Excerpt from The Third Class City Law

This publication was prepared pursuant to the direction of the General Assembly contained in the General Appropriation Act of July 16, 1917.

The development of the third class city law rests principally on three acts of assembly, the first of which was the Act of May 23, 1874, P. L. 230. This was the act which first classified cities into three classes, enumerated certain powers general to all cities, and provided for the incorporation and government of third class cities. This act was followed by the Act of May 23, 1889, P. L. 277, which related only to third class cities and was in many respects simply a revision of the act of The third act is that of June 27, 1913, P. L. 568, usually known as the Clark Act. This act was also largely a revision of the two former acts but introduced several new features, among which were the commission form of government, non - partisan elections and the initiative and referendum. By amendments, -the non-partisan election features were abolished and the initiative and referendum greatly restricted.

Neither of the Acts of May 23, 1874, or May 23, 1889, have been directly repealed. Many of the provisions of these acts have been re-enacted, or are repealed by later inconsistent legislation. On the other hand many provisions have been entirely omitted and are still undoubtedly good law. In order to ascertain these provisions, the Acts of 1874 and 1889.were carefully compared and a note made of all omitted provisions. This was followed by a comparison of the Acts of 1889 and 1913. In publishing the Act of 1913 references have been made to these omitted provisions of the two former acts in the notes under the appropriate sections. Such portions of the former acts as have been omitted and could not be published under the Act of 1913 have been published in the appendix with other legislation enacted from time to time.

In order to give the reader the benefit of the comparisons made by the bureau, an article (xxii) has been inserted showing the manner in which each section and clause of the Acts' of 1874 and 1889 has been affected by later legislation. This article will also show the section where omitted provisions of these acts have been published.

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