Sunday, May 02, 1999
Would city get mayor or monster?
Issue 4 could make people skills vital
BY HOWARD WILKINSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
What kind of mayor will Cincinnati get if city voters go to the polls Tuesday and pass Issue 4, the charter amendment for direct election of a mayor?
For one thing, they will get a more powerful mayor than they have had since the council-manager form of government was created more than 70 years ago.
They will, after the 2001 election, have a mayor who can initiate the hiring and firing of the city manager, with council consent; a mayor who can veto council legisla tion, subject to an override by six council members; and a mayor who will not be a member of council but will nonetheless be able to appoint the the vice mayor and all chairmen of council committees.
The mayor now can do none of those things. He or she, under the current system, is just another member of council.
Proponents of Issue 4 say what the city will get is a mayor who has to run and win on a specific, issue-driven platform and one who will then have the tools to carry out that agenda.
Opponents say the city could get that or it could get a mayor who would either run roughshod over a weakened city council or a mayor who couldn't get along with either the council or the city manager.
“The result could be chaos,” said former Cincinnati Mayor David Mann, a Democrat who held that office from 1980 to 1982 and in 1990-91.
“When you give the mayor that much power, you run the risk of electing some unstable, out-of-control person who would end up abusing the power,” said Mr. Mann, a lawyer in private practice. “That person can do less harm when the powers of the office are less.”
But the people backing Issue 4 say that is unlikely to happen — and, if it does, voters can remove a rogue mayor at the next election.
Nor, they say, will a mayor be able to favor one constituency or special-interest group at the expense of all others.
“If there is a perceived preference on the part of the mayor for any one group, the other groups can retaliate at the next election,” said former Ohio House Majority Leader William Mallory Sr., an Issue 4 supporter.
The only mayor Cincinnati has known for the last six years is Democrat Roxanne Qualls, who has been the top vote-getter in the last three council elections and is now an ardent supporter of Issue 4.
Since becoming mayor in December 1993, Ms. Qualls has had times when she could put together a majority of council for her legislative initiatives, but she has just as often been on the outs, with a coalition of Republicans and some of Ms. Qualls' fellow Democrats dominating council.
In December 1997, a coalition of Democrats and Republicans reorganized council, stripping her of the “committee of the whole” she had created and taking away from her the job of assigning new legislation to committees.
If Issue 4 is passed, Ms. Qualls said, it will be in the interest of both the mayor and council to get along.
“Yes, the mayor would have more authority, but that mayor will still have to have five votes on council to get anything done,” Ms. Qualls said.
A directly elected mayor, she said, would clearly be the one set ting the agenda for the city.
“If people think that under the system we have now council is setting direction for the city, they're fooling themselves,” Ms. Qualls said. “What you have is nine people going nine different directions.”
If a mayor is elected directly after running on a specific platform, Ms. Qualls said, “it ceases to be a personal agenda when you are elected by all the people.”
Issue 4, she said, “allows the mayor to transcend the personal and go out and accomplish what the people have told you they want done.”
Cincinnati's term limits law prevents Ms. Qualls from running for re-election this year. But she could run for mayor under the new system in 2001 if it is passed by voters Tuesday.
“Right now, I am looking for a job,” Ms. Qualls said. “If I find a job I enjoy, I'm going to keep it. Otherwise, who knows?”
But she believes strongly that being mayor under the Issue 4 system would give her — or anybody else — many more tools to get things done than the present system has given her over the past six years.
“It is not just the mayor's relationship with council that is important, but with the city bureaucracy,” Ms. Qualls said. “This city has an entrenched bureaucracy. Change is very difficult. But if you had a mayor elected on a specific program, to carry out a specific agenda, the message would filter down through the bureaucracy. Everything would change.”
But not necessarily for the better, Mr. Mann said.
Whether a mayor elected under an Issue 4 system, with Issue 4 powers, ends up abusing those powers depends on what kind of person the people elect, Mr. Mann said.
“In the end,” he said, “it has a lot more to do with the kind of people we elect than what kind of system we elect them under.”
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