Municipal Government

Throughout the United States, many different forms of local government are implemented. Though all forms of municipal government may exercise the same basic power structure, there are a variety of different relationships between the legislative (alderman/trustee/councilman) and executive (mayor/president) branches, within these different forms of government.

Individual state constitutions allow for City charters to adopt a constitutional "home-rule" whereby, the citizens of a City may decide which form of municipal government they wish to implement. Some states, may however, impose certain restrictions. For example, a state may not allow a city with a population below 5,000 to perform any actor organize themselves in any fashion not expressly allowed by the state.

Hardly all-inclusive, there are primarily 3 forms of municipal government used in the United States. Anything else is some type of derivative of the basic 3 types. For example, in the state of New Jersey, 12 different types of municipal government are recognized. Illinois recognizes 5 basic forms of municipal government (six when you add incorporated towns), while Texas, only two.

The newest of the three major forms of city government, the council-manager form quickly gained acceptance among cities of all sizes and continues to be the most popular form in American cities of more than 10,000 population. This form of home-rule cities operates with a city council as a policy body and a city manager as the chief executive-administrative officer of city government. Today, most city managers have graduate degrees in public or business administration.

In the council-manager form of government, the council is the governing body of the city elected by the public, and the manager is hired by council to carry out the policies it establishes. The council usually consists of five to nine members including a mayor (or council president) who is either selected by the council or elected by the people as defined in the city charter. The size of the council is generally smaller than that of a mayor-council municipality, and council elections are usually nonpartisan.

The council provides legislative direction while the manager is responsible for day-to-day administrative operation of the city based on the council’s recommendations. The mayor and council as a collegial body are responsible for setting policy, approving the budget, and determining the tax rate. The manager serves as the council’s chief advisor. Managers also serve at the pleasure of the council and are responsible for preparing the budget, directing day-to-day operations, and hiring and firing personnel.

Typically, the mayor is recognized as the political head of the municipality, but is a member of the legislative body and does not have the power to veto legislative actions.

A mayor-council city government consists of a mayor and a number of council members or aldermen. The mayor is elected at large, and the aldermen may be elected at large but generally are chosen from wards or aldermanic districts. The mayor presides at council meetings and is the chief executive officer of the city. He is properly the head of the police force and the budgetary officer of the city. The council is the legislative agent; the proposals and appointments of the mayor are or may be subject to its approval.

This form of city government has assumed two types. A mayor elected at large and a council elected either by wards, at large, or by a combination of the two, characterize both the weak mayor-council and the strong mayor-council. In the weak mayor-council type, the mayor is not a chief executive in the true sense. His powers are limited in appointments and removals, as well as veto, and there are a large number of elected officials and boards. Many legal powers of the council prevent him from effectively supervising city administration. In the strong mayor-council form, the mayor has the power to appoint and remove most department heads, and only a few officials are elected. In addition, he prepares the budget for the council's consideration and has an effective veto power. In the 1990s this form of government continued to be the most popular in general-law cities and towns but steadily declined in favor among home-rule cities.

The mayor-council form of government is the form that most closely parallels the American federal government, with an elected legislature and a separately elected executive.

The mayor or elected executive is designated as the head of the city or county government. The extent of his or her authority can range from purely ceremonial to functions to full-scale responsibility for day-to-day operations. But the mayor’s or elected executive’s duties and powers generally include the following: hiring and firing department heads, preparation and administration of the budget, and veto power (which may be overridden) over acts of legislature. The legislature has the following responsibilities: adoption of the budget, passage of resolutions with legislation, auditing the performance of the government, and adoption of general policy positions.

In some communities the mayor or executive may assume a larger policy-making role, and responsibility for day-to-day operations is delegated to an administrator appointed by and responsible to the chief executive.

Commission

The commission form of city government, also known as the Galveston Plan, was devised in Galveston, TX in 1901 and became one of the three basic forms of municipal government in the United States. Under the commission plan voters elect a small governing commission, typically five or seven members, on an at-large basis. As a group the commissioners constitute the legislative body of the city responsible for taxation, appropriations, ordinances, and other general functions. Individually, each commissioner is in charge of a specific aspect of municipal affairs, e.g., public works, finance, or public safety. One of the commissioners is designated chairman or mayor, but his function is principally one of presiding at meetings and serving in ceremonial capacities. Thus the commission plan blends legislative and executive functions in the same body.

The invention of the commission plan was a direct result of the Galveston hurricane of 1900. An estimated 6,000 lives were lost, and millions of dollars worth of property was swept away. Fearful that the island city might never recover its prosperity under the leadership of the incumbent city council, a group of wealthy businessmen known as the Deep Water Committee devised a plan to have the governor appoint a commission to govern the city during the rebuilding period. To appease opponents who contended that appointed government was undemocratic, the plan was altered to provide for popular election of two of the five commissioners. This plan went into operation one year after the great storm. Court challenges to the constitutionality of the partially appointive government led the legislature to make the office of all five commissioners elective, and in this form the commission plan became popular across Texas and the nation.

Galveston's apparent success with the new type of government inspired Houston to adopt the plan in 1905 and Dallas, Fort Worth, El Paso, Denison, and Greenville to follow in 1907. By then sometimes referred to as the Texas Idea, the commission plan began to be noticed nationally and to be regarded as a progressive reform. Des Moines, Iowa, was the first city outside Texas to adopt the commission plan. The Des Moines version included nonpartisan balloting, merit selection of employees, and the direct-democracy devices of initiative, referendum, and recall. Although Dallas, Fort Worth, and some other Texas cities also used direct democracy, Des Moines was able to take credit for making commission government a package of reforms often billed as the Des Moines Plan.

Usually supported by chambers of commerce and other businessmen's groups, the commission plan spread rapidly from 1907 to 1920. In this period about 500 U.S. cities adopted commission charters. (Exact figures are not available because of poor reporting and imprecise definitions.) Leading figures of the Progressive Era, including Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, endorsed the plan. Reformist periodicals such as Outlook and McClure's praised the idea. Historians have generally regarded the Galveston-Des Moines plan as an important aspect of the progressivism thrust toward expertise and efficiency. Some progressive reformers, however, questioned the plan because they viewed it as an effort by business interests to take influence away from the working class.

To a significant extent the commission plan served as a precursor to the popular council-manager form of city government. Richard S. Childs, often called the father of the city manager plan, worked through the Short Ballot Organization and the National Municipal League to make the manager plan rather than the commission plan the progressive idea of choice for business-minded reformers. Childs and others pointed out that the specific departmental interests of commissioners often caused internal squabbling and that the absence of a chief executive could result in a lack of leadership. Manager charters, many argued, could retain the beneficial aspects of the Galveston-Des Moines system, such as the short ballot, at-large voting, nonpartisanship, the merit system, and direct democracy, but could replace leaderless bickering with businesslike management in the corporate model.

Indeed, after World War I very few cities adopted the commission plan, and many existing commission cities shifted to the manager system; a few reverted to mayor-council charters. From a peak in 1918 of about 500, commission plan cities had dwindled to only 177 by 1984. In contrast, there were 3,776 mayor-council and 2,523 council-manager cities in that year. Even Galveston abandoned its own child when the island city adopted manager government in 1960. Because at-large balloting is intrinsic to the commission concept and since at-large elections may dilute minority voting strength, some southern cities, including Shreveport, Jackson, and Mobile, have dropped the commission plan because of suits brought under the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and subsequent amendments. In Texas as of May 1993 there were no true commission forms of government. Twenty-seven cities had manager-commission governments, but they were more like mayor-council government than the original commission form.

Variations

Town Meeting

All qualified voters of the town gather on a given day (usually once a year, but more often if necessary) to elect a board of officers (selectmen) and to make policy decisions. The board of selectmen has the responsibility for carrying out the policy set by the citizens. In some towns a manager or administrator is appointed to carry out the administrative operations of the town.

Representative Town Meeting

The representative town meeting form of government is structured in much the same way as the town meeting form, with the exception that a large number of citizens are chosen by the general electorate to represent them in voting. All citizens can attend the meetings and participate in debates, but only those chosen as representatives have a direct vote.

Township

Generally speaking, a township will consist of Mayor and 3 to 5 elected committee members. The committee members will act as the legislative body and assumes all legislative responsibilities not placed on the office of mayor. The Township Committee may delegate, by ordinance, all or a portion of executive responsibilities to an appointed administrator.

Borough

Mayor and 6 Council, all elected at large. The Mayor presides over the Council and votes only to break ties. Subordinate officers are appointed by the Mayor. Again, the Council serves as the legislative body.

Village

Generally, a Village governing body will consist of a Board of Trustees, usually 5, who are elected at large. One of these board members will serve as the Board President and is granted all of the powers given a Mayor by general law. The Board of Trustees serves as the legislative body of the municipality.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Chandler Davidson, ed., Minority Vote Dilution (Washington: Howard University Press, 1984).

Dewey W. Grantham, Southern Progressivism: The Reconciliation and Progress and Tradition (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1983).

Municipal Year Book, 1984 (Washington: International City Management Association, 1984).

Bradley Robert Rice, Progressive Cities: The Commission Government Movement in America, 1901-1920 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1977).

Martin J. Schiesl, The Politics of Efficiency: Municipal Administration and Reform in America, 1880-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).

James H. Svara, Official Leadership in the City: Patterns of Conflict and Cooperation (New York: Oxford University press, 1990).

Forms of City Government (7^th ed., Austin: Institute of Public Affairs, University of Texas, 1968).

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