Curmudgeon's Excellent Analysis

Curmudgeon said...

From recent postings, it seems that a push to switch from the mayor/council model of city government to the city manger/council model is under way. Or will be shortly.

The city manager model has much to recommend it. It's an old progressive era reform. The originators argued that running a city took a particular set of skills that you were not likely to find in the kind of people likely to run for the job of mayor and get elected. And so, they argued, the city council,chosen by the people, should hire a professional to manage the city, and to report to the council. The advantage was [allegedly] more professional management of city affairs, and that people would have a clearer understanding of responsibility: the Council could not say "they mayor did it!" since the Council hired the city manager. All responsibility then rested with the council in the end.

However,there are drawbacks to this model as well. One of the advantages of a well-constructed mayor/council plan is that each can, if need be, check the other. An out of control mayor can be checked by a council elected separately from him. [Note: that check is what supporters of the new "slate" of council memebers claim is what happened in the recent election.] And an out of control council can, in theory, be checked by a separately elected mayor. But under the city manager/council model, since the council hires [and fires] the manager,there is really no check on the Council's authority between elections.

Would the city manager model be a better one for Ogden? Maybe. I haven't thought it through thoroughly yet, and I want to hear a lot more discussion from advocates on both sides. But I am concerned that much of the drive for switching government models springs from peoples' unhappiness with Mayor Godfrey. Changing forms of goverment because folks are happy with a particular mayor [or council] is generally a bad idea. If the change is worth it, it needs to be so regardless of who happens to be in office. I can see,if we make the switch, ten years down the road, voters angry at a council and its manager demanding that we change back so the people can independently select a mayor to check the council's power.

So by all means let's debate it. But let's make sure it's a good idea on its own merits, and is not a kind of knee-jerk reaction to our having at the moment an arrogant, autocratic and [in my view] ethically challenged mayor.

November 24, 2005 10:20 AM

From the November 24, 2005 "it's a Done Deal Thread