Council-manager government is one of the five major types of municipal government found in cities and towns throughout the United States. The other four aremayor-council,commission,town meeting, andrepresentative town meeting.

In a council-manager government, an elected city council serves as the city's primary legislative body and appoints a chief executive officer called a city manager to oversee day-to-day municipal operations, to draft a budget, and to implement and enforce the council's policy and legislative initiatives.

Most council-manager governments also feature a mayor, who may be elected at-large and who officially represents the city on the state, national, and international levels. However, unlike in astrong mayor-council government, the mayor is a regular voting member of city council with little or no legal privileges that may distinguish him or her from other council members.

Basic features

The city-manager, city council, and mayor work together to enact budgets, to draft and enforce legislation, to provide city services, and to oversee city departments and appoint departmental heads.^[1][2][3]

City-manager

City council

Mayor

Hiring process

The city-manager is not an elected position. Rather, the holder of this office serves at the pleasure of the council, which retains the legal right to dismiss and replace the city-manager. The hiring process for a city-manager is comparable to that of a corporate CEO. It begins with general discussions amongst city council members, often in consultation with voters and professional consultants. After a hiring notice is drafted and distributed to professional organizations, the process then moves to a multistage interview process that includes a review of applications and onsite interviews with qualified candidates. The process ends with a vote taken by city council.^[1]

History

The origins of council-manager government in the United States can be found in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Then, most cities utilized aweak mayor-council form of municipal government in which all executive, legislative, and administrative powers were invested in city councils. Though most of these governments also featured a mayor, the role was primarily a ceremonial one with duties that included ribbon-cutting events and presiding over official city events such as festivals and parades.^[4]

In the late nineteenth century, cities began experimenting with other types of municipal government.^[5] A political movement began that criticized inefficiencies in weak mayor-council governments and their failure to break the power of the political bosses and machines that influenced American politics. One development that emerged out of this movement was thestrong mayor-council government, in which executive and administrative power was removed from city council and placed in the hands of an at-large elected mayor. Another development, however, was the council-manager government in which city councils were required to hire a professional administrator who would be responsible for municipal finances, the implementation and enforcement of law, and basic city administration.^[5][6]

Figure 1

Trends

Council-manager government is a common form of municipal government, especially in cities with populations between 10,000 and 500,000 citizens. Based on data gathered by the International City/County Management Association, approximately 59 percent of cities in the United States utilized the council-manager system as of 2011 (see Figure 1).^[3][7][8][9]

Political scientists and policy analysts have stated that the prevalence of the council-manager form of government was indicative of a trend toward professionalization in municipal administration, and that state laws and transparency and accountability organizations were the catalysts of this trend.^[10]

See also

• Mayor-council government
• City commission
• Open town meeting
• Representative town meeting

External links

• National League of Cities
• International City/County Management Association (ICMA)

Footnotes