City Manager
is Usurping Power of Elected Officials
*Reprint (with permission) of an article originally printed in the Spotlight in the mid 1980’s*
By Andrew Russo
A fast-disappearing phenomenon in American municipal politics is the existence of the council-mayor form of government with a mayor rooted -in the local community and directly answerable to the people. Instead, since World War II, there has been a dramatic and dangerous shift toward the one-man municipal dictatorship embodied in the council-manager form of government.
Today, roughly 50 million Americans live in communities governed by this system. The International City Management Association (ICMA) boasts that the council-manager plan "has become the most popular form of local government in the United States in communities of more than 10,000 citizens."
In 1983, I was a candidate or the City Council of Salinas, California, home town of author John Steinbeck and "lettuce bowl" of the nation. My campaign was based on opposition to the fraudulent form of representative government -known as the council-manager plan.
To my dismay, I found the public almost totally unaware of the fact that their popularly elected mayor exercised no real executive authority in the community. Hardly a handful knew that the city was not run by the council in conjunction with the mayor, but by an overpaid, imported, unelected "planner" known as the city manager.
During the course of the campaign, it became ridiculous to see the two contenders for mayor spending vast sums of money to win an office that, for all practical purposes, is merely a ceremonial affair concerned with cutting ribbons and judging bakeoffs.
The council-manager form of local government is the brainchild of the National Municipal League (NML), & satellite of the Rockefeller-financed Public Administration Service. The NML has been promoting this revolutionary form of government since 1915. It has also busied itself with writing “model" city charters that effectively remove power from the hands of the people and transfer it to unelected “experts'" and "planners." Many communities have been shocked to discover that their charters were not composed by the members of the community, but "provided'" to the community by the NML.
Under the council-manager system, the voters of the municipality elect a council and mayor (unless the mayor is elected by the council members) to "govern'" city affairs. These officials, in reality, do not govern the city. That power is invested in an unelected city manager, who is appointed by the council.
The manager need not be, and usually is not, a citizen of the locality he serves. Most managers are transferred from city to city. They are professionals, 85 per cent of whom come to their jobs from previous government positions. They are planners.
REVEALING MANUAL:
A manual published by ICMA tells us: “Under traditional council-manager theory, the city manager has responsibility for the recommendation of policy, . .Under this arrangement, the manager is supposed to have virtually free rein in the selection of such key personnel as department heads. The manager is usually the chief budget officer of the city and, consequently, is required to prepare and submit a budget to the council. In sum, the manager ‘runs’ the city."
It couldn’t be put more clearly.
Anne Garni, a former city council woman from the central California town of Santa Cruz, writes: "When elected to the City Council, I had a rude awakening. I learned that our City Charter restricted the elected members of the Council from interfering with the city manager. In reading a little booklet that explained how the council-manager plan worked, it said:
“The mayor, as presiding officer of the council, is the ceremonial head of the city. He is the official greeter, ribbon cutter etc. In no case should he be considered the executive or administrative head of the city or so conduct himself to give others that impression".
Indeed, the city manager is jealous of his prerogatives. The City Management Code of Ethics urges managers to "resist any encroachment on professional responsibilities...Be free to carry out official policies without interference."
In some cities, council members can be jailed or fined for "interfering" with the city manager.
In most communities governed under the council-manager scheme, the council members and mayor are part-tine officials. They are either not paid or receive just a nominal salary, they all have other employment. Such a situation is just what the city manager wants. Anne Garni writes: "Because the members of the council do not get paid, they cannot afford to take time from their regular employment to investigate the various issues, but have to rely on the recommendations of the city manager.
"He tells them only what he wishes them to know. He is supported by the ‘city' attorney and the department heads, who, for the most part, rationalize his proposals, for they are his employees. The power of hiring and firing department heads rests with the city manager alone. These employees have no recourse or appeal to the city council, thus making the role of the city manager a virtual dictatorship."
She concludes that the members of the council “are nothing more than window dressing to make the public think that they still have representative government.”
Indeed, the aforementioned ICMA manual, "Council-Manager Government in Small-Cities,” all but lets the cat out of the bag: “The successful city manager should always make his council look good. Advise them and help them reach sound decisions, but leave the ultimate policy decisions in their hands; give them all the information and advice that they need to make their decisions, but do not try to be a 'power behind the throne' or an invisible dictator.
"Salvage their mistakes, but do not become a rubber stamp for council decisions; remember that the manager's professional standing can be destroyed if he appears to willingly let the council make all decisions. Where possible, give the council credit for city accomplishments.”
How revealing. Who can come away from that quote without realizing that it is indeed the city manager who is the "invisible dictator" of the community? The arrogant and condescending attitude toward the people's elected representatives on the council that surfaces in the ICMA manual's statement is typical of the elitists’ sheer contempt for the people and their ability to run their own lives.
‘CARTE BLANCHE'
Since the city manager is not responsible to the public (and often can't be removed by the council without a super majority vote) and has the ability to keep the council in the dark about city affairs, he has an effective carte blanche to run the community the way he wishes. Such an ominous concentration of power in the hands of a single individual, especially one who has no roots in (and, thus, no loyalty to) the local community he governs.
How many know of the wheeling and dealing and manipulations perpetrated by their city managers in the back rooms of city hall, while the mayor and council members are at home watching “Kate and Allie"? How about the less-than honest men who have become rich under this system? Or the pernicious sewer taxes and fees imposed on the people from on high, without their consent?
The council-manager form of municipal government is an integral Rockefeller-sponsored regional government scheme. Regional government essentially seeks to remove power from the hands of the people and their elected officials and transfer it to unelected "planners" and "experts.” These “planners" and "experts" are vested with great power and function as a kind of regional “politburo.” The ultimate aim of the regionalists is to totally obliterate the states and localities, making them mere administrative units of an all-powerful central government based in Washington. (The Soviet Union has regional government.)*
H.G. Wells in his book “New Worlds for Old,” wrote about the designs of the Fabian socialists in England: “With them socialism ceased to be a open revolution and became a plot. Functions were to be shifted quietly, unostentatiously, from the representative to the official he appointed.
Just so.
Today, most Americans living in communities governed by the council-manager system do not realize that they have been denied representative government. It should be the duty of all Populists to mobilize against this form of municipal tyranny, and for the return of the traditional council-mayor system.
In the months ahead, many localities all across the land will be electing council members. Let’s make our voice heard and promote to the fullest our creed of “Power to the People." After all, if we Populists are to restore government of the people, by the people, and for the people in this nation, we ought to start working at the level of government closest to the people, namely the local level.
*”The Metrocrats" and "Blame Metro” are two of Jo Hindman’s famed exposés of the collectivist scheme known as metropolitan government.
