So Youngs Wants This!

New York, 1895

THE POSITION OF COUNSEL TO THE ARREARS COMMISSION.

At $2,500 a Year and Extra Compensation for One or More Clerks — He Lobbied the Bill Through the Assembly and the People Must Pay Him for It — Another Republican Scandal.

The Tax Arrears Commission will meet in a few days to organize for work. It is understood that Paul Mullineaux of Hempstead will be appointed chief clerk, and Peter Haslem messenger.

It will be a surprise to the public, and particularly the Republican public, to learn that Boss William J. Youngs is after the appointment of counsel and attorney to the commission, and that he wants a salary of $2,500 a year for himself, and compensation for one or more clerks, as may be required. The Boss is out for the boodle every time, and wants it all for himself.

Mr. Youngs is now clerk to the Assembly committee on Good Roads, which is commissioned to travel all over the United States, and may possibly go to Europe, examining into the road question, for what purpose no one knows, and no one cares, but the state will have a pretty big bill to pay for their travels. This place pays the Boss $5 a day. He is so elastic that perhaps he can serve as clerk to one body and counsel to the other. But it does seem that if the commission must have a counsel, they should choose an experienced lawyer.

The salaries of the four commissioners aggregate $6,000 a year. The clerk and messenger will add perhaps $2,000 to this sum, and $2,500 to a counsel, and $500 to a counsel's clerk, would bring the salary list up to $11,000. It would be an outrage to burden the people with this amount, and if it is done there will be a general demand for a repeal of the law. When the commission was increased from three to four, a lawyer was made a member of it so that the commission would not need to employ a special attorney at a big salary. John E. Van Nostrand is the legal member of the commission, and he is capable of giving the commission all the legal advise that it may require. To pay a special counsel and clerk $3,000 a year would be almost a criminal extortion under the circumstances, and the people should not stand it. If the time shall come when the commission has need of a lawyer to attend to litigated cases, one can then be employed who is competent. To begin with a $3,000 counsel and clerk, would simply mean the creation of two sinecures for two politicians.

The only argument we have heard in favor of Boss Youngs' appointment is that he lobbied the passage of the bill through the Assembly. This is tantamount to saying to the people that they must pay Boss Youngs $2,500 a year for working as a lobbyist. This and the fact that he is the Republican Boss are the only things that can be urged in his favor, and they are the two things that ought to make his appointment impossible.

The commission is an experiment. Just what work they can do and its value is problematical, and therefore they should exercise the most rigid economy.

The people demand it.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, April 26, 1895, p. 1.