Local Government Management

Current Issues and Best Practices

Douglas J. Watson, Wendy L. Hassett

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134942787
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Bildung
• Categoria: Lehrmethoden

Some of the very best writings on issues involving local government can be found in journals published by the American Society for Public Administration or journals with which ASPA is associated. This volume includes thirty of the most outstanding articles that have been published over the past sixty years in these journals. Local Government Management is an ideal supplement for any course in local management and administration, whether the audience is students or practicing professionals.

Part 1
Relations between Elected Officials and Professional Staff

Since the earliest public administration literature in the United States, the issue of the relationship between elected officials and professional staff has been paramount. Woodrow Wilson and Frank Goodnow wrote extensively on this subject, as have numerous scholars in the decades that followed their pioneering work. Generally, scholars have used the policy-administration dichotomy as the theoretical construct to describe or explain the relationship between those elected to identify and enunciate the will of the people and those hired to carry out the will of the people, as presented to them by those elected.

Much of the literature on the policy-administration dichotomy has centered on council-manager government for two reasons. One is that it personifies the dichotomy so much more clearly because of the superior position the elected council holds relative to the manager. Mayor-council government, based on the concept of separation of powers, does not lend itself nearly as well to an evaluation of the policy-administration dichotomy as does council-manager government. The second reason is that public administration scholars probably have a stronger interest in the professional public administrators who fill the positions of city managers. Therefore, many of the articles included in Part 1 of this volume evaluate the relationship between elected officials and professional staff in the context of council-manager government.

We begin with Karl A. Bosworth's "The Manager Is a Politician" (chapter 1), which was previously published in Public Administration Review in 1958. Bosworth reviews three historic styles of city managers and concludes that all three types of managers play a key role in the policy process. His three types are the Administrator Manager, the Policy Researcher and Manager, and the Community Leader and Manager.

Bosworth noted that city managers and their professional association, then known as the International City Managers' Association (ICMA), had only recently acknowledged a policy role for city managers. He pointed out that, historically, proponents of council-manager government "have feared that the role of active policy leadership would bring discredit to the form of government" (p. 7). Several decades before his time, Bosworth recognized the key role that managers play as community and policy leaders. His advice to city managers: "City managers, whichever role they wish to follow, must seek to be among the best politicians in town, for their work deals with the satisfaction of the wants of people who have the privilege of discussing and voting about this work" (p. 9).

Richard J. Stillman II continues the debate that Bosworth had begun on the manager as politician (chapter 2). In 1977, Stillman wondered in his title whether city managers were professional helping hands or political hired hands. Bosworth, and Norton Long before him, concluded that managers were the best politicians in town because of their influence over budgetary matters, personnel decisions, and ability to advise their city councils. While Stillman did not completely dispute Long and Bosworth, he refined their conclusions by recognizing that differences among managers' work environments determine the extent of their policy involvement. He observed: "Increasingly city managers seem to take an activist view of their community policy roles, but three variables—city size, politics, self-definition of leadership roles—largely seem to determine the extent and nature of a manager's policy activity" (p. 18). Stillman concluded that managers cannot totally embrace either role of politician or professional. They must "cautiously and continuously tread a middle ground between the two poles of politics and expertise" (p. 20).

Nelson Wikstrom addresses another common misconception about council-manager government (chapter 3). The prevalent textbook view of council-manager mayors was restrictive and titular. Mayors were nothing more than ceremonial representatives of their local governments. In his 1979 study of the role of mayors in Virginia cities, Wikstrom uncovered a very strong policy role played by the mayors in Virginia. Over the next two decades, the mayor was recognized in the literature as the central political and policy leadership position in council-manager governments. Wikstrom concluded that not only did mayors exert strong policy leadership, but that the city managers with whom they worked preferred a mayor who provides "policy leadership and direction, and bears a strong sense of political responsibility for the resolution of controversial social issues confronting the community ..."(p. 31). He concluded that the emergence of mayors as policy leaders in council-manager governments was a positive development.

James H. Svara adds considerably to the understanding of the relations between elected officials and professional staff (chapter 4). In his 1985 article, "Dichotomy and Duality: Reconceptualizing the Relationship Between Policy and Administration in Council-Manager Cities," Svara concluded that the traditional conception of the policy-administration dichotomy was inadequate to explain the complex relationship that existed between elected officials and city managers. In his study of five North Carolina cities, he realized that there are four dimensions to the relationship rather than two. He described the roles of the elected official and the city manager as mission, policy, administration, and management and decided that both positions had some role in all four dimensions, even though the first two were primarily the spheres of the elected official and the latter two the spheres of the city manager.

The general conclusion in the literature is that city managers are taking on a greater policy role. However, James M. Banovetz foresees a very different future for city managers than that described by most scholars (chapter 5). In his 1994 article, he concluded that in the future, city managers would be in positions similar to professional baseball managers: "City managers of the future may find that their job, like their job tenure, is more similar to that of baseball managers than to political leaders, and that the resulting insecurity, as well as job demands, will cause them to focus on managerial rather than policy responsibilities" (p. 51). Banovetz opined that the reversion to a stronger managerial role and a lessened policy role is based on the changing political reality. He identified four periods in the twentieth century where public perceptions of government moved from "corrupt" (1900–14), to "should be limited" (1915–35), to "is paternalistic" (1935–65), to "is excessive" (1965-present). Political leaders in the United States grew up in this last period when government was viewed with hostility and mistrust. The new political leaders want a more direct and active role in government that requires that managers "match their technical competence with human relations skills" (p. 58).

Robert S. Montjoy and Douglas J. Watson review the writings of the early reformers and conclude that there are two dichotomies—the policy-administration dichotomy and the politics-administration dichotomy (chapter 6). Clearly, the literature over the decades has documented the role in policymaking that city managers play. However, an equally important role for city managers is to restrict the intrusion of particularistic politics into the management decisions of the city government. The manager serves as a gatekeeper for the department heads who are doing their jobs based on the best professional practices and not in response to the political demands of elected officials. In their 1995 article, Montjoy and Watson concluded that the politics-administration dichotomy "is, still a live issue for council-manager government" (p. 71) because it serves as a guidepost for managers in their dealings with their councils and in handling employee-council relations. It is one of the few weapons that a manager can use "to resist the particularistic tendencies in our political system" (p. 71).

James H. Svara, writing again in 1999 (and published here as chapter 7), identified changing conditions that caused differences in the traditional relationships between elected officials and city managers in thirty-one large American cities that use council-manager government. In his survey of elected officials and appointed administrators in these cities, Svara found that four of five viewed the working relationship between them as very good or good. However, he noted that a "change in council members' behavior and preferences is occurring" (p. 76). Specifically, Svara found that council members tend to be concerned with specific, short-term matters and not with long-range policy. "It is possible that the city manager has become more active in mission and policy than previously, but another explanation is that the manager's policy activity is more obvious as council members pay less attention to goal setting" (p. 77) he concluded. Managers have become what Svara described as the "activist-initiator" while the elected officials are more consumed with their roles as ombudsmen, current problem solvers, and overseers of the manager's work.

Chapter 1
The Manager is a Politician

Karl A. Bos worth

Upper governmental bureaucrats everywhere live under the imperative of thinking of the continued justification of the activities of their bureaucracies. What are the possible ways of modifying programs and methods? How appealing to whom are the alternatives? What are the dangers to be avoided? Are the achievements impressive? Is there a firm and possibly growing body of public awareness, satisfaction, and support? These and similar considerations haunt the thoughts of the prudent governmental officer. What he does with these thoughts may depend upon the form of government and political system within which the officer works.

Council-manager government, by placing the manager directly in public view, accentuates public interest in how this kind of bureaucrat operates as a political leader. Not only is he inevitably in public view, but the range of his operations is broad, and the fate of his community may be determined in part by the public goals his thoughts lead him to set for his government. Recent awareness of the broad roles in policy leadership admitted by some city managers has raised the question as to whether council-manager government is developing now as an acceptable political system. In other words, given this bent, is it still a popular government or is there a danger that an undemocratic political system is being contrived?

It is the view here that the relatively recent willingness of city managers to admit generally that they are community leaders does not reflect a marked change in their role. City managers, abetted particularly by the International City Managers' Association, have been concerned about the image of themselves presented to the public. The role of the manager has been, after all, in the process of being structured; and the fortunes of the managers and the Association depended upon public acceptance of a described role.

The description of the role as it affects policy leadership has varied from time to time and place to place. Looking at three "styles'' of city managers as these roles have been described will, I think, point up the relatively minor nature of the recent changes. One should not think of these "styles" as a historical series. Although some case might be made for a historical trend, the emphasis here is on the presence of policy initiating elements in all the styles of manager that have been described.¹

The Administrator Manager

One stylized view of the city manager has so sought to emphasize his role in internal administration as to leave no room for policy initiative. In this view, he just carries out administrative duties such as hiring, setting up the tasks, reviewing the work, and looking for the ways of getting more production from the same input or the same production from less input. Of course he also makes up the budget, and therein, if nowhere else, he is in politics.

A manager could, and a few have tried to, provide a council with budget estimates in which there was no firm proposal but rather a pricing of amounts of programs with supplementary programs priced in a fashion so that the council could buy as much or as little as it chooses. But the firm, balanced budget is the rule, and in such a proposal the manager says to the tax-saver that the city "needs" stated amounts for various programs and to the spender that the city "can get by" on the stated totals. The saver must find some program from which he can make deductions, if he would tinker with the proposal, while the spender has either to do the same or to propose the raising of taxes. Even if a manager has had budgetary guidance from the council, he cannot ordinarily escape some public responsibility for his proposed budget: "He didn't include anything new for us," or "They got nearly everything they wanted." Whether such statements emanate from employees or from others interested in programs, they are the essence of politics.

Let us not depreciate the manager's role as an internal administrator, for that is one of the plan's principal justifications. However, even in this role the administrator-manager is likely to set goals whose achievement may impress people with the desirability of the plan and the ability of the manager; good politics, in other words. Short-run goals may include the rewriting of some of the city's contracts for services or insurance with a view toward savings or improved service or coverage. These can be matters of policy as well as administration, and if one of the changes proves to be controversial, this is politics. A longer run goal may be the transformation of a mediocre department into a technically proficient one—a change, if accomplished, resulting in changes in the quality of the services and almost unavoidably in the quantity and kinds of service. The effective city policy has changed whether the change has been noticed or not.

It is difficult n...