In about two months, Richmond moves to a new form of
government for the first time in 57 years. Most attention thus far has focused
on the election of the mayor.
Little discussion, however, has focused on the structural
changes in government instituted by the revised charter.
The council-manager form of government, which gives the city
manager responsibility for overseeing the administration of city government and
gives City Council responsibility for overseeing the city manager, will be
abolished.
The new form of government will place all executive
responsibility in the hands of a popularly elected mayor, who will appoint a
chief administrative officer upon the advice and consent of City Council.
The new city government will be characterized by separation
of powers between the legislative and executive branches, much like the
arrangement at the state and national levels of government.
The City Council will occupy a comparable relationship to the
mayor as the Virginia General Assembly has with the governor. Like the governor,
or the President of the United States, the new mayor, through the chief
administrative officer, will supervise the administrative organs of government
and will be directly accountable to the voters.
Under the revised charter, the mayor will be responsible for
advising council of the city’s financial condition. The mayor’s budgetary powers
will range from overseeing the preparation of the general operating and capital
budgets and submitting them to council to introducing before council
appropriation ordinances and ordinances altering tax rates.
The mayor can also recommend supplemental appropriations to
council. These powers are currently those of the city manager. The difference is
that now the manager reports to City Council.
Under the revised charter, however, the mayor will be
independent of council. In addition, the mayor can issue, to quote from the
revised charter, "any regulations as may be necessary in order to implement
his/her duties and powers."
This last provision gives considerable leeway to the mayor.
An assertive mayor could subsume much authority under this "any regulations"
provision of the charter.
While the initial selection of the chief administrative
officer (CAO) requires agreement between the mayor and the council, the CAO,
once selected, can be removed unilaterally by the mayor.
Except for the difference in appointment, the function of the
city manager and the CAO is essentially the same. For example, the CAO, like the
city manager, will have the power to appoint all heads of administrative
departments of the city. That the CAO will report to the mayor, not to council,
will require a major adjustment, however, since, for over half a century, the
appointed head of government has been answerable to City Council.
With the CAO being accountable to the mayor, the mayor will
have access to a vast storehouse of information ranging from how police officers
are deployed and the number of abandoned buildings in the city to the turnover
of case workers in the Department of Social Services and the latest figures on
infant mortality.
Having information of this detail provides considerable
leverage in shaping policy. That the charter calls for the mayor "to attend all
council meetings with the right to speak but not to vote" means that the mayor
can assume the same role in terms of overseeing information flow from the
administration to council as was assumed by the city manager. This power to
determine the amount and quality of information transmitted to City Council
vastly increases the mayor’s ability to influence legislation even without the
mayor’s right to vote.
Nothing in the charter prevents the council from establishing
its own means of gathering and analyzing information. Indeed, the new charter
grants council the power to investigate departments, boards, commissions and
agencies of the city.
The council could flex its muscle and create a local version
of the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (a General Assembly
watchdog agency) or create its own budget review office similar to that of
Congress.
But would such a move be in the best interests of the city?
Funding could become an issue. Given the huge demands on the
city’s scarce resources, would citizens sanction the creation of such an entity?
The council would have to weigh the merits of developing such
a legislative check on the executive against the costs of diverting precious
resources from important programs already underfunded.
Moreover, when does the small scale of Richmond city
government, at least when compared to the large scale of state government, work
against creating additional checks and balances that could jeopardize the more
personal, more consensual relationships that characterized
administrative-legislative relationships when the city manager reported and was
accountable directly to the council?
The revised charter places with City Council all legal
authority for the passage of city ordinances, including the adoption of the
budget. Only if the council fails to adopt a budget by May 31, does the mayor’s
proposed budget become the operating budget for the city.
Such a scenario would hopefully never occur, but should
majority support for the mayor’s budget never materialize by the end of May,
then the power of the mayor to implement his/her proposed budget without council
approval is formidable.
Having that power gives great leverage to the mayor when
dealing with a recalcitrant council. Under the current charter, the city manager
also possesses that power.
The difference, however, is that the city manager is an
appointee of council and, thus, does not have an independent political base. Not
so with a mayor who is elected citywide.
On the other hand, council also possesses considerable power.
Under the new charter, the mayor does not have the power to veto legislation.
Thus, a council majority working independently of the mayor could pass
legislation without mayoral approval.
Given this power of council, a key figure in the new
government will be the vice mayor. In some respects, the title of this position
is misnamed since this person is associated with the legislative branch, not the
executive branch. The vice mayor is a member of City Council whom the council
selects from among its membership to preside over council meetings.
The primary loyalty of the vice mayor, therefore, will be to
the City Council, not the mayor. The vice mayor could become the legislative
leader of Council and thus a prominent figure in policymaking.
What gives some credence to the title "vice mayor" is that,
in the event of a vacancy in the office of the mayor, the vice mayor becomes the
acting executive until a successor is elected.
Regardless of title, the vice mayor could play an important
role in brokering relationships between the City Council and the mayor.
For the mayor to advance his public agenda, the mayor will
need to develop alliances with City Council since any legislation introduced by
the mayor must garner the support of at least five council members.
There are even instances under the new charter, as is the
case now under the current charter, when six votes are necessary to adopt
legislation.
Such is the case, for example, when supplemental
appropriations are approved following the adoption of the budget. Similarly, the
council cannot afford to work independently of the mayor. Self interest alone
will compel local legislators to develop positive relationships with the
executive in order to secure fiscal and administrative resources for their
council districts.
One would hope, however, that close alliances between
executive and legislative branches would be forged, not out of narrow political
considerations, but out of a common recognition that a united front is necessary
to address issues of crime, poverty, joblessness and an array of other
challenges including public schools. Relative to the latter, both the
legislative and executive branches also will need to work cooperatively with the
School Board.
The School Board is comprised of independently elected
officials and functions independently of the mayor and the City Council. The
charter, however, requires the School Board to submit its budget estimates to
the mayor, who then submits the budget to City Council for final approval.
The council approves a lump sum appropriation to the School
Board and the School Board expends this sum at its discretion.
If the School Board fails to get the appropriation that it
seeks, then either the mayor or the City Council, whichever shortchanges the
School Board, regardless of the reason, could be targeted as insensitive to the
needs of public education.
Once again, turf issues and questions related to "who’s in
charge" could easily arise, as they do occasionally even now with the
council-manager form of government.
Such instances, however, could become even more common in the
new mayor-council form of government unless all of the parties make a conscious
effort to pull together. After all, nothing less than the welfare of the city’s
school children is at stake.
With time, we’ll know much more about our new city
government. Both the mayor and the council will learn from experience what
provisions of the charter work well and what provisions may need revision.
Citizens, too, will learn whether the most significant change
in Richmond government in several generations proved effective.
Hopefully, as we look back we can say with pride that our new
city government worked successfully in addressing the challenges confronting
Richmond and that while the executive and legislative branches each exercised
their legal prerogatives and gave voice to their respective constituencies, the
mayor and City Council did so out of mutual respect for each other and out of a
common devotion to the city they all serve.
