Dallas Is The Nation’s Largest City Still Run By The Council-Manager Form Of Government. Is It Time To Rewrite Our Charter?

YES

BY DENNIS HOLDER

The city staff is out of control; we need a strong mayor

WE’RE GOING TO have to whisper real softly about this. We don’t want to rock any boats or make any waves. We certainly can’t be knocking over apple carts. After all. there are delicate sensitivities involved here. We have the fragile feelings of the establishment to consider, the tender hearts of Dallas’ cherished public-private partnership.

So let’s go gently and not step on toes. Lean over a moment and I’ll quietly drizzle this in your ear: It may be time to rewrite the city charter. Dallas may be ready to elect a strong mayor to serve as chief executive officer. The city manager form of government may have outlived its usefulness.

Are you okay? Sit down for a moment and put your head between your knees. I knew this was shocking. No less an authority than Dr. Delbert Taebel of the Institute of Urban Studies at UT Arlington warned me it is heresy to mention such things in Dallas. Former mayor Wes Wise said that even to hint that city government isn’t all it could be would cause attacks of apoplexy among “In-Group” members like former city manager George Schrader. And Dallas Times Herald columnist Jim Schutze insisted there are certain subjects you just don’t talk about here. To suggest that city government ought to be restructured. Schutze cautioned in somewhat more colorful language, is like advocating public sodomy. We can’t turn our backs on tradition.

Still, there is a little bit of a debate brewing. Not many Dallas residents come right out and say we should scrap the manager-council system (let’s put the terms in the correct order of power), but a lot of influential people have begun nibbling at (he edges of the issue.

Take former mayor Jack Evans. His accomplishments-including his personal campaign to woo and win the 1984 Republican National Convention for Dallas-are widely acclaimed. But Evans says he could have done more if he had wielded more authority over the nuts and bolts of city business.

’’As it is, ” says Evans, “the mayor has just one vote, the same as other council members. I think we should consider a plan in which the mayor becomes the chief executive officer and the manager becomes the chief operating officer. I certainly think the mayor needs veto authority and some control over the professional staff. “

Other responsible residents offer similar opinions if you ask them. One or two names probably will surprise you.

Start with Greater Dallas Planning Council President Jerry Bartos. He’s closely identified with the North Dallas Chamber of Commerce, which might reasonably be described as the most establishment organization in the entire world. But Bartos complains of lousy street maintenance, inept law enforcement, careless planning and a generally crumbling infrastructure. His conclusion: “The city manager form of government isn’t working too well. I don’t think a strong mayor government would create the horrors a lot of people think it would. Giving the mayor more powers, giving him a veto power-those things would help, “

Listen to Dallas City Plan Commission member Cay Kolb: “1 understand that Dallas is the largest city with a city manager form of government. I think the form has worked for us in the past, but I’m not sure it still works. There certainly is a breakdown occurring here. “

There are other voices, too. Wes Wise remembers his term in office, saying “There were certain areas of government where it was a detriment not to have the power that strong mayors have. ” Would-be future mayor Jerry Rucker contends that the existing system “works okay if you agree with the city manager that the mayor and council jobs are largely ceremonial. But if you believe the people of Dallas elect us [the council] to make the critical decisions, it doesn’t work at all. “

One way or another, these people conclude that the manager-council form of government no longer delivers what it promises. In a city as large as Dallas has become, they feel that a city administration insulated from the voters by a part-time, volunteer council cannot adequately respond to the diversity of interests within the various communities.

Oh, the manager-council plan sounds all right on paper. The high school civics lesson Petty and Schrader offer in lieu of rebuttal makes that clear enough. But it ignores reality. “The city manager does what he is told to do, what he is permitted to do, and he does not do what he is prohibited from doing, ” Petty and Schrader assure us. Right. And the potholes are always filled, there is no crime at Fair Park and we all live together in peace and harmony.

Of course, no form of government can guarantee that the streets always will be clean and safe or that city officials always will be honest. The best we can shoot for is accountability. We want someone we, the voters, can instruct on what to do, someone we can fire if things aren’t done to our satisfaction.

And since we’re talking about a city of roughly one million individuals, we need accountability in a political sense. A leader, the person who ultimately is accountable, must be in a position to listen to diverse interests, forge compromises and get things done. He must have something at stake-a desire to keep his job-which in political terms means a desire to keep a majority of the voters happy a majority of the lime. The manager-council system doesn’t provide political accountability.



LOOK AT HOW Dallas government works. We elect 11 council members, three to represent the city as a whole and eight from so-called single-member districts, One of the three at-large members is the mayor. The term “mayor’7 is a little misleading, though, because the mayor of Dallas has none of the authority of a strong mayor like Dianne Feinstein in San Francisco. Our mayor cannot appoint a police chief, order staff to install traffic light or say with certainly that a public problem will, by God, be solved. Really, the mayor of Dallas is just another council member. His vote counts the same. He has no veto, no executive power and no administrative authority.

“To do the mayor’s job right means working full time. “’ says Jack Evans. “1 don’t think we can continue with a volunteer government, As it is now, you have to be wealthy, retired or willing to make an enormous economic sacrifice to serve as mayor of Dallas. It means that a lot of people who might be excellent in the position cannot afford to hold it. and anyone who does hold it can’t afford to give it the kind of time it really deserves. It isn’t very democratic. “

Because the mayor has no more pull than any other council member and because the need to make a living limits the time most mayors can devote to the job, the city manager is the only official who works full time on the city’s problems and the only one who commands a staff. He hires department heads whose loyalties, if any. are to him. He controls both the public work force and the staff responsible for listening to voters and solving their problems. More than that, the city manager sets the agenda for the city council. He decides what elected officials will debate and when.

It’s true, of course, that the city manager can be fired by a majority vote of the council. But for that to happen, he must infuriate a council majority, six members. A prudent manager can keep six council members in his corner and do as he pleases. Anyway, accountability to a committee is, as any business executive will tell you, the same as no accountability. Butter up a few council members, most of whom worry largely about their own constituencies, and the show is all yours, cagey managers know. If the voters don’t tike it. let them eat cake.

In Dallas, neighborhood activists like Cay Kolb often leave encounters with city government with the kind of feeling most of us get fighting die telephone company. Nobody pays attention. Nobody gives a damn.

As a past president of the Oak Lawn Forum and the Oak 1. awn Committee, Kolb invested thousands of hours over about three years hammering out a document called the Oak Lawn Plan. The plan is a model of compromise, a blueprint for the future that an entire sector of the city agreed upon. Its key features were adopted by City Council as an ordinance.

But in October, when Kolb, as a plan board member, challenged a proposed thoroughfare she believes would fundamentally alter the Oak Lawn Plan, she was told the document doesn’t really count. “We have tried, as [city manager] Chuck Anderson has said, to be sensitive to but not dictated to by the nlan. ” a mid-level bureaucrat blandly told her. To Kolb. it sounded like an admission thai Anderson’s staff will follow neighborhood wishes and City Council policy only when it’s convenient.

Anderson later told Kolb that he values the Oak Lawn Plan. Callousness from other city officials wasn’t his fault. But that’s the trouble with the manager-council system. Everybody says “Not me!” The buck doesn’t stop anywhere. No one can vote the manager out of office.

The newspapers lately have been full of stories depicting Dallas administration as having a strong, arrogant smack. City staffs plans for the Cable Television Board, for example, could affect everyone who suffered through the Warner-Amex era and dreams of brighter pictures ahead. Not only did the staff try to eviscerate the board, it did so secretly,

Without notifying anyone-including, apparently, the City Council-staff moved to merge the cable television board into another body that oversees public access programs on cable. Had it succeeded, the change would have eliminated citizen supervision of such things as installation of service and the cable company’s response to complaints. Only city staff would have dealt with the contractor on behalf of subscribers.

“To walk into a City Council meeting on an unrelated matter and to be sitting there reading the agenda and find our demise on there-item 70-was, to say the least, surprising, ” says Ron Natinsky, a Cable Board member who discovered the plot in time to thwart it. According to Natinsky, staff members questioned about the proposal insisted that Cable Board members had been notified of it. But a show of hands-“Who got a letter about this?”-suggested no such notices were sent.

Festival Marketplace was another example of our current system’s flaws. The proposed project altered forever the character of the immediate neighborhood even though it was subsequently scrapped when developers squabbled among themselves. Several large wholesale produce companies had already moved to new locations to make way for construction. As a result, the economic viability of the Dallas Farmers Market may be in jeopardy.

If the plan had gone through, it would have cost the city some $27 million in beautifica-tion projects, including a lagoon. It also would have set a precedent for a new kind of financing that, in effect, lets a developer use the money he ought to contribute to the city in taxes to pay his own bills. That affects our future. But most of the negotiations for Festival Marketplace, including discussions about the unusual tax abatement plan, were conducted by staff and presented to council as faits accompli. Even when a majority of council expressed reservations, staff went blithely on.



WANT MORE PROOF that the system isn’t working? Go back to September 1984 when a Times Herald reporter found that a $140, 000 project represented to council as an environmental study for a flood control project actually was a soil study for the proposed Town Lake fiasco. Council had made it very clear they did not favor Town Lake, and when elected officials read in the paper that they had been tricked, they nearly fired Assistant City Manager Vic Suhm. The outrage was fine, but suppose the Times Herald hadn’t tumbled to the scam?

My own pet peeve is the so-called Lake-wood bypass. With the cooperation of neighborhood groups, City Council agreed to construct a road around the Lakewood shopping district-provided local merchants coughed up about $1 million for landscaping and a park. When the merchants didn’t raise the cash by their deadline, city staffers decided council hadn’t meant precisely what it said. They went ahead with the road on the merchants’ promise to find their share of money-someday.

Of course, the bypass operation now is complete and, except for a couple of odd configurations that encourage fender benders, it appears the patient lived. You ought to see the “park, ” though. Your backyard is bigger, but if you kept it up the way this park is maintained, you’d be hauled into court for creating an eyesore.

We could quibble for hours over any of these examples. Stacked together, though, they clearly suggest a disturbing pattern of business in the upside-down building on Young Street. The city manager and the bureaucrats he hires run Dallas affairs any way they choose. They cut deals and hide information. They ignore the average Joe and manipulate elected officials.

“It isn’t just this particular city manager, ” says Councilman Jerry Rucker. “It is the way the government is set up. The manager controls all of the information available to elected officials and all of the sources of information. “

As Rucker sees it, the central problem is the absence of a chief executive officer responsible to the voters-in other words, a strong mayor. Without a chief executive officer who represents a clear philosophy and has a political need to listen to the electorate, Rucker says, you create “a class of clever, adaptable, manipulative, sometimes Machiavellian bureaucrats” who control city government.

“Blind faith in a strong mayor would be just as bad as blind faith in a city manager, ” says Rucker. “But at least you can throw the mayor out every now and then. “

Rucker, Evans, Bartos and Kolb are strange bedfellows, to be sure. But their diversity is the best reason for considering a change. Governing the city of Dallas is becoming much more a political exercise than it ever was before. Where once the city was a tightly controlled fiefdom of business and real estate interests, it now has all sorts of factions shouting demands and expecting to be heard. Muscular neighborhood groups, vocal minorities, pushy Northerners and a few odd liberals now compete with the Bob Folsom boys to carve up the action. This is no longer a one-issue city.

Bringing in political scientists on a question like this is roughly equivalent to calling on psychiatrists to testify in court. You can always find a couple to take any side and there’s no way to tell who is right. But even some political scientists who favor the city manager form of government admit that it doesn’t work well in large, diverse cities.

Taebel at UT Arlington is one who generally prefers city manager government. But he concedes that an elected official is better able to balance the often conflicting interests of a heterogeneous city. Satisfying neighborhood demands while encouraging growth is a political problem. So, too, are allocating a budget, patrolling the State Fair or taking private property to widen a street. Strictly managerial solutions cannot always work.

Taebel points out that when the International City Management Association met in Dallas for its annual convention in 1974, city managers themselves agreed that the need for political leadership is the strongest argument against the form of government they represent. In descending order, they-the city managers-also listed these weaknesses in their system:

It is difficult for citizens to gain access to city government when a city manager is in control.

Managers are oriented to things, not to people.

Under a manager system, elected officials are powerless.

Each of these seems a pretty fair argument against the government system we now have in Dallas.

Those who support our current system often claim that a strong mayor would politicize city government. They overlook the fact that, me way things are, the city manager is a powerful, but unelected politician.

“The manager is stronger politically than anyone on the council, ” observes Jerry Bartos. “Our manager is supposed to be our best manager, not our best politician. The manager’s office here has become highly politicized. “

Says Rucker: “When you have diversity on the City Council and no one in a clear position of political leadership, the manager becomes a coalition politician. He lobbies certain council members for whatever he wants. His only problem is making sure he doesn’t get a majority of council mad at him at the same time. In Dallas, the manager is the only professional politician in city government. “

Of course a city as large and complex as Dallas needs professional management. The question is, who does the professional report to and who makes policy? It seems clear that Charles Anderson reports to nobody and winds up setting policy as he will. It needn’t be so. During that meeting in Dallas, a policy committee of the ICMA recognized the differences between political leadership and professional management.

In its report, the city managers’ committee acknowledged that “the profession prefers the form of government that gives it the most responsibility and authority. 1’ However, the report went on to say that “wide variations in approaches to electing me local governing body and selecting the mayor are both acceptable and desirable. Wide variations in the duties and responsibilities of the elected chief executive and council are acceptable and desirable. “

As nearly as I can tell, that means that a good manager can effectively administer city government even if the top person is an elected official with fairly broad authority.

Taebel believes that a strong mayor with a professional administrator beneath him is what’s in store for Dallas. “I think you’ll see a hybrid with a mayor and a chief administrative officer under the mayor. I’m a strong proponent of professional administration, but I think a city as big as Dallas may need a political leader at the top of the structure. There’s no reason you can’t have both. “

Whether Dallas will eventually rewrite me city charter to create a strong mayor is, of course, a political question. What kind of government we will wind up with is another political question. Before any of it is decided, a great many people will have a say. But as long as we’re whispering here, let me suggest a couple of elements I hope to see. I’d like an elected mayor to serve as chief executive officer. He should work full time for the city and its citizens, and he should earn a respectable wage for his service. He might have a vote, in case of a tie on the council. Certainly he would have a veto over council legislation.

He also would appoint department heads, including a top administrator. The administrator would run day-to-day business, but the mayor would set major directions and his philosophy would prevail. If the voters didn’t like him, they’d damn well boot him out.

It wouldn’t be a radical change, really. But to the old guard of Dallas, I suppose it’s a little shocking. That’s why we’re whispering. Delicate sensibilities, don’t you know.

NO

BY DAN S. PETTY AND GEORGE SCHRADER

The council-manager system is working for Dallas

THE PURPOSE OF this article is to present counterevidence that rebuts the article by Dennis Holder. The authors of this article are neither skilled nor clever writers. Therefore, only the facts and straight talk will appear here.

A review of the success of our council-manager plan is a pleasant task. Nationally, the council-manager plan was first adopted in 1908 in Staunton, Virginia, and has grown rapidly, with an average of 80 new cities and counties adopting the plan each year since 1945. The plan was adopted as a charter amendment by the voters of Dallas in 1931 at the insistence of business and civic leaders who were fed up with corruption and the spoils system in city government.

Since 1931, Dallas has continued to thrive and prosper under the council-manager plan and is now one of 2, 543 cities in the United States with this form of government. And it is the single most popular form of government in cities with a population of more than 10, 000. The council-manager form of government serves over 100, 000, 000 Americans. Dallas, as the largest city with the council-manager system, is in good company with Phoenix, San Diego, San Antonio and many other large cities operating under the plan.

Holder’s basic premise-that it may be time to throw out the council-manager form of government in Dallas, with its appointed professional chief executive, and substitute in its place an elected “strong mayor, ” a political chief executive such as those found in Chicago, Newark and Detroit-is just “drizzle in your ear, ” as he describes it. Holder’s suggestion is not “shocking” nor “heresy” as he suggests; it just doesn’t make good sense-or good cents.

Why would Dallas, a well-managed “city that works, ” as Time magazine declared a couple of years ago, a city with a AAA bond rating (the best you can earn) want to kick out a form of government that is working well and substitute in its place a less efficient, less effective and highly political form of local government? Our top bond rating is an index of our financial health and stability; the higher the bond rating, the lower the interest rate on our bonds. Many cities managed by politicians, not professionals, have bond ratings lower than Dallas’ AAA. Consider, tor example. Chicago’s BBB+ and Detroit’s BB. Is it just a coincidence that the council-manager cities of San Antonio. Phoenix and San Diego all have earned AA or AA+ ratings? Of course not.

For Holder to conclude that Dallas needs to fire the professional city manager and substitute a professional politician in his place is really not good logic. Let’s examine some of Holder’s specific allegations and try to set the record straight.



Assertion; Dallas has lousy street maintenance, inept law enforcement, careless planning and a generally crumbling infrastructure.

Response: Dallas is by no means perfect, but the assertion is largely untrue and is really unrelated to the issue of appointed vs. elected CEO. The infrastructure (water, sewer, streets, parks) in Dallas is, compared to other large cities, in quite good shape.



Assertion: City government no longer listens to just plain folk; city administration follows neighborhood wishes and City Council policy only when convenient: the city manager’s staff cuts deals and hides information; Dallas has all sorts of factions shouting demands and expecting to be heard; the manager is a coalition politician, lobbying certain council members for whatever he wants.

Response: How would an elected CEO rather than an appointed one deal with these problems? What real basis is there to think that election rather than appointment of the CEO would change things one iota? Narrow special interest groups should not exert undue influence, regardless of the form of government.



Assertion: The Festival Marketplace deal was negotiated by staff and presented to council as a fait accompli.

Response: Staff will always have to take the initiative and negotiate such deals, even with an elected CEO. Eleven council members cannot ride off in different directions making separate deals. All proposals are always presented to the City Council. which always has the final say. This process would not and could not change with an elected CEO.



Assertion: Lakewood/Abrams merchants couldn’t raise cash tor a private sector portion by their deadline and staff stated the council didn’t mean what it said.

Response: The truth is that the Lakewood/Abrams merchants have now raised the funds they agreed to. The City Council did approve the development agreement. There was considerable public discussion on the matter. The park and mall development is now out for bid and the privately financed improvements will soon be constructed.

So much for the specifics related to current issues.

Let’s put this question back into perspective. Historically, council-manager government originated in reform movements that were devoted to facilitating effective self-governance. The initial focus was on civic excellence, not the public executive. The search was for whatever governmental form would best serve the public.

The great strength of council-manager government has been precisely in the combined presence of those two qualities: a powerful council, oriented to community brokerage; and a coordinated executive framework, characterized by diverse expertise and professionalism and free of narrow factionalism. If compared with the alternatives, council-manager governments have generally demonstrated far greater strengths to provide coordinated public services in difficult times. We see the following as advantages of the council-manager form of government:

Cities are complex and city governments are complex institutions delivering survival services: police protection, fire protection, ambulance service, public health, traffic service, transportation service, water service, garbage disposal, sanitary sewerage disposal. Therefore, the city needs two specialists: A mayor who is a political leader who can interpret public will, lead the public and the council and get the votes to get elected; and a manager who can effectively convert the political decisions and the public interest decisions of the whole council into reality. The larger the city, the more complex and the more difficult the leadership job and the managerial job-requiring two specialists.

The city manager does what he is told to do, what he is permitted to do. and he does not do what he is prohibited from doing, The council has complete control as to what will be done by the city manager.

The city needs the continuity that an appointed manager brings-bridging one elected body with its successors to provide organizational memory and continuity of performance.

The city needs a non-partisan administrator, an impartial administrator who is not rewarding allies and punishing enemies.

The council-manager government is more democratic, not less, as Holder argues, because the manager is not the mayor or an administrator appointed by and responsible to the mayor. He isn’t responsible only to himself and to those who are a part of the segment of the electorate who elect him. The manager is responsible to all the members of the council. The manager therefore performs in behalf of the combined judgment of all.

The manager is more responsive to the will of the council than the so-called “strong” mayor. A strong mayor serving as administrator is elected for a fixed term of two years. He can only be voted out after serving his two-year term. The manager, on the other hand, can be removed on any day at any hour, and he therefore is more responsive to the direction he gets from the council members, who interpret public will and make all decisions.

The city manager is needed for the sake of an effective professional organization, for a professional police chief, fire chief, public works director, water and sewer director, librarian, airport director. These department heads need to have the stability of employment that comes from performing their jobs well and should not be forced to perform in a manner politically acceptable to the mayor. The record in other cities reflects that die executive staff usually changes with the election of a strong mayor who rewards city employees and especially department heads who supported him.

Council-manager government is needed for continuity because of the time involved in developing, implementing and performing public services: 15 years for developing a water supply, 10 years for a street, five years for a fire station and library. The city needs the continuity across those time spans to permit that work to continue without interruption while the citizens change political leadership and public policy.

The city needs the council-manager form of government for its influence in behalf of honesty, propriety and ethical performance. The record reflects that cities with council-manager government have performed with a high degree of honesty, propriety and ethical performance, and in those few cases where dishonesty has occurred, it has been exposed and remedied.

Most of the objections cited to the Dallas form of local government would be as valid for an elected CEO as well. The council can fire the manager just as the voters can unseat a mayor-the likelihood of the former is as great as the latter. Charges of arrogance and unresponsiveness are really unfounded and would likely be made by the same people of an elected CEO and his/her staff.



CERTAINLY, DALLAS has become more diversified in recent years and there are more diverse groups active in the political process. There is no universally accepted “right or wrong, ” and this fact is going to create criticism of persons in authority, regardless of whether a CEO is elected or appointed. There is no convincing argument in the Holder article for an elected CEO being able to handle the diversity and being responsive any better than an appointed CEO. Statements like “the manager controls all the information available to elected officials and all the sources of information” are irrelevant to the thesis of the article. How would things really be different if the mayor controlled all the information? Holder simply does not make a convincing case that all of the bad things he attributes to a city manager as CEO would disappear with a mayor as CEO-he just claims they would, with no real evidence or convincing arguments to support his thesis.

Holder says that “Anderson reports to no one and winds up setting policy as he will. ” We suspect that Mayor Starke Taylor and most members of the Dallas City Council would find this allegation somewhat humorous, in addition to being inaccurate.

The quality of the people involved deter mines a government’s success; different forms and structures can work. A strong mayor form of government may work for Chicago, Newark or Detroit, and so be it. The council-manager form of government works and works well for Dallas, and so be it.