: Explosion in Municipalities and the Beginning of Restraint
After the Civil War, the State of New Jersey added a constitutional amendment to the Township Act which prohibited the enactment of special or local legislation. Over the next ten years, the State backed off a bit and gave municipalities the right to change their boundaries and annex one another.
As you might expect, this led to chaos and confusion (to the extent that chaos and confusion could erupt in late 19th century local New Jersey government). Between the 1840s and the 1920s, a bunch of new municipalities started popping up every year. If an area was growing and the local government wasn't able to provide enough services, the citizens just opted to create new units. Things were pretty disorganized at this time, and, like much of the United States, socioeconomic and political problems led to the development of corrupt wards, the party boss, and the political machine
Progressives, at this time were pushing for the development of a standardized stronger government. They were started fed up with the corrupt and variegated wards emerging in New Jersey, and, riding on a nation-wide tide of dissatisfaction, they came up with something called the Commission form, which was codified under the Walsh Act of 1911.
The Walsh Act allowed municipalities to adopt a non-partisan commission form of government, where voters elect a small commission based on a plurality voting system (not runoffs). It also came with a bunch of other laws giving power to the people (referendums, ability to recall, etc.). While the Commission form went out of favor with Progressives and was replaced by the Municipal Manger Law of 1923, it laid the foundation for an organized, more business-like apolitical form of government.
The traditional American right of passage, a Declaration of Independence, continued to take place over. In fact, New Jerseyians declared independence more than 400 times between 1834 and 1957, and the number of municipalities grew from 125 to 568.
Things came to a sudden halt during the Depression. More people were relying on services provided by the Federal Government (by 1933, 10% of people relied on the New Deal).
Map of Current NJ Municipalities (Source: NJDEP Municipality Boundaries for the State of New Jersey
)
Later forms
In 1948, people got together to reexamine the way that local government was run, through the Commission on Municipal Government. Remember the types of municipalities we discussed above? The commission compared them and the effectiveness of their operations and came up with some "best practices" for the operations of different types of municipalities.
Realizing that some municipalities may not rigidly fit a "type", they recommended the enactment of "Optional Municipal Charter Law", which let municipalities choose how they would be run, without approval from the state legislature. This gave municipalities a lot of flexibility and made it easier for them to operate based on the needs of their people.
In 1950, these recommendations were hammered out in the Optional Municipal Charter Law, also known as the Faulkner Act. It allowed municipalities to operate as:Mayor-Councils: you've got a mayor and a council, and, depending on what the people want, different ways that power can be allocated between the two. This is usually most suitable for large cities.
Council-Managers: the council, elected by the people, is in charge of legislation. They appoint a city manager, who is like the "CEO" and can give management advice.
Mayor-Council-Administrator: a variant of the above
Small Municipality: really local -- here you've got a system run on initiatives and referendums, which relies heavily on petitions. The local governing body then votes on whether or not to enact a successfully executed petition.Since the Faulkner Act, not much has changed. In 1972, the Revenue Sharing Act passed by the Federal government gave states and local governments more power on how funds would be used, and there has been some bickering on how funds allocated to local governments (i.e., municipalities) would be split up. This controversy ended in 1986, when the Revenue Sharing Act was eliminated.
Sources:
1) " Chapter I: New Jersey Municipal History and the Traditional Forms of Government" http://www.njaeo.us/NJ%20Government.pdf
2) " Municipalities", Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_New_Jersey#Types
Additional Detailed Information:
"A History of Municipal Government in New Jersey Since 1798" http://www.njslom.org/history_municipal_govt.pdf
Note: My information relies heavily on the sources above, and errors are likely my own. Please do not reproduce without permission.
