Cincinnati moved in the last five years to strengthen the mayor's powers and re-invent the city's development apparatus, but it's an open question whether the central city and metro area have what it takes to do great development and make this region boom.

Leaders here are all over the map on further election reforms. Multiple campaigns to give even more power to Cincinnati's mayor stalled this year, but several Election Reform Commission members and the NAACP still expect to float a consensus plan shortly after November's elections. It most likely will call for a chief executive mayor and nine district seats on council. A petition drive could follow to put those changes on the ballot in the spring or fall of 2005.

Others scoff at such proposed power shifts as irrelevant, and argue if we hope to compete against rival cities and lift Greater Cincinnati to the next level, we ought to be working instead on metro-wide development pacts and collaborations.

A stronger mayor

Certainly Cincinnati and Hamilton County should make broader use of such powerful development tools as the Port Authority. That's a top recommendation of the International Economic Development Council's report released just this week.

What do you think?

• Would you favor a chief executive mayor for Cincinnati? • Would you favor a council elected from nine neighborhood districts? • What development would you like to see here that would appeal to young professionals and diverse ethnic groups? • Should Cincinnati and surrounding communities consolidate some services to save taxpayer dollars and compete better with other metro areas? Send your responses to Great Cities, letters@enquirer.com; or mail to Enquirer Editorial Page, 312 Elm St., Cincinnati, OH 45202; fax (513) 768-8610.

But a stronger port wouldn't necessarily make Charlie Luken or Cincinnati's next mayor a stronger executive able to negotiate development deals or fix the dysfunctional council-manager relationship. As Luken put it, "there is not a great deal of oomph to this position."

Mayors of most successful cities, including Indianapolis, Louisville and Columbus, are CEO-type mayors. In progressive cities there is no uncertainty about whom you need to see to do major development, and that clarity can translate into more jobs, a growing tax base and new city revenue.

Unless cities create incentives for private business to invest in revenue-producing development such as housing, retail and high-tech jobs, they won't have the new money to rebuild neighborhoods and downtown. And you can't build a great metro without a strong central city.

Cincinnati needs a stronger mayor. But the debate still rages how to deliver it, and whether the current system, which just took effect in 2001, has been fairly tested.

A January 2004 survey found Cincinnati voters overwhelmingly favored giving the mayor more authority to get things done and making him more accountable to voters. They sharply split over who should be most responsible for actually running the government - mayor, city manager or council.

Voters also split over whether council members should be elected from neighborhood districts instead of, as they are now, as at-large, citywide candidates.

Council districts

The NAACP supports a stronger mayor only if coupled with a council district system. "You can't be a great city without district representation," says NAACP president Dr. Calvert Smith. "A great city means all voices represented at the legislative table. With district representation, development would be more equitable throughout the city. Good balance is what we need."

Some wind dropped out of that district argument's sails when African-Americans won four of nine council seats in the last election. District advocates argue an executive mayor and districts would relieve the city manager (renamed chief administrative officer) from reporting to 10 bosses and would make council members less likely to micromanage city operations.

Last month, Councilman Christopher Smitherman skirted City Manager Valerie Lemmie and wrote directly to the fire chief to urge a bigger fire budget, at a time when Lemmie was instructing all her department heads to stop overspending. Lemmie had to fire off a letter explaining to Charterite Smitherman how the Charter-city manager government is supposed to work.

Opponents of districts fear it will further balkanize the city, and argue that, yes, your district councilman would represent your neighborhood to get your potholes fixed, but he would be unlikely to worry about all of the city's potholes.

Former Mayor Arn Bortz, a developer and Charterite, thinks an all-district council system and a mayor-appointed administrator are terrible ideas. "It would de-professionalize and politicize the administration," he said. He would rather see civil service reform, which he laments is no longer merit-based, and more consolidation of city-county services.

Indianapolis, Louisville and Columbus are further along than Cincinnati in consolidating city-county services to save money and compete for economic growth. "It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition," Bortz said. "You take the path of least resistance, merging services such as parks, highway departments, building departments."

Competitive disadvantage

Cincinnati's manager form of government was designed in the 1920s to prevent boss-style corruption. Cincinnati attorney Don Mooney, who chaired the Election Reform Commission, thinks the current non-executive mayor system puts Cincinnati at a competitive disadvantage against other cities.

"It's hard to play catch-up with a system mostly designed to prevent things from happening," Mooney said. He thinks the mayor - who now merely emcees council, can't vote and is regularly insulted by protesters - ought to welcome being freed from legislative duties to run the city full-time.

The two declared candidates for mayor, Ohio state Sen. Mark Mallory and Councilman David Pepper, both say they want to see what someone else can do with the directly elected mayor system first before pronouncing it a failure. As for districts, Mallory cited the recent dispute over whether the English Woods housing project should be demolished as an example of such a system's weakness: If only one council member represented that district, why would anyone else on a district-based council care?

Pepper, who has visited Chicago, Portland, Ore., and other cities for comparison, worries Cincinnati doesn't have the development staff to do what the best cities are doing. He estimates the staffs of Cincinnati's port authority, City Hall's "strike force" and the private Cincinnati Center City Development Corp. (3CDC) combined would only equal about one-20th of Portland Development Commission's 200 professionals. He says Cincinnati's new development director Chad Munitz "was not supposed to be a lone ranger."

3CDC chief executive Stephen Leeper reports that Munitz and the port authority have been "intimately involved" in all three of 3CDC's major projects - the Fountain Square, Washington Park and riverfront Banks "precincts."

3CDC is a great addition to Cincinnati's development resources. "We're all working together to improve the development delivery system," Leeper said, "but it's too early to tell whether that system has been improved." He thinks it can be a "well-oiled machine," but much will depend on how well projects are coordinated between city, county and the port. Leeper also thinks Hamilton County's commissioners are "on the right track" in pushing for a strategic countywide development plan.

Broader regional approach

Fifth Third Bank chief executive George Schaefer Jr. co-chaired with City Manager Lemmie the Economic Development Task Force that led to City Hall's new one-stop permit shop, the development "strike force" and other reforms. He favors a stronger mayor.

"It's always deemed better to have more power vested in a central figure," Schaefer said. "It makes the negotiating process more straightforward rather than negotiating with nine people."

The task force sought to make the port authority flexible enough that it could do development countywide. But as presently structured, the port had to get special permission from Cincinnati and Hamilton County just to help with Cincinnati Mills' mall reconstruction.

Heimlich's view

County Commissioner Phil Heimlich favors giving the port eminent domain powers but not taxing authority. The commissioners will push ahead with the International Economic Development Council's recommended strategic growth plan for the county.

A former Cincinnati councilman, Heimlich favors a stronger mayor. "No one knew who was in charge," he said. "There's got to be a place where the buck stops." He also is convinced there is a need for some mergers of city-county services here if we are going to compete with with other regions.

Indianapolis Mayor Bart Peterson has just launched a second round of city-county service consolidations in his community, the first since the metro area's 1970 Unigov merger. He put together a nine-county non-compete pact governed by rules to keep them from bidding to steal each other's companies and jobs. Mayor Jerry Abramson finessed Louisville's city-county merger. Akron has worked out an area tax-sharing pact for bringing in new businesses.

Northern Kentucky success

Northern Kentucky's Tri-Ed development corporation has shown how productive a united three-county development strategy can be, and Tri-Ed's original chief, Jim West, just returned to head Dearborn County's development initiative.

The days of laissez-faire are gone. Wannabe great cities are all trying to upgrade their delivery systems. It will take strong leadership here to generate new revenue and coordinate development efforts that can put Cincinnati, Hamilton County and all 2 million people in the metro area on track toward becoming a "great city."