City manager-style government works better.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Robert O'Neill For The Register-Guard

In his April 25 guest viewpoint, former Congressman Jim Weaver proposed changing the city of Eugene's council-manager structure to a form of government that provides for an elected executive mayor and five-member City Council, `each with jurisdiction over separate departments' and `all of them full time and well paid.'

What Weaver advocates is similar to the commission form of government, an outdated structure employed by only 2 percent of the 7,144 cities in the United States with populations greater than 2,500. Of those 143 cities, only five have populations of 100,000 or greater.

Weaver's primary argument is that the city's current structure restricts elected officials' access to city staff. He sees a powerful mayor and department-head council members as the city's ticket to a `strong, effective city government responsible directly to the citizenry.'

Centralizing city operations under the direct control of elected officials, rather than pro- fessional staff, will not address the political, leadership and administrative challenges facing Eugene. Instead, conveying responsibility for specific areas of operation, such as finance or public safety, to the same people elected to establish city policy and create a vision for the community is an open invitation to favoritism, patronage and subjective decision-making. And at the end of the day, it ignores the contribution of the city manager, a professional with the education, expertise and skills to manage a complex organization.

A fundamental provision of the council-manager form is that the city manager be allowed to exercise the powers and authorities of a chief executive officer, including the hiring, firing and administrative oversight of staff. This autonomy helps ensure that decisions are based on merit, not politics.

We have seen how too much power concentrated in too few hands can be disastrous. In their new book, "The Recurrent Crisis in Corporate Governance," Yale University professor Paul MacAvoy and shareholder advocate Ira Millstein suggest that only separation of the board and management functions will solve the problems of corporate governance.

Many of these same principles - independent directors, a chairman or chairwoman who is not the CEO, a strong commitment to the oversight role of the board, transparency of action and a strong commitment to ethics - are at the core of council-manager government.

More than half of the 40 cities that received a triple-A bond rating as of December 2003 from both Moody's and Standard & Poor's operate under the council-manager form.

Six of the 10 communities recognized in 2004 by the National Civic League with the coveted All-America City award use the same form.

Recently, the Center for Digital Government and the National League of Cities ranked the top 10 cities in four population categories for making the best use of technology to improve operations. Eighty-three percent of the highest-ranked cities use the council-manager form.

Such successes could happen under any form of government. But the council-manager form and alternative provisions, as presented in the National Civic League's Eighth Model City Charter, provide the best approach to ensuring effective political leadership, representation, accountability and results.

While periodic reviews of a city's charter are warranted, I encourage the citizens of Eugene to consider the many benefits their current form of government offers. This highly flexible structure, under which Eugene has operated since 1945, provides for the best of all worlds: strong political leadership; experienced, nonpartisan oversight of the community's administration; and accountability to the community's political leadership. Aren't those the attributes a metropolitan region needs?

Robert O'Neill Jr. is executive director of the International City/County Management Association in Washington, D.C.