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Model City Charter Committee

Convened by the National Civic League, June 21, 2001, Atlanta, GA

Summary of Meeting #1

 

Committee members present: Linda Barton, Terrell Blodgett, Donald Borut, Jacqueline Byers, Bill Cassella, Chris Gates, Charles Gossett,  John Hall, Bill Hansell, David Miller, Sylvester Murray, John Nalbandian, Betty Jane Narver (Chair), Tanis Salant, Phil Schenck, David Schultz, David Sink, John Vocino.

Observers: Dot Ridings, Martha Perego

NCL Staff: Matt Krumme, Derek Okubo, Bill Schechter

Organizations represented: Academics (University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Hamline University, University of Kansas, University of Pittsburgh), American Society for Public Administration, International City/County Management Association, National Association of Counties, National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, National Civic League, National League of Cities

Summary

(Note: the issues and opinions appearing below represent input from all committee members, but no particular opinion was endorsed by the committee as a whole)

            The purpose of the first meeting was to identify and frame charter reform issues to be focused on at the next three meetings and included in the Eighth Revision of the Model City Charter published by the National Civic League (NCL). The NCL employs consensus-based planning process designed to maximize input from experts and account for a variety of opinions and interests. Meetings scheduled for December of 2001, for Spring of 2002, and for Fall of 2002, will allow the Model Charter Revision Committee to further analyze and reach conclusions on the issues identified at the first meeting. Furthermore, the NCL will facilitate discussion and exchange of ideas between the meetings electronically and by teleconference.

The meeting began with three speakers who addressed broad themes to provide context.

-Bill Cassella (Former Executive Director of the National Municipal League and Senior Advisor to the Model City Charter Revision Project) reviewed the history of  the model charter as the centerpiece of the NCL program of municipal reform.  He observed that since 1915 NCL has endorsed the council-manager plan and pointed to the following issues which have to be considered in each revision of the model:  the question of to whom the model should be addressed, separation of powers versus unitary plans, the role of the manager, the method of election and the performance of council, the method of election and role of the mayor.  He discussed Richard Child's doctrinaire enthusiasm for the council-manager form and Murray Seasongood's view that it was desirable for an elected-by-council mayor to serve as policy leader. 

-John Nalbandian (Chair, Department of Public Administration, University of Kansas) spoke of form and structure of government. Analogizing it to an architect's work, he said that as values and problems change, structures should change to accommodate those values and solve those problems. In the past, reformers dealt with problems of too many officers and politicians, and with problems of patronage and corruption. The response was a much smaller city council with an at-large election system, designed to increase accountability and get rid of special interests. The form unified the legislative and executive powers. Today, he suggested, the problems are different and the structure should change. The more diverse a community, the more an at-large election system fails to adequately represent that community. He pointed out that change may create other problems. Strengthening the mayor's powers, such as giving the mayor veto authority, can marginalize and reduce councils to mere ratifying bodies. Also, there is significant emotional investment in the status quo for government forms that may be difficult to overcome.

-Bill Hansell (Executive Director, International City/County Management Association) said this is a time when people like what they are seeing in local government. He said that local governments do not have time or tolerance for the inefficiencies of separation of powers; that such a system is intended to limit government and hampers the ability of localities to get things done. He added that a necessary condition for separation of powers is sovereignty, and that local governments do not have sovereignty, as they are constrained by state and federal law. He felt that councils should choose their own leaders, and that the citizens should not tell council with whom they have to work. He also expressed concerns with term limits, concurrent terms, excessive compensation for council members, and the need for training elected officials to be more civil and collegial.

Following these three presentations, responses from committee members included:

1. Accounting for Current Realities

  • the council-manager form is accepted and entrenched in most localities

  • managers say councils are not like they used to be

  • intractable questions include the relationships among council members, and between council members and citizens

  • the model should account for diversity of demographics

  • we should address how structure relates to urban sprawl and race/diversity issues

  • one member felt the time for community charters has not arrived, while another suggested they should be addressed

  • we should consider consolidation of governments and the proliferation of special districts

  • we should address citizen frustrations

2. Themes and Goals

  • the model should seek to rectify the lack of decisiveness of governing bodies

  • we should ask: Who do we empower? How? For what purposes?

  • we should identify trends in "form" decisions, especially recently

  • we should examine council-mayor relationships

  • we should examine the size of governing bodies

  • the model should address at-large vs. district elections, and whether to mix them

  • the model should address intergovernmental relations

3. Style and Utility of the Model Charter

  • we should be careful of terms and adjectives (e.g., strong, weak)
  • we should consider whether the final product can be  available online as well as in print
  • the model should have clear definitions
  • the model needs to be made useful and accessible to charter commissions
  • the model should reflect changes incrementally, not radically, moving toward a middle ground

After the first round of issue identification, committee members were asked to write down ideas which they felt were important and warranted consideration by the full committee in the revision process. Subsequently, the issues were clustered into categories by a few committee members, as outlined below.

 

Issues Framed (organized in outline form)

  1. Overall Approach: Should the 8th edition show a preference for a particular model, or should it be a menu of options?
    1. How should the 8th edition deal with the emerging hybrid form?
    2. Can directly elected mayors and city-managers happily co-exist?
  2. Utility of the Final Product
    1. Who uses the model charter?
    2. Can it be proactive rather than reactive, projecting trends into the future rather than describing the present?
    3. Can it be made available electronically?
    4. Can it be made accessible and useful to charter commissions?
    5. Can it describe how to establish and operate charter commissions?
  3. Council, Manager, and Mayor
    1. Role and Authority of Council (Article II, 7th Edition
      1. Effectiveness
      2. Role and relationship of council committee process
      3. Compensation
        1. Limit compensation to no higher than 50% of the average per capita income in the community?
      4. Miscellaneous
        1. Structural issues that support and enhance the roles and process of council members and meetings
        2. Shrinking power of council as mayor is empowered
        3. Role of local officials in initiative and referendum
        4. Perhaps unintended effect of hybrid system on quality of council members
        5. Problem in encouraging a new generation of leaders to run for local offices in smaller cities
        6. Staff assistance for mayor and for council
    2. Role and Authority of Manager (Article III, 7th Edition)
      1. Maintaining professionalism: Political neutrality of mayor-appointed administrator as part of definition of professionalism
      2. Ability of Manager to influence policy development
      3. Qualifications to be manager
      4. Manager accountability to community, council, mayor
      5. Clearly designate manager as "chief executive officer" not "chief administrative officer" as it now appears in sec. 3.04.
      6. How is oversight of manager exercised
      7. Manager working with community
    3. Role and Authority of Mayor (Appendix I, 7th Edition)
      1. What is the best method of election of the mayor for effective governance?
      2. Is election by the council the preferred method?
      3. What is the real nomination process for the council when it chooses a mayor?Ý How does this impact structure?
      4. Mayoral staffing if mayor is legislator
    4. Relationship between Council, Manager, and Mayor
      1. Mayor-council roles and relationship, separation of powers, checks and balances
      2. The working relationship of councils and mayors to enhance effectiveness
      3. The risk of taking the "empowered mayor" model so far as to create a de facto separation of powers
      4. Should the 8th edition define the responsibilities and role of the manager in a strong mayor system?
  4. Election issues (Article VI, 7th Edition)
    1. Should a sitting council member not be allowed to run for mayor?
    2. Representation issues
    3. How can minorities be better represented: cumulative voting, proportional voting, ballot access, election administration
    4. Redistricting
    5. Should a hybrid system of district nomination with at-large election be used?
    6. No term limits?
    7. Partisan or nonpartisan?
    8. Should the 8th edition prefer staggered terms?
    9. Must a member resign from council upon becoming a candidate for mayor?
    10. Additional qualifications for mayor/council, such as age
  5. Technology: E-Government
    1. How will computer-interactive communication affect local government?
    2. How will local government deal with the digital divide?
    3. Will e-government challenge the very notion of a geographically bounded community as a principle organizing institution?
  6. Relations with Other Levels of Government
    1. Neighborhoods as governing units
      1. "Office of Neighborhood Relations"
      2. Citizen participation in the charter revision process, through neighborhoods
    2. City-County consolidation
      1. NCL should produce a separate charter for a consolidated city-county
    3. Regional and Intergovernmental Relationships
      1. Structural enhancements that can promote and support intergovernmental/metropolitan collaboration and cooperation
      2. Define council-mayor-manager roles in intergovernmental affairs, horizontal and vertical, policy management
      3. The role of cities in the metro political economy is very different today than it was 10, 20, and 50 years ago.
      4. Regional management
      5. What role will cities have as "building blocks" of metropolitan regions?
    4. Size of City
      1. Is the council-manager form relevant to large cities?
      2. Can small cities share city managers?
      3. Is it time to bifurcate the model charter on the basis of city size and demographics?
  7. Diversity/Inclusion
    1. Demographics
      1. Cities are more racially and economically polarized than they were 50 years ago: address housing, education, governance disparities
    2. Form of government
      1. Structural changes to ensure representation of diverse interests and community
      2. Structural changes to address the concerns of disaffected groups looking outside of government for answers via initiatives, private sector responses, etc.
  8. Training and Performance Measurement
    1. Training of Elected Officials
      1. Promoting deliberative work of public officials and citizens
      2. Can training be made palatable to elected officials?
      3. Teach civility and the art of compromise and consensus building to elected officials and candidate
    2. Performance Measurement
      1. Performance of government agencies, including outside service providers like nonprofits
      2. Have annual reports on performance to the public
      3. Is the local government effective at taking decisive action?
      4. Local government merit system
  9. Finance (Article V, 7th Edition)
    1. Should focus on "big picture" approach, long term view, 2 year, 5 year budget, long term capital planning
    2. Options for capital approach
  10. Miscellaneous (Ideas that were raised, but did not appear to fit into any one certain category at the meeting)
    1. Urban/local land use planning
      1. Transportation, housing, smart growth, environmental and social justice
    2. Management information systems
    3. New vocabulary of governance
    4. Does the city attorney work for the manager or for the council?
    5. If new government structures are created, what is being replaced, and is there redundancy?
    6. Have a list of minimum powers that charters should include (Article I, 7th Edition)
    7. Relationship of model charter to empowering state legislation
    8. Implications of new realities of governing for public administration schools
    9. Need for autonomy vs. exclusion of some
    10. What institutions are perceived to be "broken"?

 

After the committee framed and clustered the above issues, the committee was asked to revisit the issues collectively and determine if anything was left out. This additional brainstorming yielded the following comments:

            Specifics to be Included in the Model

            The model should:

-deal with the use of initiative and referendum by special interests (Article VI and Appendix II, 7th Edition)

-address conflict of interest law (Article VII, 7th Edition) and local campaign finance reform

-have a preamble addressing issues like the need for a charter, the desirability of home rule, and the underlying values; claim all powers available (Article I, 7th Edition)

-call for televising council meetings, open meetings, transparency

-have requirements for civility and decorum

-outline continuing education for elected officials (but not require it, since elected officials don't like to be "trained")

-address recall

-speak to different departments, offices, agencies

-reflect trends toward privatization, gated communities

-we should consider the problem of getting good people to run, civic education, adding local government in K-12 education

 

Process, Final Product Considerations

-we should consider involving other stakeholders, including media, unions, nonprofits,public/private partnerships

-there should be a guide for charter commissions, and it should provide for periodic review of charter (e.g., how often?)  and charter amendments

-we need to be informed of what should be in a charter, and what should be in collateral documents

After identifying the numerous preceding issues, the committee turned to the question of bringing other groups into the process. It was generally agreed that while there are many organizations who should be informed of the committee's work, only those who have direct knowledge of the issues being discussed should have a direct role in the revision process. Two additional organizations met this criteria: The International Municipal Lawyers Association (contact Henry Underhill) and the Government Finance Officers Association.

The next meeting will occur on Friday, Dec. 7, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Atlanta, Georgia, at the annual conference of the National League of Cities.

 

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