200 THE POLITICS OF INTERVENTION
The two major aspects of the municipal and provincial laws
were that the provincial and local governments were given
more theoretical independence and less freedom to spend.
They could budget without Treasury approval, but could not
spend more than a fixed percentage of their income on per
sonnel or exceed a limited bonded indebtedness. In a munic
ipal tax law, the local tax base was made compatible with
the national one, but was not radically changed. Irene Wright
observed that the only thing the Liberals and conservatives
could agree on was that they did not want tax reform.^30
The code also more or less nationalized Havana by giv
ing the national government control of the city's police and
sanitation services.
The judiciary and civil service laws protected judges and
bureaucrats from arbitrary removal, fixed their salaries and
reorganized the courts and the civil service system. Both
laws were widely discussed in Cuba because they confirmed
the current officeholders in their posts. Both were modeled
in their personnel provisions after similar statutes then in
force in the United States.
The Advisory Law Commission did succeed in its assigned
task: making statutory modifications that would enable the
United States to restore a representative Cuban government.
The Commission drafted and Magoon decreed a legal, sys
tematic basis for the peaceful transfer of political power.
Nonetheless, legal reforms, however well-intentioned, politi
cally acceptable and brilliantly wrought, were no more than
palliatives. They were the Roosevelt administration's timid
solutions to fundamental economic and political problems
in Cuba.
Colonel Crowder pointed out the implications of such
limited solutions. He emphasized that even to bring Cuba
to the point where its legal system matched its Constitution,
the Provisional Government would have to sponsor much
more radical reform than Roosevelt and Taft were ready to
approve. Crowder identified the Cuban dilemma: it could
not be anything but an authoritarian or chaotic state until