Mayor-council government
Mayor-council government is one of the five major types of municipal government found in cities and towns throughout the United States. The other four are council-manager, commission, town meeting, and representative town meeting.
Mayor-council governments generally feature an elected executive officer called a mayor and an elected legislative body that is most often known as the city council. Depending on a city’s history or its relationship with the surrounding county, however, the legislative body might go by another name such as an urban-county council, a common council, a board of supervisors or a metro council. Similarly, the number of city council members varies widely. The Madison Common Council, for example, consists of 20 members, while the New York City City Council consists of 51 members.[1][2]
In a mayor-council government, the mayor and city council work together to balance and pass a budget, draft and enforce legislation, and oversee city departments and appoint departmental heads. The dynamics of how the mayor and city council work together depend on the type of mayor-council government that a city uses.
Strong vs. weak mayor-council
Mayor-council government can be broadly divided into two types: strong and weak. The difference centers on the scope of the mayor’s executive authority and legal power.
Strong mayor-council
Strong mayor-council governments reflect the organization of most state governments. The mayor is the city’s chief executive, while the council is the city’s primary legislative body. The general characteristics of strong mayor-council governments are as follows:[3]
|
Weak mayor-council
In a weak mayor-council government, the executive authority of the mayor is less expansive and more power is shared with the council. The general characteristics of the mayor-council governments are as follows:[3]
|
Variations
There are forms of mayor-council government that deviate from the strong and weak models. A 2002 study published in the State & Local Government Review, for instance, noted that strong and weak mayor-council governments can each be divided into at least two subcategories:[4]
|
The city of Fresno, California, offers an illustrative example of subcategory one. In Fresno, the mayor possesses many of the features that distinguish the strong mayor-council form of government, such as veto powers and the authority to draft and propose a budget. The mayor also appoints a chief administrative officer, who is responsible for appointing department heads and overseeing the day-to-day operations of the city.[5]
The city of Houston, Texas, offers another form of mayor-council government that deviates from the basic strong vs. weak dichotomy. In Houston, the mayor holds the executive authority and legal powers typical of the strong mayor-council government but also presides over city council meetings and retains the right to vote at council meetings.[6]
History
The origins of mayor-council government can be found in the administration of late medieval and early modern English towns. Between 1200 and 1500, some towns obtained municipal charters from English lords or the royal government that granted local elites—exclusively males—the right to elect a mayor and a city council, who were responsible for regulating trade and overseeing local law and order.[7][8][9]
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the British colonial administration established this same system of municipal government in its North American colonies, albeit with at least one notable difference: while colonists elected their own council members, colonial governors reserved the right to appoint mayors.[9]
Following the American Revolution in the late eighteenth century, local governments in the United States maintained the mayor-council system that they inherited from the British, though the responsibility of appointing mayors shifted from colonial governors to the elected members of city councils.[10][9]
Throughout much of the early nineteenth century, most American cities and towns utilized the weak form of mayor-council government described above. The position of mayor was predominantly ceremonial and symbolic, while the councils, on the other hand, wielded considerable legislative, financial and executive power.[11] But, as early as the 1840s and 1850s, some cities were already transitioning toward a strong mayor-council government. The scope of mayoral executive authority was growing and several cities began electing mayors at-large instead of allowing city councils to appoint mayors from their own ranks. By the early twentieth century, strong mayor-council governments could be found in many of the country’s largest cities.[12]
What drove this transformation?
Historians generally cite two different factors that shaped the development of strong mayor-council governments throughout the course of the nineteenth century. One was the influence of Jacksonian democratic principles, which advocated for a strong executive branch of government. A second was the inefficiency of early weak mayor-council governments and their failure to break the power of the political bosses and machines that dominated early twentieth-century American politics.[13] Many viewed a strong, elected municipal executive as a key to streamlining the legislative process and curbing political corruption (see the image and caption on the right).[11][12][14]
The rapid rise of strong mayor-council governments, however, was short-lived. At the same time that cities throughout the United States were looking to elect strong executives in order to alleviate the political and legal problems of the early twentieth century, the commission and council-manager forms of municipal government were also growing in popularity. Consequently, strong mayor-council government was no longer the sole option for reform and many urban reformers began turning to these other new options.[12][13]
Trends
As of 2011, 33 percent of cities in the United States used mayor-council government in one of its various incarnations (see Figure 1), according to the International City/County Management Association. This was a 20 percentage point drop from 1981, when 53 percent of municipalities used a mayor-council government system. Approximately 59 percent of cities used the council-manager government system and another 6 percent used a town meeting system in 2011.[15][16][17][18]
See also
External links
Footnotes
- ↑ City of Madison, "Alders," accessed November 19, 2014
- ↑ New York City City Council, "Members," accessed November 19, 2014
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 National League of Cities, "Mayoral Powers," accessed November 19, 2014
- ↑ DeSantis, V.S. & Renner, T. "City Government Structures: An Attempt at Clarification," in State & Local Government Review, Vol. 34, No. 2, Spring, 2002 (pages 98-100)
- ↑ City of Fresno, "Government," accessed November 19, 2014
- ↑ City of Houston, "About City Government," accessed November 19, 2014
- ↑ Davis, J. (2012) Medieval Market Morality: Life, Law and Ethics in the English Marketplace, 1200-1500. New York: Cambridge University Press (pages 175 and 240)
- ↑ Holt, R. & Rosser, G. (1990) The Medieval Town in England 1200-1540. London: New York (pages 100-102)
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Garrard, J. (2007) Heads of the Local State: Mayors, Provosts and Burgomasters Since 1800. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing (pages 11-28)
- ↑ University of North Carolina: School of Government, "Governance in Mayor-council Cities," accessed November 19, 2014
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Kweit, R. & Kweit M.G. (1999) People and Politics in Urban America. London: Routledge (pages 181-185)
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Goldfield, D. (2007) Encyclopedia of American Urban History. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publicans, Inc. (pages 454-456)
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Frederickson, G.H, Logan, B. & Wood, C., "Municipal Reform in Mayor-Council Cities: A Well Kept Secret," in State and Local Government Review, Vol. 35, No. 1, Winter, 2003 (pages 27-28)
- ↑ Ohio State University, "Thomas Nast Portfolio," accessed November 11, 2014
- ↑ International City/County Management Association, "Municipal Form of Government Survey Summary 2011," accessed November 18, 2014
- ↑ International City/County Management Association, "Municipal Form of Government Survey Summary 2006," accessed November 18, 2014
- ↑ Moulder, E. "Municipal Form of Government: Trends in Structure, Responsibility, and Composition," in The Municipal Year Book 2008. Washington, D.C.: International City/County Management Association, 2008 (pages 27-28)
- ↑ DeSantis, V.S. & Renner, T. "City Government Structures: An Attempt at Clarification," in State & Local Government Review, Vol. 34, No. 2, Spring, 2002 (pages 96-97)
|
|||||||||||
