[CGC] Interesting post from a Ridgely blog (toblog)

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Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Preserving The Republic One Town At A Time

"You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some
of the time, but you can not fool all the people all of the time." Abraham
Lincoln

Most of us who are involved in small town government are volunteers or are
paid only a token amount for our services. We are either elected or
appointed to our boards, councils or commissions. We have families and
jobs and are seldom political scientists or professional public servants.
Not being professionals puts us at a decided disadvantage when dealing
with the ever growing power of town managers over our communities. It is
important to remember that it is the elected town government which employs
the town manager. Increasingly, however, town managers seem to ignore this
fact and act as if this arrangement was the other way around. The growth
of the role of the non-resident and unelected town manager has led to many
conflicts as citizens fight to keep control of their town's destiny.

Most town managers are itinerant moving from town to town over the course
of their careers. This profession has one of the highest turnover rates of
any occupation. There are many reasons for this. Being a professional,
town managers often quickly assume an attitude of thinking that they know
what's best for their employer's town. Such an attitude inevitably leads
them to indulge in all kinds of Machiavellian maneuvers to manipulate
various members of the community to achieve their goals. After a few years
of this, enough enemies will have been made so that the manager becomes an
election issue and is then sent packing.

A second reason for the high turnover is the fact that many small towns
are governed by charters that never envisioned the need for town managers.
Such charters don't even mention the position and are full of ambiguities
that allow for all kinds of mischief. No party clearly knows what is
expected of the other. Often, these charters provide for no elected mayor
or long term commission president to counter the machinations of a
manager. The town where I live, for example, rotates its commission
president yearly, making management of the town manager difficult at best.
Again, over time, ill will builds up and the manager faces the risks of
growing citizen hostility.

The third reason for the instability of the position is the fact that our
own American political culture is changing. Many citizens have lost their
political self respect and ability to act as sovereign decision makers.
Our society is run more and more on a bureaucratized or corporate model
with less opportunities for the development of these traditional
citizenship characteristics. People are elected to office unprepared to
govern. They act as if they are serving on a charity board instead of a
real flesh and blood political entity. Once again, after a few years,
these folks wake up, assert themselves and it's off to the hinterlands for
the town manager. This constant turnover doesn't benefit any one. The
towns suffer from inconsistent management and town managers suffer from
unemployment.

Let me retrofit an old saying here. "town managers, you can't live with
them and you can't live without them". For our citizen volunteers charged
with governing our towns, their job is no small matter. We need the town
manager's expertise. Without them, we will find ourselves rudely awoken
one morning by our fellow citizens, ready to lynch us because the waste
water treatment plant is overflowing and their toilets won't flush. There
is no question that we need these policy wonks. However, we are the ones
who know what is best for our towns and set the direction of the course
where we want to take our towns. We must make it absolutely clear that we
are in charge. Failure to do so leads to unbalanced budgets, higher taxes
and water bills and excessive ugly development. These are problems
concerning the town's quality of life which our elected resident
legislators must be attuned to. They are the kind of problems that get
little attention from a non-resident and unelected town manager. This
creates the sad opportunity for a town government to morph into the
strange proposition of being (to borrow and retrofit another old saying) "
a government by and for the employees". Such a proposition gets expensive
and the need for tax revenues will be ever growing. It's here that schemes
including eminent domain abuse to raise more tax revenues raise their ugly
head. In this situation, New London, Connecticut, the pioneer of eminent
domain abuse is only right up the road. What's a concerned citizen to do?

First, the town manager should be a stakeholder in the community. They
should be required to live in the town they will serve as a citizen and
taxpayer. This doesn't mean renting an apartment to use a few nights a
week. It means residency plain and simple which must be written into a
contract and clearly understood before being hired. Then, residency must
be enforced. The negligence of elected officials to carry through on this
first step is setting the town manager up for failure. A potentially
successful town manager could be wasted if allowed to ignore this
important step. A strong correlation seems to exist between town manager
residency and an absence of autocratic actions.

Elected officials must make it clear to the manager that they haven't
hired a municipal union leader (sorry grandpa). The town manager is
management and works for the elected officials serving the taxpaying town
residents. This isn't to advocate not paying employees what they are
worth. You won't, for example, be able to keep a police force in a small
town with the state and county constantly trying to recruit your recruits
with promises of more money. It is, however, about the loyalty of the town
manager to the elected officials who hired him. Too often town managers
view the employees as their first constituency. If the manager has somehow
avoided step one and not really moved to town, what does it matter if
requests for salaries and benefits for staff will far exceed the town
taxpayer's median income? It's not money out of his pocket.

Development and growth for the sake of raising enough tax dollars to
maintain an ever increasing payroll destroys towns. The town manager's
bottom line is often in conflict with the town resident's interest in
maintaining their quality of life. When a choice must be made between
revenues or quality of life issues, the manager frequently favors the
first. This is particularly true if he isn't a town resident. Great plans
emphasizing "smart growth" and "traditional neighborhood development" will
all fall by the wayside in an economic crunch. It is at this juncture that
the mettle of elected officials and town planning commissions will really
be tested.

Certain citizens drive autocratic town managers nuts. They are usually the
better educated activist types and they overwhelmingly make up a town's
volunteer commissions. These are the natural enemy for autocratic town
managers because they also think they know something about how their town
should be run. They also can still think and act like old fashioned
American citizens. Usually they aren't of one political persuasion. One of
my favorite towns has an interesting coalition including Greens and
Paleo-Conservatives. As long as national issues are avoided, they work
well together trying to preserve their town from what Russell Kirk termed
"the enemies of the permanent things".

If your town manager is having activist troubles, expect him to exploit
resentment of the activist group. Good old fashion class war works for a
time. Because many of the activists are better off and new arrivals, it's
not hard to fan the flames of resentment among old timers of lesser means.
However, once the water bills and taxes start to rise because of town
manager policies, all will reunite in opposition to their common
oppressor.

Town manager misuse of the town council executive session (which is
basically a secret meeting) is a serious problem. Most states allow this
for personnel reasons or talking to the town attorney about litigation.
Unfortunately, it's often abused. Here the town manager strikes out at
dissidents or even elected officials threatening them or accusing them of
just about anything. Yes, anything, and the elected officials can't go
public about this tactic or risk dismissal through their own ethics board.
Usually, publicity aids the elected officials but now they must remain
silent. Only when the town manager puts his "anything" into action can a
resistance take form. Those he has targeted will have no need to restrain
themselves at this point because the consequences of the secret agenda
will have made their impact. The result is outrage from the community.

Most of us don't want any of the above to happen. To start with, elected
officials ought to start acting like they understand the power that they
exercise on behalf of their constituents. Then, there are the ways to
address the problem of inadequate old town charters which fail to address
the role of the town manager. Ambiguity must be banished from these
documents. A strong and consistent council presidency or mayor commission
type of government must be established. This is absolutely essential to
manage the town manager. It's a classic check and balance type of
arrangement that can work well.

Those who should serve on a charter change commission need know something
about government and should be recruited from the various volunteer boards
and commissions serving the town. This should also include former
commission members as well as resident business people, clergy, volunteer
firemen and the town attorney. To be representative of all the town, it
probably needs to be at least as large as twelve people. The commission
needs people with a strong sense of their role as American citizens. We
need people who understand ordered liberty and checks and balances to the
concentration of power.

Charter change is not the panacea for all of the problems towns have with
their town managers. It's possible that a completely spineless mayor could
be elected who actually sees nothing wrong with schemes for over
development or using eminent domain to fatten tax rolls to cover
overspending. However, in such cases,the citizen has a recourse through
the ballot box. At least elected officials have records that can be made
campaign issues. It's even possible for a charter to have a town manager
who is an elected official too. Once again, the recourse to the ballot box
provides a proper check to abuse.

Benjamin Franklin's observation at the conclusion of the Constitutional
convention applies here. When asked what had been accomplished, he replied
that: "You have a republic, if you can keep it". The history of republics
is littered with failures from Rome to Weimar. All too often, it is the
citizens themselves through their apathy, fear, or lack of knowledge, that
allow the abrogation of their rights. We need to get to work here in our
small towns to "keep" alive our part of this republic.

Posted by Toby Gearhart at 12:04 PM