I want this post and comment thread to be on the current Pensacola government, not the proposed charter, not strong mayor. No personal attacks or conspiracy plots.
——————–
Pensacola has a unitarian form of government, meaning the power, in theory, is vested in one elected body. There is an administrative staff, but its role is to implement the directives, programs and policies of the council. In other words, the council passes it, the staff gets it done. If the staff fails to do so, it is removed. If the council fails to follow the wishes of the voters, its members aren’t re-elected.
It’s very straight-forward. The council runs the city. Voters can change the council if they aren’t happy and can thereby change how the city is run.
Pensacola city government doesn’t quite operate this way. There are several barriers to this straight-forward governance. Some are actually good, others are not.
The City Council only controls two positions, city attorney and city manager. By law, council members are not to interfere with the city administration.
Separation of council and city staff
The council members are not to deal directly with department heads or city employees, without permission of the city manager. In theory, council member who has a problem with a street in his district calls the city manager not the public works department. In practice, I understand council members do call department heads, which can either listen, ignore the request or complain to the city manager.
This law does buffer the department heads and city workers from politics. The staff, in theory, can operate solely on the basis of how it can best implement the directives from the entire council.
There are two problems though:
1) There is no objective performance evaluation system by the city manager that is made public to the city council on how well a department head is implementing the directives from the entire council. Objective means measurable results— such as pot holes repaired, reduction in response times, increases in program participants, etc.
2) What happens if a department head has an agenda that isn’t aligned with the council? If his/her actions don’t implement the directives of the council, without an objective evaluation of their performance, department heads can become entrenched and can simply wait out leadership changes in the city council.
City Manager and City Attorney Employment
The City Manager and City Attorney, in theory, serve at the whim of the City Council, meaning if the majority so votes, they can be fired. The reality is City Managers and City Attorneys aren’t fired. They hold the positions as long as they wish. And even if they were fired, they have contracts with hefty termination payments.
Removing a city manager or city attorney is nearly impossible for two reasons:
1) There is no objective performance evaluation system in place that would help the council determine if any change is warranted.
2) A council member has no way of knowing if he has five votes to replace the city manager or attorney. The City Manager and City Attorney can lobby individual council members for their jobs, but the council member can’t do the same without violating the Sunshine Laws.
The City Council has opened the hiring process for the City Manager in the past. Tom Bonfield was hired from Temple Terrace. However, the City Attorney has actually been handed from assistant city attorney to assistant city attorney for over 40 years. That doesn’t mean the attorneys—all white, all male— haven’t done good jobs, but an open job search does provide an opportunity for more fresh thinking and more independence.
Council Structure
The structure of the City Council is also a barrier to straight-forward unitarian governance. There are ten council members – with seven single member districts, three at-large – one of which chairs the meetings and is the ceremonial mayor. It is by far the largest council of any Florida city with similar population size. And its size greatly dilutes the power of any one member.
In a five-member council, a member doesn’t have to share the mic with nine other people. He has time to express his ideas and ask questions. He only has to convince two other people, not five, to win a vote. The City Manager must listen and keep all the members informed – because it takes only three to remove him. One council member speaking out in a five-member board has to be taken seriously. One from a ten-member board speaking out can be dismissed as disgruntled.
The City Council doesn’t initiate policies and programs—-let me be fair, rarely does it do. It can direct staff to study an issue and come back with a recommendation – but the council can’t talk with the staff members about what they will recommend, only the city manager.
Nearly all recommendations come from the city manager and his staff. The council is rarely given more than one option on an issue. There is rarely an alternative offered – the council usually approves the one recommendation or not. Substantial amendments are rare. And the size of the council makes discussions of alternatives difficult. City Manager and staff can lobby individual council members for their recommendations, but the alternatives suggested by the council can only be discussed in open meeting.
This gives a huge advantage to staff and makes a council member reluctant to suggest a plan or program without the support of the city manager and staff. They can kill an idea before it ever gets mentioned at a council meeting.
Individual council members can’t put items on the agenda. If they are on the appropriate committee, they can make a motion to add something, but must have the votes to add it. The City Manager has significant control over all council agendas. The committee chairs can add items, but the individual council members can not without the votes.
This limited access to the council agendas is unique to Pensacola. In talking to other councils from other cities, individual members can have anything placed on the agenda for discussion. The Escambia County Commissioners are allowed to add agenda items.
Power of the Voter
The voter has three outlets to impact how he is governed:
1) Votes for his district representative and hopes that council member can persuade five other council members and the city manager to govern better and implement the programs and directives important to that voter.
2) Tries to elect a slate of four council members – his district, two at-larger members and the mayor. Slates are difficult politically because it is hard to find four like-minded candidates willing to run on one platform. Even then, the four will have to persuade two other council members and the city manager to govern better and implement the programs and directives important to that voter.
3) Waits for a specific vote that opposes the initiative or program that he wants and then lead a petition drive, get nearly 6,000 signatures and win a referendum vote. However if there is no vote on the issue, then the voter can’t do a petition drive.
Voters can not change their government. If they want a more conservative or more progressive government, they can not elect enough people to change it. The city manager and his staff not only are buffered from the politics of the council, but also from the power of the voters. The result is the voter is dependent on the city manager and his staff doing a good job and listening to his concerns. If they don’t listen, the voters has little recourse—either move away or wait for the city manager to do so.
How important is the voter? If the city staff is competent and does a good job of providing the basic services of police, fire, sanitation and roads, the voter’s wishes may not be important. It is only when the city steps outside of these services are there issues – airport, port, downtown redevelopment, poverty, libraries, disparity in purchasing programs, job creation– then there is controversy.
Or as one Pensacola resident told me, Pensacola government works until you have a problem.