04/14/2002

By JAMES NORTHRUP / The Dallas Morning News

I imagine most Dallasites are interested more in good city services than in the posturing of politicians.

We enjoy a form of government where professionals ? not politicians and their appointees ? run the daily operations of the city. The mayor and the other City Council members preside over government the way a board of directors presides over a corporation. They listen to the community and set the policy. Then, management executes it.

When "strong mayors" run cities, political considerations often corrupt the management process. Appointments frequently are made on the basis of political loyalties, not merit. And the role of individual council members is reduced to a rubber stamp.

Would that happen in Dallas? It already has to a certain extent. As mayor, Ron Kirk used his limited powers of appointments to pack council committees with those who supported him, while punishing council members who didn't, including Laura Miller. After being elected, Mayor Miller did the same thing, changing committee chairmanships based more on political loyalties than on experience or merit.

If the mayor ran the city, such politically motivated appointments would extend deep into the management ranks, discouraging qualified professionals from working for the city and encouraging patronage. We don't need that in Dallas. Whatever shortcomings the city manager form of government has, a politicized city management would be far worse.

A "strong mayor" is promoted as being more responsive to all of a city's residents. But the results are just the opposite. The influence of individual council members ? a neighborhood's best voice at City Hall ? would diminish. If they didn't support the mayor, council members and their districts would be ignored or punished, just like those council members who lost their committee chairmanships after the recent mayoral election.

City management's focus should be on delivering services, not embroiling municipal employees in political games. Good managers need good people skills, but they shouldn't have to be professional politicians to keep their jobs.

If a professional manager isn't doing his job, he can be dismissed. That is the City Council's prerogative. When Dallas school trustees needed to fix the system, they brought in a top professional to do it ? Mike Moses. When faced with a management dilemma, the school district didn't abandon professional management in favor of a politician. The City Council should be so wise.

How can the council-manager system fail to live up to its capabilities? There are two ways. When a Grade B city manager hires Grade C staff for Grade D service. Or when individual council members or the mayor meddle with the staff's daily tasks ? and the city manager lets them get away with such interference. In either case, the solution is to have a strong city manager, not replace the management structure with politicians who only would make the situation worse.

Dallas doesn't have to abandon the council-manager system to be a world-class city. Phoenix is larger than Dallas and, with a council-manager form of government, consistently wins top honors as one of the best-managed cities in the world. More than 75 million Americans live in city-manager cities ? including some of America's best: Boulder, Colo., Sacramento, San Antonio and San Jose.

Famous mayors have been cited as examples of how a strong mayor system might work. Yet most of those model mayors are the exception to the rule, even within the city's own experience. New York's Mayor Rudy Giuliani was preceded by an unbroken string of mayoral catastrophes ? all of whom made him look good by comparison. He got rid of many of the patronage jobs that had accumulated from his predecessors and ran the city like a professional manager.

But Dallas' main competition for new households and new businesses isn't New York; it is Arlington, Fort Worth, Irving and Plano ? all strong council-manager cities. That is the standard of service by which Dallas should measure itself. It is a higher standard than any strong mayor ever has achieved.

I have lived in cities with strong mayors, including Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Providence, R.I. None can compare to Dallas. There are several reasons for our success, but the most important is that professional managers ? not political appointees ? run the city's services. Our system in Dallas isn't broken. It just needs to be improved and used as it was intended.

James Northrup is a local investor and community activist.