Patronage Ruling’s Impact Unclear : Politics: The system has long been on the wane. But where favoritism still exists, the decision is hailed as end to a tawdry chapter in U.S. history.

Joseph DeVincenzo, once a $104,500-a-year top aide to former New York City Mayor Edward I. Koch, was indicted last August for running a so-called “talent bank” that provided lucrative city jobs to workers loyal to the Koch Administration.

Koch’s talent bank was one of the last vestiges of the Tammany Hall-style machine politics that once dominated the government of New York and many other states and municipalities across the nation. It was a system that kept political bosses in power while at the same time providing employment for thousands of poor people.

In New York City and some other municipalities such as Philadelphia, Cook County, Ill., and Nassau County, N.Y., where some form of political patronage still exists, the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday was hailed as the end of a tawdry chapter in American political history.

“I think it’s going to be revolutionary,” said Terry Brunner, executive director of the Better Government Assn. in Illinois. “This kind of stuff has gone on forever here.”

At the same time, however, political scientists were quick to note that political patronage long has been on the wane in the United States.

“In effect,” said Thomas Mann, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution, “the court’s decision certifies a trend that has been long in the making. While there are still patches of it, machine politics has been trending down for decades and decades.”

Indeed, in the city of Chicago, whose name has been almost synonymous with machine politics for generations, officials said that the ruling will do nothing but underscore the results of a 1983 consent decree that has virtually eliminated patronage there.

“This means nothing to us,” said Avis LaVelle, spokesman for Mayor Richard M. Daley, son of the political boss who helped give Chicago its reputation for patronage.

Patronage, in one form or another, has been a part of the American political system since the founding of the United States. “Even when the Federalists replaced the anti-Federalists, they replaced the postmasters,” remarked Burt Neuborne, a New York City civil liberties lawyer who has long been a leader in the battle against patronage.

But to most students of history, the system is most closely identified with William M. Tweed, the Tammany Hall boss who controlled New York politics in the late 1800s and stole $200 million through a system of patronage, graft and control of elections.

Political scientists say that a number of dramatic changes in American politics finally undercut patronage systems. In the early 1970s, there was a drive to unionize public employees that succeeded in many states and municipalities. At the same time, independent politicians began to be elected more frequently without assistance from the party apparatus.

In Pennsylvania, according to Tony May, executive director of the state Democratic Party, changes in the law and fund-raising techniques have been responsible for the virtual elimination of patronage, which only two decades ago had a stranglehold on state hiring. In fact, he said, the parties cannot now solicit the state’s 85,000 workers to buy tickets to their annual fund-raising dinners, as they once did.

Likewise in New Orleans, another city with a long history of machine politics, local officials report that strict civil service guidelines have insulated city workers from political pressures. “Quite often,” said Ken Carter, real estate assessor for New Orleans’ central business district, “you find that employees are not as responsible as they should be because of their perceived security.”

In California, where civil service has traditionally had the upper hand in hiring of public employees, the ruling went virtually unnoticed by public officials.

Donald Deise, senior assistant administrative officer for Los Angeles County, said that the decision will have “absolutely no impact” on the county.

Staff writers James Risen in Chicago, Maura Reynolds in Washington and Glenn Bunting in Los Angeles contributed to this story. Researcher Tracy Shryer in Chicago also contributed.