The People's Watchdog

Advanced nations tend to rely more and more on activist government to enlarge their citizens' wellbeing. But the more government does for people the bigger government gets--and the smaller citizens feel. What champion can fight city hall, slash red tape and rescue the Little Guy from the insolence of Big Bureaucracy?

As far back as 1809, Sweden invented just such a "people's watchdog" and gave him a name, ombudsman, which means representative. Sweden's current ombudsman, Alfred Bexelius, 63, is a unique national mediator who serves the public by prodding laggard civil servants. He and his ten assistants already have counterparts in Denmark, Finland, Norway and New Zealand. Britain recently joined the movement by appointing a "parliamentary commission," and agitation for the appointment of ombudsmen has suddenly become popular all over the U.S. So far, however, the word does not even appear in U.S. dictionaries.

The power of an ombudsman varies from country to country, but all have common characteristics. They are eminent jurists who investigate citizens' complaints against government officials at little or no charge. Although they are instruments of the legislature, they are only generally answerable to it, and have no links with the executive. Their access to official papers is virtually unlimited, permitting them thorough review of administrative actions. One result is that they defend officials as well as citizens and knowledgeably dismiss most complaints as unfounded. Though all seek justice for individuals, their overriding goal is better administration.

Clogged Channels. The strongest argument for American ombudsmen comes from Columbia Law Professor Walter Gellhorn, top U.S. scholar on the subject. Last week Harvard University Press published two Gellhorn books, one a survey of "citizens' protectors" in nine countries, Ombudsmen and Others ($6.95), the other a U.S. study, When Americans Complain ($3.95). Although the U.S. is rich in responsive administrators and procedural safeguards against official abuse, says Gellhorn, the country's channels of complaint are so clogged that citizens either get no hearing or win isolated victories that rarely cure the root causes of their grievances.

U.S. skeptics argue that, in effect, all U.S. Congressmen and state legislators are already ombudsmen. Not so, says Gellhorn. To be sure, Congress receives 100,000 letters a day, a vast percentage of them constituents' requests for anything from Fort Knox gold bricks to intercession with regulatory agencies. Unfortunately, says Gellhorn, the episodic results merely assure individual votes rather than broad reforms. Worse, most state legislators cannot even help their constituents. Thirty state legislatures meet only biennially, and newcomers fill half the seats at each session; only eleven states pay legislators more than $5,000 a year, and funds for adequate staff work are rarely provided. As a result, most citizens' complaints are simply passed on to the official concerned, who may well ignore them.

As a further result; says Gellhorn, Americans tend to turn to courts to redress their wrongs. But judicial rules bar many grievances from the courtroom; litigation is also costly and timeconsuming, and appellate judges do not have the power to reform most administrative procedures. All of which leaves many Americans voiceless, notably the poor, who cannot cope with faceless welfare agencies or constructively vent their real or imagined complaints against big-city police.

Dragons v. Windmills. The need is certainly there, but would ombudsmen be able to do their job in the U.S.? A federal version poses problems, not the least of which stems from the sheer size of the country. Scandinavian ombudsmen thrive in small countries with multiparty coalition governments that remain relatively stable. By contrast, the U.S. two-party system might leave the ombudsman suspiciously indebted to the appointing party. U.S. executive privilege might cripple him as an investigator; Congress, the President and the Constitution could tether him tightly. The dragon-slaying St. George might become just another Don Quixote.

To bypass such problems, Gellhorn and others suggest a congressionally appointed "administrative counsel" who would only field complaints that came to Congressmen. He would take over their relations with Government agencies and, in theory at least, give Congressmen the vote-getting credit--besides taking the blame, if need be. More modest Senate proposals include a District of Columbia ombudsman to focus on the capital's burgeoning socio-economic problems, and regional ombudsmen to adjudicate federal tax disputes involving less than $2,500.

New York Ferment. More promising is the outlook for state and local ombudsmen. Size is less daunting at that level. As Gellhorn points out, 43 states are smaller than Sweden (pop. 7,700,000) and only three U.S. cities are bigger than New Zealand (pop. 2,600,000). The U.S. already has one local ombudsman: retired Judge Samuel Greason, 79, of New York's Nassau County on Long Island. Appointed experimentally last June, Greason claims to have solved 110 assorted public-service complaints--mainly, it seems, by telling citizens to forget it. Gellhorn & Co. are far more favorably impressed by New York City's reaction to the voters' recent resounding defeat of a civilian-dominated police review board--a board that Gellhorn regarded as divisive and inadequate. Now both friends and foes of the board (which reverts to police control) have suddenly backed the idea of a well-staffed "office of citizen redress" headed by an overall city ombudsman, who would function not as a punisher of erring cops and other officials but as a thoughtful outside critic of city administration.

Mayor John Lindsay has already opened two "little city halls" in Brooklyn, and New Yorkers have long been able to mail complaints to Box 100 for presumed probing by the city's Commissioner of Investigation, Lawyer Arnold G. Fraiman, 41, who has 120 assistants to help him subpoena records and examine any of the city's 250,000 employees. As Gellhorn notes, however, whoever holds the commissioner's job is still "the mayor's man" and hides or exposes as the mayor wishes. Lindsay may now try to make him the country's first true ombudsman. The city council may well balk, fearing a rival power. But if the nation's biggest city ever does manage to establish an ombudsman, the idea will probably spread across the country.

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