Local Government Management

The only certainty about local government management today is change, and the most salient change concerns the dissolution of traditional barriers, a topic addressed by every author in this special issue of the American Review of Public Administration (ARPA). Many local government challenges are larger than one jurisdiction, requiring new approaches to addressing public issues. Think of any major public policy challenge facing local governments: housing, poverty, crime, disaster response, education, and climate change adaption, to name a few. To address any one of these challenges effectively, a “full court press” is needed across jurisdictional boundaries (Huxham, 1993; O’Leary, Gerard, & Bingham, 2006). Tied in with this, the desire to improve the effectiveness and performance of programs is encouraging local government leaders, in particular, to identify new ways of providing services and many of these options cross boundaries (Agranoff & McGuire, 2001; Bingham & O’Leary, 2008; Goldsmith & Kettl, 2009; O’Leary & Bingham, 2009). Moreover, technology is helping local governments share information and provide services across boundaries in a way that is integrative and interoperable (Pardo, Gil-Garcia, & Luna-Reyes, 2010). Finally, citizens are seeking additional avenues for engaging in governance, which can result in new and different forms of cross-boundary problem solving, decision making, and service delivery (Nabatchi, Gastil, Weiksner, & Leighninger, 2012; O’Leary et al., 2006).

Issues such as globalization, diversity, collaboration, networks, multidisciplinarity, publicness, public participation, ecological approaches, and sustainability all are related to one another, and all represent an orientation toward embracing tension and complexity and transcending old boundaries. Tied in with this is the idea that to attract more leaders to government and the work of local governance in particular, a broader conceptualization of public service is needed—one that crosses boundaries. A primary rationale for this is the need to reconceptualize what government is and does.

Rather than providing direct public services or “fixing” public problems, a growing number of local government managers see their roles as convening “experts” from a wide variety of backgrounds and from different sectors with the public to exchange knowledge, brainstorm ideas, and implement solutions together. Multisectoral engagement and collaboration may be a way of recasting the work of local government. A broader conception of publicness may sharpen the governance focus of local government jurisdictions and contribute to the breakdown of traditional boundaries that have inhibited collaboration, innovation, and improvement in results.

Adding to the challenges of local governments today is the fact that escalating demands on local governments and mission creep abound (Figone, Walesh, Danaj, & Benest, 2011). Fiscal challenges, including increased unfunded mandates, pose additional challenges as responsibilities are shifted downward to local jurisdictions (fondly called “the shift and the shaft” by local government managers). Cutback management and leaner local governments are rapidly becoming the norm around the world (Figone et al., 2011). Developing and institutionalizing more effective mechanisms for determining what constitutes the work of local government and what should be financed by government, partially or wholly, but developed and provided by other institutions and stakeholders is being hotly debated. Politicization over what constitutes inherently governmental work, as well as whether and when the responsibility to deliver services might be shared with private sector and non-profit sector providers, is rampant as not everything can be done by local governments or delegated to others. Some ask, “Are we setting up local governments for failure.”

And yet, when the co-editors of this special issue examined recent volumes of our best public administration journals, we were surprised at the paucity of articles addressing local government concerns. Seemingly rare is the article that examines current trends and challenges at the local government level. As the Edwin O. Stene Distinguished Professors of public administration at one of the top local government programs in the world, we decided that one of our top priorities had to be to bring to light some of the best thinking and research on local government management today. Hence this special issue.

In this volume of ARPA, local governments and metropolitan areas are seen from a particular vantage point, through the eyes of public administrationists: those who manage cities and counties and those who teach them and study the cities and counties they manage. The study of local government and particularly the study of cities and the practice of city management trace to the origins of modern American public administration, over a century of scholarship and application (Bollens, 1952; Childs, 1965; Peel, 1938; Stone, Price, & Stone, 1940). Much of that practice and scholarship, particularly in the first half of the 20th Century, was couched in the language of municipal reform. Ideas matter and the specific ideas associated with American municipal reform—non-partisan elections, professional administration, civil service based on merit, budgeting and auditing, and a fire wall between electoral politics and professional administration—were widely adopted. By midcentury, it could be said that “city government is vastly more honest, efficient, and democratic that it was a generation or two ago” (Banfield & Wilson, 1963, p. 149). The article in this special issue by Craig M. Wheeland, Christine Palus, and Curt Wood, “A Century of Municipal Reform in the United States: A Legacy of Success, Adaptation and the Impulse to Improve,” describes municipal reform from the public administration vantage point and illustrates how core public administration ideas have resulted in better local government.

Jurisdictions also frame the public administration vantage on local government and metropolitan areas. Jurisdictions—cities, counties, school districts, and special districts—have broadly agreed-upon governmental characteristics including defined borders, statute-making authority, and the power to tax, elected office holders representing jurisdiction residents, and appointed staff and managers responsible for day-to-day operations including enforcing statutes. At the local level of government, public administration is all about jurisdiction. Many of the persistent themes and questions in local government management scholarship manifest in the frame of jurisdiction: How to make the delivery of public services more efficient? Should the city staff report to a manager or to the mayor? Should city council members or school board members be elected by district or at large? Should public schools be operated by cities? Should the city or county be better prepared for disasters and emergencies?

In the first half of the 20th Century, from the vantage of the jurisdiction framework, public administrationists tended to strongly favor the city manager model or council-manager form government, with an emphasis on a city manager selected on the basis of merit, directing a city staff of civil servants likewise selected on the basis of merit, a small part-time non-partisan city council and either no mayor or a symbolic mayor chosen from among the city council. This was the municipal reform model. Variations on that model were also favored for more urban counties. As local government jurisdictions, school districts almost universally used a model rather like the council-manager form city government, school district superintendents thought to be the educational equivalent of city managers. Following World War II, as U.S. metropolitan areas grew rapidly, hundreds of new suburban cities almost all adopted the city manager model of local government. Postwar suburbs tended to be middle class, homogenous, conservative, and pro-business, favoring the order, predictability, and reliability that the council-manager form of government provided. Large American central cities, however, retained robust political cultures, often with colorful mayors, but adopted many of the municipal reform movement’s administrative principles.

As Wheelend, Palus, and Wood describe, by the 1970s, the municipal reform movement had little else to reform. Merit based civil service is the norm among local government jurisdictions, with professionalism in most local functions—education, law enforcement, fire protection, civil engineering, and public works. Most reformed local government jurisdictions have moved in the direction of strengthening the political power of mayors and increasing the percentage of their council members being elected by district. There has been a decrease in the importance of the form of city government among the members of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA), mostly city and county managers, and a sharp increase in the professionalization of local government administrators. Rather than emphasizing form of government, city managers and those aspiring to be city managers are encouraged by ICMA to go through an educational and professionalization process whereby they are “credentialed.” Cities of any type are expected to have credentialed chief administrators.

Among the most important lessons of the century of municipal reform is that cities are remarkably adaptable and malleable, incrementally changing their political, organizational, and managerial arrangements over time (Frederickson, Johnson, & Wood, 2003). Other forms of U.S. local government—counties, school districts, and special districts—also exhibit patterns of change and adaptability. School districts are creatures of the states and the states, in search of efficiency and economy, have been consolidating districts for more than a century. The number of school districts has dropped from about 125,000 early in the 20th century to fewer than 15,000 today (Snyder, 2012). School district consolidation has given way to local alternative forms of schooling, most particularly charter schools, and to the growing influence of the national government on local schooling through the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 with its emphasis on so-called “high stakes testing” to measure school quality (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). Some big city mayors (New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C.) have led the charge to take over “failing” schools. If anything, over the past decade, school reform has been more dynamic than municipal reform, and we expect that trend to continue.

As the number of local school districts has declined, the number of local single purpose special districts has increased from just over 8,000 fifty years ago to more than 35,000 today. Some special districts, such as the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, are well known, but most are nearly invisible. Most have elected boards of directors, but some have directors appointed by mayors or governors. Many operate on the basis of a mixture of property taxes and fees for service. Single purpose special districts provide services such as water, mass transit, air and sea ports, stadiums and arenas, sewerage, fire protection, cemeteries, gas, and/or electricity. Many of these governmental functions are part of the ordinary portfolio of city services. However, if a particular service, such as a stadium, is designed to serve the residents of several jurisdictions, the boundaries of a stadium authority can solve that problem. Stadium authorities can borrow money using municipal bonding powers, pay those bonds through ticket sales (fees for service), and operate somewhat outside the din of local politics. Special districts tend to invisibility because their politics are muted, and, absent disaster or scandal, they fly under the political radar. Given the growth of special districts, it is easy to conclude that at the time of their creation, there were moments of governmental creativity and adaptability. Once established, however, these jurisdictions tend to become permanent and to stay in the shadows of local government (Burns, 1994).

American counties were once considered the “dark continent of American politics” . Counties are the administrative arms of states, the state’s local political and service delivery jurisdictions, and, increasingly, the street level manifestation of American federalism. Counties operate tax systems, corrections systems, election systems, roads, courts, and vital statistics for their states. The federal government has increasingly used the states as the delivery arm of federal programs; many states have passed those responsibilities on to their counties, particularly in the health (Medicaid) and welfare fields. In many states, the majority of residents of metropolitan areas do not reside in cities but in “unincorporated” areas. So-called urban counties have increasingly become their “cities” providing police, fire, streets, garbage collection, and even utilities. Some urban counties are the lead jurisdiction for coordination, regulation, and negotiation—dealing with problems that cross jurisdiction boundaries such as pollution control, emergency medical services, public communication, and mass transit (Menzel, 1996). While some rural counties are still part of the “dark continent,” many counties in urban areas are some of the most sophisticated and advanced jurisdictions in U.S. local government.

The first thing we learn from this tour of U.S. local government is that it is both highly fragmented and dense or thick. Almost every resident of a city is also a resident of a county and of a school district—three distinct jurisdictions, each with their own politics, elections, taxes, statutes, and regulations. Some Americans are residents of six or seven local government jurisdictions. One can reasonably argue about the quality or effectiveness of local government, and we do, but it is difficult to argue that we do not have enough of it. Indeed there is a long public administration literature on the need to streamline local government and make it lighter and more penetrable. The article by Suzanne Leland and Kurt Thurmeier, “Political and Functional Local Government Consolidation: The Challenges for Core Public Administration Values and Regional Reform,” in this special issue, addresses this important topic. Jurisdictional consolidation, particularly of cities and counties in metropolitan areas has been and continues to be a favorite reform idea, but there are few examples of consolidation. Local political jurisdictions including cities, counties, and special districts resist formal consolidation and so-called functional (e.g., law enforcement and fire protection) consolidation. Once formally established, local government jurisdictions rarely disappear. Rather, they tend to accumulate. Interjurisdictional functional collaboration, rather than formal consolidation, in the form of interlocal agreements, is often a more politically acceptable alternative. And, it appears that there is widespread informal functional cooperation among public administration professionals in metropolitan areas. The city police chiefs and county sheriffs in a particular metropolitan area are often organized, meeting regularly and cooperating in a variety of ways. The same is the case for public works. It would seem that Americans do not prefer single metropolitan government if it threatens the continuation of their city or their school district. However, they appear to expect effective metropolitan governance in the form of functional interjurisdictional cooperation, and at times, collaboration.

Another idea that emanates from looking at local government through a public administration lens is the salience of American federalism, now generally referred to as intergovernmental relations or IGR. Local governments, following the article in this special issue by Robert Agranoff, “Local Governments in Multilevel Systems: Emergent Public Administration Challenges,” are “always framed from above” by state governments and by the national government. As mentioned previously, county governments are in some ways administrative arms of the state and are also delivery agents on behalf of the states for federally funded social programs. Likewise, school districts are “framed from above” by their state and by federal laws and policies, hence, the great disagreements over the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 and now the proposed “common core.” Cities operate within state statues or must have a home rule charter that requires adherence to state statues but with some flexibility in financial affairs and political structure. Finally, not all of the organizations in American IGRs are actually governmental. It is increasingly the case that the final stages of service delivery are done by contractors, either private non-profit organizations or corporation contractors. Consider the insurance companies and medical organizations involved in Medicaid or the prisons operated by the Corrections Corporation of America (just under 100,000 beds in 67 facilities). And so it is that local governments are at the operating level, the “street level,” the place where citizens and residents touch their governments and are touched by them. Local governments are the primary level of applied democratic self-government, the places where the ideals of citizenship meet the realities of place, the families, homes, and neighborhoods where democracy does or does not reside.

In the context of IGR, local governments are understood to be partners operating in “value creating” complex networks often with blurred boundaries among partners. These dynamic networks are built, maintained, and operated by public administrators who manage both the “inside” of their jurisdictions or organizations and the “outside” in complex and dynamic partnerships with other organizations in mutually useful bonds of interdependency. Network arrangements require great managerial skill and the capacity to build the trust that cements network partnerships.

In the complex patterns of fragmentation and density of American local government, many jurisdictions were designed to contain or limit politics. Cities and counties, for example, are thought to be politically different than school districts and single purpose special districts. Schools and special districts tend to the politics of elections, politics ending or at least sharply receding after the ballot box. Following elections, most districts tend to settle into day-to-day operations and service delivery punctuated by monthly board meetings. Cities, depending on their model or structure, range from highly political with city level versions of the separation of powers and checks and balances between mayors and council members, to minimally political in suburbs or smaller rural towns that operate on the council-manager or city management model. Public administration specialists tend to prefer the council-manager model with its efficiencies and contained politics while political scientists and urbanists from other social science disciplines tend to prefer the yeasty competition of city politics and especially the role of high profile mayors with the full range of executive powers: someone to lead and to be held responsible.

Even with these differences, however, there appears to be general agreement that there is a “democratic deficit” in American local government. Robert Putnam (2000) describes Americans as civically disengaged, “bowling alone.” We have a much diminished capacity to be “public,” our capacity to act publically reduced to politics in the hands of professional politicians (Mathews, 1996). American civic life, according to Theda Skocpol, has moved from membership and citizenship to politics and management in what she describes as our much diminished democracy (2003).

Yet another idea that comes from looking at local governments through a public administration lens is that public administration has a long association with this problem; after all, the full name of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, one of the first schools in the field, is the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. In this special issue, Tina Nabatchi’s and Lisa Blomgren Amsler’s article, “Direct Public Engagement in Local Government,” reviews that association, setting out a framework for exploring public engagement, tracing its evolution, and setting out a roadmap for future research and the application of alternative forms of public engagement, all in an effort to reduce the “democratic deficit” in American local government.

Finally, this special issue includes an in-depth consideration of the concepts presented here as they apply to the subject of American local government and disaster preparedness and relief. Amy Donahue, Catherine Eckel, and Rick Wilson in their article, “Ready or Not? How Citizens and Public Officials Perceive Risk and Preparedness,” take on this dilemma. Evidence repeatedly shows that elected officials—mayors, city council members, county commissioners—get much more political credit and electoral support for their efforts to respond to disasters after they happen than they get for preparing for possible future disasters. The differences between local government administration and local government politics in disaster preparedness and relief are not unlike the differences between local government politics and administration in funding future pension fund obligations, maintaining so-called “rainy day funds,” and spending on the maintenance of roads, sidewalks, gutters, sewers, parks, and other infrastructure. Politics tend to be short run, often lasting only a bit longer than the terms of elected officials. Professional public administration tends to be long run. City, county, and district budgets and strategic plans are the battle grounds on which these dilemmas are fought. And there is some evidence that organizations specifically designed for disaster response, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, may be not only ineffective but also authoritative distractions to the real patterns of local collaboration, community building, purposeful work, and generosity that arise in natural responses to disaster (Solnit, 2009). Donahue, Eckel, and Wilson describe why politics usually wins battles with administration in disaster preparedness and response, and spell out the implications for U.S. local government including why that may not be all bad.

There is no such thing as metropolitan government in the United States, but there definitely is metropolitan governance in the United States. There are many examples of American metropolitan governance working in practice (e.g., in Portland, Denver, Dallas, Seattle, Phoenix, Baltimore, and the Minneapolis–St. Paul area). Governance is based on a logic of appropriateness and sense-making rather than rational action. It involves “capable political actors (elected, appointed, NGO, or corporate) who understand how political institutions work and are able to deal effectively with them” (March & Olsen, 1995, p. 28). Governance involves shared narratives and identities and preferences that define what is appropriate, right, desirable, and acceptable, the rules by which citizens and officials are constituted. And effective governance is understood to involve individuals representing governmental jurisdictions, non-governmental organizations, private or business organizations, and civic organizations, in forms of agreed-upon collective action. Participation in a system of governance is voluntary and systems of governance have no fixed borders, which brings us full circle to the rapid dissolution of traditional barriers in local government management and the inevitability of change. ¹

This special issue is jointly funded by the School of Public Affairs and Administration at the University of Kansas, and the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. Both co-editors have long, positive, past affiliations with both universities that have shaped jointly held views concerning the importance of quality local government management. We thank both public affairs schools for their support and generosity. We thank ARPA editors Guy Adams and John Thomas for their foresight in supporting our joint effort, as well our 20 anonymous reviewers. We hope that this special issue is one of many steps taken to encourage quality research and thinking to inform our understanding of the rapidly changing landscape of local government management.