Early Manager Adoptions
Council-Manager Charters
This document is reprinted with permission from "The Manager Plan in Maine" published by the Margaret Chase Smith Center for Public Policy. Copies of the complete book may be obtained by calling the Center at (207) 581-1646.
The first Maine municipality to adopt the manager plan was the City of Auburn in 1917. The council-manager charter was drafted by a citizen charter committee. The charter was submitted to, and passed by, the Maine state legislature as a special act (Chapter 201, Private and Special Acts of the Legislature, 1917). While the charter issue seems to have been somewhat overshadowed by the question of whether or not Maine should approve women's suffrage, the Auburn voters approved the new charter in September, 1917 (Lewiston Evening Journal, 1917).
The new charter supplanted a highly partisan, weak mayor-bicameral council form of government that had been in effect since 1868. Under the old charter, 5 aldermen and 15 councilmen were elected annually by ward, and the mayor was elected at large each year. The mayor was legally responsible for the enforcement of laws and supervision of city affairs, but the council supervised city finances and elected city officers, such as the clerk, the treasurer, the tax collector, the auditor, and the assessors. In effect, the mayor was given little authority over city affairs.
Little is written concerning the major issues in the Auburn charter campaign. One source does state: "Corruption was not the only important issue in Auburn" (Wilson & Crowe, 1962, pp. 13 - 14). Concerning several of the early council-manager charter adoptions, O.C. Hormell, Bowdoin College professor and charter consultant, is reported to have remarked: "In practically every place in Maine (the adoption of the manager plan was a reaction) to the spoilsmen who wanted power" (1962, p.14, parenthetical statement added).
It is probable, however, that Auburn's problems were similar to those documented for other Maine cities that later shifted to the council-manager from the weak mayor-council form. These included:
1) the inability of citizens to fix responsibility for municipal actions,
2) inefficiency and lack of economy in municipal operations,
3) little coordination and control of municipal activities,
4) poor handling of city finances, and
5) general citizen dissatisfaction.
The Auburn council-manager charter assimilated ideas of the municipal reform movement of that day with some features of the prior Auburn charter. Municipal reform ideas which were prevalent at the time included: nonpartisan and at-large elections, the small council and short ballot, lengthened terms for councilors, and a single professional manager who was chosen by and served at the pleasure of the council (Willoughby, 1969, pp. 519-534 and Nolting, 1969, pp. 1-16).
The Auburn charter provided for:
1) the election of a five member council on a non-partisan, ward basis for two-year concurrent terms;
2) a mayor, elected at large for a two year term, who was presiding officer of the council and ceremonial head of government but who was given no administrative duties;
3) council appointment of the manager and other key administrative officials; and
4) a manager chosen "on the basis of his executive and administrative qualifications'' who was administrative head of government.
Features retained from the previous Auburn government included: election of councilors by wards, at-large election of the mayor, and council appointment of key administrative officials.
In a 1940 article, Professor Hormell cited a reason why the ward system was retained:
...the (charter) committee believed that the abolition of that system, with a solid French
Canadian fifth ward would result in inevitable defeat (of the charter) at the popular
referendum (Hormell, 1940, p. 650).
Hormell also discussed problems with the application of the charter. There was an apparent tendency for the separately elected mayor to assume administrative responsibilities legally belonging to the manager. It is interesting to note that this trend has been a chronic problem of the council-manager plan. More recently, many communities outside of Maine have strengthened the office of mayor. Second, council appointment of key administrative officials and confirmation of all other managerial appointments meant that administration was not completely under the manager's control.
The manager was given the difficult duty of supervising a large number of subordinates who were subjected to council appointment or confirmation and might recognize loyalty to an influential councilman more than loyalty to the manager (1940).
Part of the problem may have been alleviated in 1967 when the Auburn charter was revised, giving the manager power to appoint key administrative officials, in some instances with council confirmation, in other instances without.
In 1923, Portland, the oldest and largest city in Maine, became the second city to adopt a council-manager charter. Since 1832, Portland had operated under a weak mayor-council form, much like the previously discussed 19th century Auburn city government except that Portland had a unicameral 12-member board of aldermen, nine members elected by ward and three members elected at large. Wilson and Crowe summarize the Portland council-manager charter campaign as follows:
Portland represented the real old fashioned reform. Here, interested businessmen and
other public spirited citizens formed a group, later called the Committee of One Hundred,
to do something about the corruption and maladministration that characterized the city's
government. The Committee's first attempt to secure a council-manager charter failed in
1921, but the closeness of the local referendum encouraged a second, successful try
(Wilson & Crowe 1962, p. 14).
The Portland council-manager charter drafting process and campaigns for adoption are documented by Professor Edward F. Dow (Dow, 1940). The 1923 campaign may have been the first organized citizen-oriented public information campaign in the state. The key issues concerned economy and efficiency in government, but the campaign attained national notoriety due to active electioneering by the Ku Klux Klan. Apparently, the Klan favored an at-large system of election to dilute the traditional ward based powers of the Catholics, Jews and French Canadians (Huntington, 1969, p. 8). Another reason reported for Klan support of the council-manager charter was antagonism to the incumbent mayor and "gang" who supported an alternative charter revision which would strengthen the mayor's authority and increase the council size. The new charter was adopted by a 56 percent majority of the voters, but a New York Times editorial is reported to have debunked the Klan's role in this election:
The victory consisted on (sic.) being on the side of the majority. Indeed, it was a victory in that public disgust with the Klan didn't go so far as to defeat an excellent plan of city government simply because a lot of hooded noodles gave it their unwanted help (1969).
The Portland council-manager charter drew from both the Model City Charter first published in 1915, and the Auburn charter. Five councilors were elected at-large on a non-partisan basis. The council chair was elected by and from the council and served as presiding officer as well as ceremonial head of government. Innovative provisions establishing a proportional representation system of election and providing for the initiative, the referendum and the recall were included. Because proportional representation involved cumbersome vote tabulation techniques, it was abandoned in 1931 in favor of a plurality system. Initiative and referendum provisions have been repealed from the charter but enacted as an ordinance pursuant to the Constitution of the State of Maine, Article IV, Part 3, Section 21.
Like the Auburn charter, the Portland charter provided that the clerk, solicitor, treasurer, tax collector, auditor and other officers be appointed by council. The manager, however, was empowered to appoint, with the consent of council, the public works commissioner, city electrician, police chief, fire chief, secretary to the overseers of the poor as well as other department heads. In addition, the manager was given authority to appoint other employees upon the recommendation of the department heads.
The major defect in the charter, according to Professors Dow and Hormell, was the absence of departmental integration, particularly the failure to provide an integrated department of finance. This was attributed to the attitude of the charter commission that:
It seemed the part of wisdom to disturb the administrative organization of the city to the smallest extent possible as the citizens are accustomed to its mode of functioning, and the limits of the several departments are now determined with some precision by our customs and habits of thought. The tentative draft of the charter...leaves the existing administrative organization of the city almost entirely intact with the names and functions of all executive officers and boards precisely as before with certain minor exceptions (1940, p. 37).
The first two Maine council-manager charters appear to have had some impact on the content of many other early council-manager charters that were subsequently adopted. Two elements of this apparent influence are identifiable: the Auburn ward council/elected mayor system and the lack of managerial appointing authority in both Auburn and Portland charters. Four council-manager cities, Belfast, Augusta, Gardiner and Hallowell, followed Auburn in providing that councilors be elected by ward and that a mayor be elected at large. In 1969, Belfast revised its charter to provide that council members be nominated by ward but elected at large. More pervasive in Maine council-manager charters is the requirement that the council, not the manager, appoint other municipal officials such as clerks, solicitors, assessors, tax collectors, treasurers, or auditors who are then responsible to the manager, but as a practical matter may also be responsible to the council which appoints them.