1    The profession of local government manager: evolution and leadership styles

Local government is the most dynamic, innovative, and organizationally diverse level of all governments. It employs more people, provides more direct services, and is the most likely point of contact between government and citizens. Whether citizens are concerned about the quality of drinking water, the speed with which snow is removed from streets, opportunities for recreation, or the response time of emergency medical services, the service in question is most likely to have been funded or provided (or both) by municipal and county government. Everyday life is bound to the services and programs of local government more inextricably than to other levels of government. Citizens depend on the effectiveness and quality of local government to make their lives safer, healthier, and more livable.

Because of the close bond between citizens and local government, the nature of local government has changed (and keeps changing) to mirror the changes in society. In particular, the twentieth century was a time when the demands placed on government rose dramatically, as did the expectations of citizens. Thus, the public’s need for professional and effective government was never more apparent. And the ever more varied and complex role of public service created a parallel need for managers who could see the issues, create a vision of what a community could be, take charge, and manage effectively.

In 1918, at the annual convention of what was then called the International City Managers’ Association (now ICMA), Richard Childs predicted:

Some day we shall have managers who have achieved national reputation, not by saving taxes or running their cities for a freakishly low expense per capita, but managers who have successfully led their commissions into great new enterprises of service. … The great city managers of tomorrow will be those who pushed beyond the old horizons and discovered new worlds of service.1

Rarely has a speaker been more prescient. The role of the local government manager is decidedly more complex at the beginning of the twenty-first century than it was in 1918. The contemporary local government manager is still concerned with potholes and sewer systems, but those responsibilities are now supplemented with others: supervising and managing co-workers, involving and accommodating citizens, and interacting with elected officials. These new responsibilities have required the entire profession to (in Childs’s words) “push beyond old horizons” and “discover new worlds of service.”2

At this point in the evolution of local government, as modern relationships and ways of doing business are replacing the methods and practices of earlier times, new skills are required. In fact, the changes come so fast that the question of how to be an effective manager elicits a different response decade by decade. This chapter focuses on the evolution of the profession of local government management and on the distinctive aspects of the professional manager as leader.

The profession of local government management

City and county management is called a profession. But what exactly does being a profession mean? Professions are marked by

Professions evolve as a specific set of practices, and shared norms or values are first taught (often in what are characterized as professional schools) and then emerge as proper or accepted behavior. Shared credentials and ultimately a shared language separate those whose training enables them to understand from those who lack such training. According to Frederick C. Mosher, professions have their

own particularized view of the world and of [their institution’s] role and mission in it. The perspective and motivation of each professional are shaped at least to some extent by the lens provided him by his professional education, his prior professional experience, and by his professional colleagues.3

A profession, then, is a defined career that usually requires a college degree and often a graduate degree. Mosher goes on to note that professions are characterized as having an “evolving and agreed-upon body of knowledge,” as promoting socialization among members, and as sometimes reflecting norms different from those of the organizations that employ their practitioners.4 Additional features of a profession are client recognition, professional identity, professional culture, a code of ethics (one of the critical distinguishing features of a profession), formal measures of professional competence, and sufficient discretion to perform at a professional level.5 The local government management profession is characterized by all these features and by the fact that the practices, norms or values, and perspectives that distinguish a profession are carefully laid out.

The birth of a profession “Grassroots professionals in America often developed from particular events. The need for passable streets and sidewalks, after the old ones had turned into quagmire with the appearance of the new automobile, led Staunton, Virginia, to hire the first city manager, Charles Ashburner. Thus, a new profession began quite literally out of potholes in roads created by cars.”

Source: Richard J. Stillman II, Preface to Public Administration: A Search for Themes and Directions, 2nd ed. (Burke, Va.: Chatelaine Press, 1999), 92–93.

The local government management profession was born in the twentieth century, but it was born with ancient precepts and notions of governance and management that heavily influence it to this day. Furthermore, local government management is arguably the first self-conscious profession in that it represents the first effort to shape a job to notions of professionalism. There is no predecessor occupation for the local government manager. The profession’s creators had to define the norms or values and perspectives of the profession and then determine the practices.

In a very real sense, therefore, local government management was a profession before it was an occupation. To this day the fundamental characteristics that distinguish the professional local government manager are not occupational but center on credentials, recognition, and experience. Local government management is not and never has been an occupation with a narrow range of duties and responsibilities. Rather, the work environment varies with the economic, social, and cultural differences among local governments. The day-to-day practices of managers vary as well. Certain technical skills (finance or public works management) may be more critical or less, depending on the community; and certain skills may be paramount for a period (for example, public works in the early years of the profession, public finance during the Great Depression, growth management in the 1980s) until events demand new skills.

In other words, like most professions, local government management redefines itself in relation to changing perceptions and values. (An example of such redefinition is the medical profession’s reaction to the patients’ rights movement.) But although the local government manager changes practices, he or she does so in order to remain true to the values or norms of the profession, some of which go back to its founding.6 This historic continuity of purpose and values is both the greatest strength and the greatest weakness of local government management. Therefore, it is to this history that we turn first.

Local government management in historical perspective

The profession of local government manager emerged in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from two separate but related intellectual movements, one political and one organizational: the urban reform movement and what was called scientific management. This odd coupling remains relevant to the profession to this day. The new profession combined a zealous commitment to transforming the very structures of government with support for new, “scientific” theories of management (the modern notion of the manager comes from this period). The new profession required the transformation of governmental structures so that it could put into practice its vision of the new urban society. The vision began with the attempted separation of political activities from administrative functions so that local governments would largely operate as though they were apolitical.

In short, the new profession arose from efforts to reform governmental structures and make them less blatantly political than their unreformed cousins. The ultimate embodiment of that vision of new government was the council-manager form of government. For many decades that form and its placement in cities and towns helped define the profession. The managers’ professional society was originally called the International City Managers’ Association.

A central feature of the ideal of the council-manager form of government is the unitary style of government—cooperation between council and manager.7 This style was effective because policy issues were the responsibility of the council, and the execution of policy and the administrative details of government were the responsibility of the manager. The manager and the council worked as one, seamlessly shifting from policy to practice. This type of government was effective as long as the organizational structure reflected the intended relationship between council and manager. It was also effective as long as administration was left to the chief executive officer (CEO)—that is, the manager.8 The rationale for this type of government was that the professional city manager was the ultimate administrator, separated from politics (policy making) but possessing the skill and acumen to ensure that the city worked well. Although such a pure separation between administration and politics rarely exists, the council-manager plan did at least make clear which type of official had primary responsibilities for policy making and which for administration. However, even in the earliest days of council-manager government, the engineer-managers knew that recommending Avenue A instead of First Street as a candidate for rebuilding had political implications. Indeed, L. P. Cookingham, the dean of city managers until his death in 1992, was fond of observing that one of the initial tasks of a manager was to determine just how political the council wanted the manager to be.

Because the local government manager was a professional generalist, the creation of an ethics code in 1924 was a necessary step: the code became the primary basis for judging performance and practice. The primacy of integrity in the local government management profession is connected partly to the fact that local government management is a matter of public trust and partly to the fact that quantitative performance measures are often hard to identify. The integrity of the manager was and is more important to how the occupation is understood than is true for most professions, especially for professions that emphasize specialization. Basically, the reason few professions take their codes of ethics as seriously as local government managers do is that for the latter there is less latitude and the need to enforce the code is more critical. Without the code there is no profession.

The ICMA Code of Ethics sets the local government managers’ professional organization apart from many others. The code provides communities and elected officials with confidence that managers—at all levels and serving local governments in a wide range of capacities—who belong to ICMA nationally and internationally are required to maintain high ethical and professional standards. The managers’ code helps them to do the right thing right. The council-manager form of government was created to remove politics from the day-to-day management of local government. The code was established and exists as the sole mechanism to achieve this goal, and through its aggressive enforcement by local government peers, it stays current, relevant, and effective. Our members have embraced the Code of Ethics and work very hard at keeping it alive and robust.

Gordon Anderson and
Anton “Tony” Dahlerbruch

What were the implications of melding this form of government with a professional practice based on a code of ethics? Ultimately, there were (and are) at least five:

Although the mind-set of the profession was focused on the council-manager form of government, reality was never so clear-cut. Beginning in the 1950s, membership in the profession (through its professional society9) slowly changed, eventually including city administrators, county administrators and managers, clerks of board, and international variants. Even without such changes in membership standards, this was a profession on the rise.

In sum, the nature and character of local government have changed radically since the beginning of the twentieth century. The level of professional and technical skill needed to be a competent manager is quite different in 2004 from what it was in 1920 or even 1960. During the first three decades of the twentieth century, for example, the responsibilities of local governments

were generally confined to housekeeping or systems maintenance issues; sewage and waste disposal, water supply, public safety, and building and road construction; and other public works projects. The training required of local government managers was largely technical. In 1934, more than three-quarters of managers with college degrees had received them in engineering.10

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, it is generally recognized that the core values of the profession are no longer expressed through form of government or specific technical skills but through ethical practices and professional development. Nevertheless, a considerable residue of older views remains because the most reformed plan of government, the council-manager form, was originally inseparable from a suspicion of politics. Many managers still feel most comfortable at some distance from local politics; they sometimes achieve this distance by claiming special expertise in a functional area such as financial management or infrastructure management that seems remote from politics. In fact, the ICMA Code of Ethics (discussed in more detail on page 12) demands a separation from true political involvement. Yet the behavior of successful managers—behavior that includes giving policy direction and exercising community leadership (see Chapter 2)—sometimes belies separation. Clearly, walking the fine line between ethical behavior (which includes providing policy and community leadership) and unethical behavior (which is defined by the code as “political activities”) raises the importance of professional education to a new level.

New political context: The revolution of the 1980s and 1990s

In the 1980s and 1990s charter reform began to move away from, instead of toward, pure council-manager government. In a few cities, mostly very large ones, the shift was to some form of mayor-council government. In most other cities, however, elements of nonreform government—chiefly the direct election of the mayor and the district election of council members—were introduced. But the most significant shift in form of government was the addition of a chief administrative officer (CAO) in what had been pure mayor-council cities. CAOs generally lack the authority to hire and fire but in all other respects fill the role of a professional local government manager. Thus, since the early 1980s a blurring of the lines between forms of government has been occurring.

There are several explanations for this evolution. First, many cities that adopted the council-manager form early in the twentieth century had changed economically, socially, and politically since deciding to adopt the innovative plan. Rather than being the new approach, the council-manager form was now the status quo. Accordingly, some of the reformers who in earlier times might have been advocates of the council-manager plan and therefore of the profession were now looking for alternatives, especially for more identifiable and accountable political leadership. However, even the more zealous reformers urged elected officials in traditional nonreformed (mayor-council) cities to add a professional CAO.

Second, a small change that was to have a lasting effect on the council-manager form was the shift to a separately elected mayor rather than a mayor who was appointed from within the council. Although many separately elected mayors had no more formal power than mayors appointed from councils, this change was to prove significant because it would pit the political ambitions of the legislators (the council) against those of the new executive (the mayor). Moreover, many directly elected mayors began to seek additional powers, mainly with regard to budgeting and key appointments. A parallel development was the shift from at-large to district election of council members. Indeed, district elections were second only to the addition of a CAO as the most common form of structural change in local government.11

I don’t like to get involved in politics. The job is difficult enough with what lands on my desk.

Dave Osberg

The third change that came to fruition in the last two decades of the twentieth century had its roots in the 1960s and 1970s, a time of rising insistence that government do more, especially for those with the least political clout. The street-level bureaucrat, seen as the advocate for and voice of the disadvantaged, was frequently praised in the 1960s and 1970s. Academics and political activists, at least, held in high esteem those who were closest to the people.12 Those at the top were suspect; they were part of the problem.

By the 1980s this discontent had broadened. The very concept of public service was held in considerable disdain. Politicians at every level of government and across a broad ideological spectrum found that the best way to get elected was to run against the government and, especially, against the careerists in government.13 The label “bureaucrat” was virtually an expletive. Being a professional bureaucrat was even worse than being a professional politician. The local government manager was soon painted with the same broad brush of disrespect and anger as other careerists. Under such circumstances, the council-manager form with its emphasis on professionalism and apolitical administration struck many as a formula for old-fashioned and unresponsive government. The intensity of the arguments is conveyed by the points (and counterpoints) made in comments featured in newspapers in two cities—Fort Lauderdale and Cincinnati—that still have professional local government but where fierce campaigns for change have been waged:

The proposed strong mayor system undermines the desired objectivity and professionalism of a county administrator.… My point is that consistently, and historically, the council-manager plan has maintained a more stable, ethical and efficient administration of the taxpayers’ business than any other form of local government. The checks that are established in such a form of government do not allow absolute power in the hands of the chief administrative officer without responsive action to the legislative body.

—George Hanbury in the Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale), February 28, 2000

Under Issue 4, the mayor will be able to initiate the hiring and firing of the city manager; veto legislation, subject to override by six council members; and be able to appoint all council committee chairs. … Coming Together for Cincinnati, the pro-Issue 4 campaign committee, maintained that the new system would give the mayor’s office credibility and political accountability.

—Howard Wilkinson, in the Cincinnati Enquirer, May 5, 1999

Strong mayors know votes put them in office because of their agenda. … By electing the mayor, the voters gave him a mandate to get the job done. “Beyond the issues, the mandates and the art of consensus building,” David Axelrod told me, “electing a strong mayor boils down to electing a strong personality.”

—Cliff Radel, in the Cincinnati Enquirer, May 7, 1999

In the early twenty-first century, drawing a picture of what constitutes a particular form of local government has become complicated. Victor DeSantis and Tari Renner, explicating work by Bill Hansell, have identified three variants of council-manager government and four variants of mayor-council government; the distinctions depend on the relative authority of the mayor and of the administrator.14 Figure 1–1 shows an approximation of the power of the professional administrator across the myriad forms of government.

ICMA has reported that the proportion of governments classified as council-manager rose from 34.7 percent of all city governments in 1984 to 53 percent in 2001 (the equivalent form in county government, the council-administrator form, remained constant at 12.2 percent from 1988 through 2002). These findings reflect the continuing robustness of professional local government management, particularly in communities with populations between 5,000 and 250,000. At the same time, however, the percentage of mayor-council cities and of counties with an appointed CAO also grew.15 In 2003 Susan McManus and Charles Bullock concluded that “the council-manager form has continued to gain in popularity while the commission form [in which elected commissioners serve as directors of one or more functional departments] has faded somewhat; use of the mayor-council form has regained some ground, especially in larger jurisdictions [but the] position of chief appointed official increasingly has broad appeal across various forms of government.”16

The greatly expanded powers of mayors in larger council-manager cities has eroded managerial authority. When the mayor controls or shares in the appointment to certain politically sensitive positions such as police chief and city attorney and has growing control over the budget, managerial authority is eroded. Nevertheless, many mayors and managers forge successful partnerships, sometimes at the expense of the council members.

Figure 1-1 Professional administrator’s authority in local government

images

Source: Based on Victor S. DeSantis and Tari Renner, “City Government Structures: An Attempt at Clarification,” State and Local Government Review 34, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 95–104.

In the smaller and midsize communities, where the council-manager plan continues to flourish, one may still see the breadth of authority envisioned by Richard Childs and the other early advocates of the profession. Yet there is no doubt that during the latter part of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first, managerial authority was challenged not only in large cities (such as Cincinnati, San Diego, San Antonio, and Dallas) but also in smaller communities where newly established council-manager or council-administrator charters required long-powerful mayors to cede some authority to a chief administrative officer.

New politicians

While the political context has changed, research by James Svara and others notes that the makeup and character of those who serve on councils has also changed.17 Most commonly cited in this respect are the single-issue candidates who have emerged at all levels of government. The presumed problem is that such candidates, when elected, have little regard or concern for, and provide little input on, most of the policy issues and practical service-delivery problems of local government. Their regard and input are directed only to the issues and problems that relate to their single concern.

A more critical problem is that many newly elected officials focus on issues of implementation. After all, often the core of campaigns for election or reelection is some issue of constituent service. Two interrelated attitudes shape the outlook of many council members: existing management practices must be challenged and privatization is a progressive solution to public sector problems.

Council members’ new interest in implementation has put the manager much more in the spotlight, and at some point the desires and goals of managers and councils inevitably collide (this is the one profession where being fired is almost a badge of honor; see Chapter 8 for a discussion of being “IT”—that is, of being in transition). In some cases management practices even become a subject of political debate. The first action of some new councils is to fire the manager and bring in their own, someone with a different perspective on running the local government. Many council members, particularly those who have been elected on single issues, assume that careful scrutiny of the managerial and administrative decisions of the manager is their primary task. Judgments are based on specific decisions, not on performance in a broader sense.

Antagonism between council and manager can be exacerbated by a mayor seeking to consolidate power. When denied political leadership by a strong mayor, council members focus more heavily on administrative issues. However, antagonism between council and manager and between mayor and council is presumed by the public to be healthy and appropriate rather than an aberration.18

City government is becoming more about process and less about outcomes. Government cannot solve the problems facing some of our largest cities; they are too complex, too expensive, too highly charged. … Citizens want a visible leader who will lead them to the right solution and that leader is not seen as the low profile, technically competent, professional manager.

Mark M. Levin

Where has all this left the manager? Although the role has broadened just as Richard Childs predicted in 1918, the outlook is quite different from the one Childs anticipated. The need for professional knowledge and understanding to execute the policy directives of the council is replaced by the need for survival skills that will enable the manager to juggle the competing demands of mayor and council. Changes in municipal and county government have transformed the local government manager from the technical administrator of the early twentieth century into a manager of diverse interests and perspectives.

As mentioned above, managers in the twenty-first century are much more deeply engaged in policy making.19 Success as a manager now depends on skills and relationships that have more to do with leadership than with administration. The skills and competencies implied by the distinction between administration and leadership are certainly not mutually exclusive (just the opposite), but the emphasis and application have changed. The profession in the early years of the twenty-first century is distinguished by

The real question is how can a city council and manager come to terms with leadership roles, separating the political leadership from the organizational leadership roles, and the manager keeping him/herself from being sucked into the former.

Charley Bowman

New leadership styles

At the start of the twenty-first century, the primary skills of the effective local government manager are the skills that characterize modern organizational leadership. The literature on management and leadership, even if studies directed to the private sector are filtered out, is quite extensive; and a cursory look at the body of work would consume far more space than is available here. Chapters 2 and 5 return to this topic in considerably more detail. This survey of two decades of change highlights new perspectives on the manager’s role.

Managerial roles    The 1991 ICMA FutureVisions Consortium identified the following 13 important managerial roles:

In 1991 ICMA’s FutureVisions Consortium described managerial leadership as the

ability to help people see more clearly their own desires and goals. Leadership is continuing quietly to instill in people the belief that they can successfully contend with the future.… Managers [in the future] will rely much less on fixed legal parameters—much more on political realities and strategic thinking and persuasiveness.… The manager as broker and negotiator, or unobtrusive leader, will dominate the time and resources of the top professional.… The more traditional internal management functions—that often require entirely different skills, knowledge, and experience—will fall to a new group of specialists.20

The key elements of management as leadership include, at a minimum, both an appreciation of how to frame problems and an understanding of the need for flexibility and experimentation in implementation of policy directives. Six elements of management practice that represent minimum competencies are

These competencies fall into two categories: the first three relate to how a manager defines problems, and the second three relate to how a manager decides what to do.

The way we define a problem shapes the solution to that problem, and the first step toward freedom to be creative in defining problems is to understand the facts broadly. Recognizing that facts may hide more than they reveal is the starting point for those who have the ability to define problems clearly when others can only list symptoms.22

The public nature of any problem confronting a public manager requires the manager to focus on citizens (not merely on clients or constituents) and on democratic process. The manager has a mandate to begin problem solving by creating a vision of an idealized future. To do this, the manager must be creative and sensitive to community sentiment.

Defining and solving problems is a collective job in a democracy. A team has the capability to address problems more creatively than an individual. Knowledge and participation are prerequisites for everyone involved in decision making, whether the decision-making team is limited to others within the organization or includes all citizens. Just as important, the perception by the public that decisions and actions are fair is critical for the public to support those decisions and actions.23

Carla Day recommends that organizational leaders (managers) use what she calls “value statements” to define an ethic that can serve as the basis for organizational action.

Translating values into practice begins with developing an understanding of the normative practices that go with each value orientation. … Values that engage and empower employees and give clear direction are likeliest to succeed in bringing about behavioral change. But to guarantee compliance with new policies, values should also be supported by coherent and congruent regulatory practices within the framework of the existing culture.24

ICMA’s Code of Ethics and Guidelines are an excellent starting point for developing an organizational ethic.

Together [concepts of ethics and democracy] form for me the backdrop of every decision I make at work every day. In government, you can’t always make the decision that is the quickest or least expensive or most popular. Truly understanding that comes from ingrained concepts of ethics and democracy.

Wally Bobkiewicz

Borrowing from physics what is popularly referred to as chaos theory, Douglas Kiel developed a management perspective to help managers succeed in a chaotic world.25 Chaos theory for management addresses organizational dynamics and change. It says that variability of performance is the norm and that trying to make employees fit into narrow confines of behavior (the “one best way” of scientific management) may only create problems. The goal is to take advantage of chaos (Kiel prefers the term “instability”) to impel change. Just as luck, for some people, can mean the ability to recognize opportunity,26 instability in the local government environment gives the good manager an opportunity to promote positive change. Managers must understand their role in fostering stability or instability and must use disorder to promote change and innovation.

Good and bad luck was the lot of Austin, the second-fastest-growing city in the country but one whose rapid growth was heavily dependent on high technology. Facing a 20th month of negative sales tax figures and a negative property evaluation for the first time in 12 years for FY 04, the city manager noted that “the higher you fly, the farther you can fall.” The budget and its consequences are a “helluva” challenge, but the city had made its own luck by careful development of publicly owned utilities.

Toby Futrell

Two ways to apply chaos theory to management are to encourage participation and to create a diverse workforce. Encouraging participation is a way of stirring the pot; and the conflict of ideas and cultures gained through diversity helps achieve instability. The nonstable organization is a creative organization. Rather than use the energies of management to control and direct the organization toward a defined future (one that is unlikely to be achieved), managers should focus on looking for opportunities to destabilize the organization through change and innovation. These are not easy notions for managers who have been taught that control is key. Yet one senses intuitively the connection between instability and change even as one resists, or fears, trying to foster instability in practice.

Strategic management applies some of the same principles about the uncertainty and elusiveness of the future. Strategic management emphasizes working toward a broadly defined future, not taking a narrow path to a single point.

Helping an organization follow an unknown path through change and innovation is not an easy task. It requires a manager who has insight and courage. When goals are so far into the future that those who set them will not be around to be judged by the outcome, a controlling style seems a wise course. However, James MacGregor Burns, in a book titled simply Leadership,27 suggests an alternative approach. He introduces the idea of transformational leadership; the key tenets are that

Burns argues that the key responsibility of the leader is to foster an organizational culture that seeks and supports the values of the people in it. Change itself is neither good nor bad. What can be evaluated is how the organization anticipates and responds to change. With one eye on an obscure future and the other on a commitment to a way of acting, leaders help organizations face change not as a problem but as a necessity and an opportunity.

Generally, I want to continue to build a team atmosphere where everyone’s input is valued and considered. Ultimately, I expect the team approach to result in better organization and coordination within the county and better customer service.

Jan Christofferson

Burns emphasizes that a leader accomplishes transformation by

The ability to help an organization achieve its goals may be the best definition of leadership. John Gardner suggests that “leaders must look beyond the systems they are heading and grasp the relationship to larger realities.” They must be able to craft agreements, network, exercise power beyond their official jurisdiction, and build institutions.28

The successful leader promotes an organizational culture that permits the organization to navigate a complex of issues, perspectives, perceptions, and ideologies. Luck, instability, and organizational change make a heady mix. The environment within which public managers work requires considerable skill and interpersonal acumen. Under these circumstances, the manager must be firmly grounded in the values and core understandings of the profession.

The traits needed by the leader in today’s environment include

On being an ethical leader

Most professions emphasize academic degrees and credentials, but the local government profession has always concerned itself first and foremost with ethical action. The ICMA Code of Ethics found in Appendix A embodies the mission and core values of the local government management profession. These core values are

Members of ICMA place a great deal of importance on personal integrity and adherence to the ICMA Code of Ethics, which was first approved in 1924 and supplemented with guidelines in 1972. All members of the association (including about 5,300 appointed managers at various levels) agree to abide by the code and are “subject to sanctions for any violations thereof which occur during their membership.”31 The professional local government manager takes responsibility not only for personal adherence to the Code of Ethics but also for the adherence—in values, actions, and behaviors—of all persons the manager appoints or supervises.

Fundamental to our service to our communities and our professional values is the need to consider thoughtfully when we as managers are morally, ethically, and/or legally required to confront misconduct.

Kevin Duggan

The ICMA Committee on Professional Conduct regularly investigates questionable conduct by members to determine whether it violates the code, and it recommends sanctions to the ICMA’s executive board. Sanctions can include private censure, public censure, expulsion from ICMA, and a bar against reinstatement. (In 2002, ICMA expelled and barred from membership one member, publicly censured three members, and privately censured two members.) Infractions of the code that are sanctioned by the organization typically involve inappropriate personal relationships, violations of the public trust, encroachments on the role of elected officials, campaign contributions to local and federal candidates, and failure to fulfill commitments. The actual number of sanctions is always small, but the fact of the sanctions dramatically demonstrates the importance of the code.

An ethical problem Scenario: The city has a sports arena and plans to work with a consultant to come up with a state-of-the-art lighting plan for the facility. The consultant has completed a similar project in another state and has offered to fly the public works director out to see it. The public works director thinks this is a good idea and argues that it won’t cost the city any money and will ensure that the city gets what it expects. The city manager, however, has some doubts about the offer and has asked for guidance.

This ethics inquiry, along with the unofficial response to it, was posted in the May 2003 issue of Public Management. The inquiry and response are a useful subject for discussion.

The effective professional

As emphasized above, the profession of local government management is anything but static. The nature and structure of the governments within which managers work have expanded and changed, and public expectations have changed. In this context it is vital that managers continually review and assess their capabilities to manage, to lead, and to promote ethical behaviors. ICMA has acknowledged the importance of continual self-assessment in Tenet 8 of the Code of Ethics, which says that every member of ICMA has the “duty continually to improve the member’s professional ability and to develop the competence of associates in the use of management techniques.” The guidelines for this tenet specify

Self-assessment Each member should assess his or her professional skills and abilities on a periodic basis.

Professional development Each member should commit at least 40 hours per year to professional development activities that are based on the practices identified by the members of ICMA.

To support Tenet 8, during the 1990s the ICMA membership developed three interrelated programs:

These three programs provide a solid foundation for local government managers who want to explore the concepts of leadership, ethics, and management. The 18 core content areas, or practices, were developed and approved by the entire membership of ICMA and represent the state of the local government management profession. The practices essentially correspond to the precepts and skills of leadership and ethics described above and examined in more detail in subsequent chapters. These areas lay out the key approaches and activities that make local government more effective. The detailed list appears in Appendix B; the list below presents only the labels given to the core content areas.

Practices for effective local government management

The ICMA University offers programs and resources centered on these 18 practices that have been identified as essential to effective local government management. ICMA members are, of course, responsible for assessing their own skills and abilities and determining what continuing education activities to pursue.

The Voluntary Credentialing Program was a significant step toward providing the same kind of guidance and perspective on management and leadership that the guidelines adopted for the ICMA Code of Ethics do on ethics. The program helps interested members quantify the unique expertise they bring to their communities. It also guides ICMA members in focusing their lifelong professional development. Members who complete the program are recognized by the ICMA executive board and are awarded the designation of ICMA Credentialed Manager (or, for those who lack the full experience required, Credentialed Manager Candidate). The program’s key attribute is its emphasis on both expertise (born of experience and education) and the need for lifelong learning and professional development.

In summary, a code of ethics implies continual self-assessment, which the local government management profession carries out by means of a list of core competencies, a comprehensive training agenda, and a credentialing program. On behalf of its membership, ICMA has developed a support system to ensure the competence and skill of members of the profession. The expectation is that managers who adhere to ICMA’s Code of Ethics and pursue lifelong professional development will display the managerial and leadership traits necessary to create effective local government.

Looking ahead

The primary purpose of this chapter has been to establish the meaning of professional local government management and thereby foreshadow key, recurrent themes of the book. The focus has been on the near term, that is, how the changes of the last decades of the twentieth century have influenced the profession and what skills and abilities its practitioners need in order to be effective. Particular importance has been paid to ethics and leadership. The chapters that follow discuss the details of how to be an effective local government manager.

Chapter 2 examines the characteristics of community (broadly defined to include not only government but also citizens and organizations other than government) and the processes involved in exercising community leadership. The chapter also examines the manager’s responsibilities for helping both to shape the policy agenda and to create programs to implement those policies.

Chapter 3 focuses on the manager’s relations with the governing body. Not only have the charter-defined relationships between the manager and elected officials changed, but so also have citizens’ and elected officials’ expectations for managerial behavior. The chapter emphasizes the importance of a strong partnership between the appointed professional manager and elected officials in the effort to create and maintain an effective local government; at the same time, the chapter also acknowledges that one of the manager’s important roles is helping governing board members improve their own effectiveness.

Chapter 4 focuses on the role of the manager in shaping the future of the community. Although the chapter notes the importance of traditional planning processes (for example, strategic planning), it emphasizes economic development, the sustainable community, and community visioning. The element common to all these topics is community building.

Chapter 5 addresses the essential skills that mark a good manager and considers the three sets of resources for which managers are continually responsible: people, finances, and information. How the manager allocates each set of resources determines the manager’s capacity to accomplish goals, to respond quickly to changing circumstances, and to ensure that each resource is mined to the fullest.

Chapter 6 introduces the idea of service-oriented management. Whereas the preceding chapter looks at the inner resources of the local government, this chapter looks at the program planning that results in services provided to the community. Of equal importance is how the manager enhances productivity and orchestrates the evaluation of performance and the success of programs.

Chapter 7 takes an expansive view of relationships between and among governmental and nongovernmental organizations, with an emphasis on the importance of networking. The effective manager must develop appropriate interactions with the people in key organizations in the community. Overall, managers must learn how to capitalize on the many different resources available from organizations outside the government.

Chapter 8 looks at the personal side of management, including various career paths and levels of local government management. It deals with the realities of how to manage self, health, family relations, career disruptions, and professional networking. In short, the chapter allows the reader a glimpse of what it is like on a personal level to be a local government manager.

Recap

Sample performance evaluation

Confidential
City Manager Performance Evaluation
City Of Garden City, Kansas

Responsibility or Characteristic

Rate from 1–10, 10 being excellent Circle Rating

General Administration

Manpower Development Does he/she appoint and train effective subordinates? Is he/she able to recruit and retain quality employees?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Leadership Does he/she motivate others to maximum performance? Is he/she respected as demanding but fair? Does he/she get enthusiastic response to his/her new ideas and needed reorganizations?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Supervision Does he/she adequately supervise and direct the activities of the Department Heads and staff? Is he/she able to control the operational activities of the City through others? Is he/she available to his/her employees for guidance and counseling? Does he effectively develop Department Heads and staff people?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Job Organization Does he/she delegate responsibility effectively? Does he/she use his/her time productively? Does he/she program activities in an orderly and systematic way?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Execution of Policy Does he/she understand and comply with the overall policies, laws and philosophy of the City? Do his/her efforts lead towards successful accomplishment of goals? Does he/she measure results against goals and take corrective action?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Planning Does the Manager translate polices and objectives into specific and effective programs? Does the Manager independently recognize problems, develop relative facts, formulate alternate solutions and decide on appropriate recommendations.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Budget Is the budget developed in a systematic and effective manner? Is the budget proposal for the Manager normally reasonable and appropriate? Does he/she carry out the budget satisfactorily and control expenses within the levels set in the budget?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Communication Does he/she keep appropriate people informed? Does he/she present his/her thoughts in an orderly and understanding manner? Is he/she able to be persuasive?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Reporting Does he/she submit accurate and complete staff reports on schedule? Do the reports adequately convey information on the City?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Commission Communication Does the Manager provide the Commission with adequate information to make decisions?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Written Communication How effective are the Manager’s letters, memoranda and other forms of written information?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Response to Commission Does the Manager respond in a positive way to suggestions and guidance from the Commission? Is the Manager attuned to the Commissions attitudes, feelings and needs?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Productivity Can the Manager be depended on for sustained productive work? Does the Manager readily assume responsibility? Does the Manager meet time estimates within his/her control?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Stress Management Is the Manager able to resolve problems under strain and unpleasant conditions? How well does the Manager tolerate conditions of uncertainty? Does the Manager respond well to stressful situations and adequately deal with the stress inherent to the position?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

External Relationships

Community Relations Is the Manager skillful in his/her dealing with the News media? Does he/she properly avoid politics and partisanship? Does he/she show an honest interest in the community? Does he/she properly convey the policies and programs of the City?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Community Reputation What is the general attitude of the community to the Manager? Is he/she regarded as person of high integrity and ability? Is his/her public credibility an asset or liability to the City?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Professional Reputation. How does the Manager stand among his/her colleagues? Does he/she deal effectively with other public managers? Is he/she respected by professional and staff representatives of other cities and counties? Does he/she attend and participate in seminars and conferences for professional development?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Intergovernmental Relations Does the Manager work effectively with federal, state, and other local government representatives? Is the relationship with other local government officials beneficial to the City? Is he/she able to facilitate cooperative efforts among various local agencies and the City?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Personal Characteristics

Imagination Does he/she show originality in approaching problems? Does he/she create effective solutions? Is he/she able to visualize the implications of various alternatives?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Objectivity Is he/she unemotional and unbiased? Does he/she take a rational and impersonal viewpoint based on facts and qualified opinions? Is he/she able to divide his/her personal feelings from those which would most effectively convey the City’s interest?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Drive Is the Manager energetic and willing to spend the time necessary to do a good job? Does he/she have good initiative and is he/she a self-starter? Does he/she have good mental and physical stamina?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Judgment and Decisiveness Is he/she able to reach quality decisions in a timely fashion? Are his/her decisions generally good? Does he/she exercise good judgment in making decisions and in his/her general conduct?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Attitudes Is he/she enthusiastic? Cooperative? Willing to adapt? Does he/she have an enthusiastic attitude toward the City, both professional and personally?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Integrity Does the Manager fulfill his/her responsibilities and duties in accordance with the ICMA Code of Ethics? Is he/she honest and forthright in his/her professional capacities? Does he/she have a reputation in the community for honesty and integrity?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Self-Assurance Is the Manager self-assured of his/her abilities? Is he/she able to be honest with himself/herself and take constructive criticism? Does he/she take responsibility for mistakes which are his/her? Is he/she confident enough to make decisions and take actions as may be required without undue supervision from the Commission?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Composite Performance Rating

General Administration

__________________________

External Relationships

__________________________

Personal Characteristics

__________________________

STRONG POINTS

WEAK POINTS

SUGGESTIONS AND SPECIFIC DIRECTION

GENERAL COMMENTS/DIRECTION FOR IMPROVEMENT

Notes

  1  Leonard White, The City Manager (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1927), 149.

  2  See Chester A. Newland, “The Future of Council-Manager Government,” in Ideal and Practice in Council-Manager Government, ed. George W. Frederickson (Washington, D.C.: International City Management Association, 1989), 257–271.

  3  Frederick C. Mosher, Democracy and the Public Service (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968), 106.

  4  Ibid., 122.

  5  Daniel W. Fitzpatrick, “City Management: Profession or Guild,” Public Management (January/February 1990): 32.

  6  The distinction between the city manager and the city administrator that was codified in the definition of full membership in ICMA through the 1960s is an example of preserving values and norms that were critical in 1920 but are increasingly less relevant.

  7  The idea of a unitary system is borrowed from discussions with David Y. Miller, formerly a city manager and now an academician. Miller noted that in the council-manager form the success of the government rests on cooperation between the manager and the council. When the two work as one, the form is most successful. However, when a form that includes a separately elected—and particularly strong—mayor is substituted, the government effectively has three parts, with the manager in the middle. Each of the two sides has its own goals and aspirations. Being in the middle requires quite different behaviors and skills from being part of a cooperative unitary effort. See also Greg J. Protasel, “Abandonment of the Council-Manager Plan: A New Institutional Perspective, in Ideal and Practice in Council-Manager Government,” 22–32.

  8  James Svara, “Dichotomy and Duality: Reconceptualizing the Relationship between Policy and Administration in Council-Manager Governments,” Public Administration Review 45, no. 1 (January–February 1985): 221–232; Svara, “Complementarity of Politics and Administration as a Legitimate Alternative to the Dichotomy Model,” Administration and Society 30, no. 6 (January 1999): 676–705.

  9  The name of the society until 1969 was the International City Managers’ Association, when it was changed to International City Management Association. Only since 1991 has it been the International City/County Management Association.

10  Tari Renner, “The Local Government Management Profession at Century’s End,” The Municipal Year Book 2001 (Washington, D.C.: International City/County Management Association, 2001), 35.

11  Susan McManus and Charles S. Bullock III, “The Form, Structure, and Composition of America’s Municipalities in the New Millennium,” in The Municipal Year Book 2003 (Washington, D.C.: International City/County Management Association, 2003), 1–18.

12  Frank Marini, ed., Toward the New Public Administration (Scranton, Pa.: Chandler Publishing, 1971).

13  Charles Goodsell, The Case for Bureaucracy, 4th ed. (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 2004) is among the many who explore this phenomenon.

14  Victor S. DeSantis and Tari Renner, “City Government Structures: An Attempt at Clarification,” State and Local Government Review 34, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 95–104; Bill Hansell, “Is It Time to ‘Reform’ the Reform?” Public Management 80, no. 12 (December 1998): 15–16; see also H. George Frederickson and Gary Alan Johnson, “The Adapted American City: A Study of Institutional Dynamics,” Urban Affairs Review 36 (July 2001): 872–884; James H. Svara, Official Leadership in the City: Patterns of Conflict and Cooperation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Craig M. Wheeland, “An Institutionalist Perspective on Mayoral Leadership: Linking Leadership Style to Formal Structure,” National Civic Review 91 (Spring 2002): 25–39.

15  See, for example, Tari Renner, “The Local Government Management Profession at Century’s End,” The Municipal Year Book 2001 (Washington, D.C.: International City/County Management Association, 2001); Kimberly Nelson, Structure of American Municipal Government, Special Data Issue, no. 4 (Washington, D.C.: International City/County Management Association, 2002); and “Council-Manager Government … The Most Popular Form of U.S. Local Government Structure,” drawn from ICMA’s The Municipal Yearbook 2002 and available at www.icma.org by clicking on “Council-Manager Form of Government,” then “Form of Government Statistics” among the available e-Library documents.

16  McManus and Bullock, 17.

17  Svara, “Dichotomy and Duality,” and “Complementarity of Politics and Administration”; Protasel, “Abandonment of the Council-Manager Plan”; Kimberly Nelson, Elected Municipal Councils, Special Data Issue, no. 3 (Washington, D.C.: International City/County Management Association, 2002); McManus and Bullock, 16.

18  David Y. Miller, interview, March 30, 2003.

19  See, for example, Greg J. Protasel, “Leadership in Council-Manager Cities: The Institutional Perspective,” in Ideal and Practice in Council-Manager Government, ed. H. George Frederickson (Washington, D.C.: International City Management Association, 1989), 114–122; and Charldean Newell and David N. Ammons, “City Managers Don’t Make Policy: A Lie, Let’s Face It,” National Civic Review (March/April 1988): 124–132.

20  Amy Cohen Paul, Future Challenges, Future Opportunities: The Final Report of the ICMA FutureVisions Consortium (Washington, D.C.: International City Management Association, 1991), 4.

21  Raymond W. Cox III, “Creating a Decision Architecture,” Global Virtue Ethics Review 2, no. 1 (Summer 2000).

22  Gareth Morgan, Imagines of Organization (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1986).

23  Stuart Gilman, “Public Sector Ethics and Government Reinvention: Realigning Systems to Meet Organizational Change,” Public Integrity 1, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 175–192.

24  Carla Day, “Balancing Organizational Priorities: A Two-Factor Values Model of Integrity and Conformity,” Public Integrity 1, no. 2 (Spring 1999): 162–164.

25  L. Douglas Kiel, Managing Chaos and Complexity in Government: A New Paradigm for Managing Change, Innovation, and Organizational Renewal (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1994).

26  Robert Behn, Leadership Counts: Lessons for Public Managers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).

27  James MacGregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper and Row, 1979).

28  John Gardner, “The Changing Nature of Leadership,” Independent Sector (July 1988): 14.

29  Summary of Patrick Manion, “Promoting Excellence in Management,” The Effective Local Government Manager, 2nd ed. (Washington, D.C.: International City/County Management Association, 1993), 81–105.

30  ICMA Strategic Plan, approved July 2000.

31  ICMA Code of Ethics: Rules of Procedure for Enforcement, II.A.