Commentary: More Questions than Answers…

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12128
• Published date: 01 September 2013
• Author: Bonnie Svrcek
• Date: 01 September 2013

736 Public Administration Review • September | October 2013

Bonnie Svrcek

City of Lynchburg, Virginia

More Questions than Answers…

“ e Adoption and Abandonment of Council-

Manager Government” by Cheon Geun Choi,

Richard C. Feiock, and Jungah Bae uses event

history analysis of 191 cities with populations of

more than 30,000 over a 75-year period (1930–2005)

to isolate adoption and abandonment trends in the

council-manager form of government.

 e authors readily admit that “despite dozens of

empirical studies, we lack a systematic understanding of

these forces over time because previous work has relied

on cross-sectional designs or analysis of change over

short periods.” I am pleased that the authors note that

“this article begins to f‌i ll this lacuna” (emphasis added)

using the aforementioned event history analysis.

Population size, Republican vote, nonwhite population,

and home ownership were identif‌i ed as institutional

preferences, and unemployment rate, manufacturing

establishments, f‌i scal health, and population growth

were used in the methodology to identify sociological

context and the severity of environmental change in a

community. Each of these variables is quantitative in

nature; I of‌f er that there are many more data points,

quantitative and qualitative, that need to be researched

before we land on why communities adopt or abandon

the council-manager form of government.

Nearly 100 years ago, in December 1914, the

City Managers’ Association, the forerunner of the

International City/County Management Association

(ICMA), was formed when eight of the 31 existing

city managers met in Springf‌i eld, Ohio, “to promote

the ef‌f‌i ciency of city managers and municipal work

in general” (according to the ICMA Constitution

adopted at the second annual conference in Dayton,

Ohio, November 1915). Today, the ICMA is a mem-

ber organization of 6,000 professional local govern-

ment managers in the United States.

Only 10 years later, in 1924, the ICMA adopted a

Code of Ethics that today serves as a hallmark for pro-

fessional local government management. In addition,

as former ICMA president Dave Mora has noted in his

ref‌l ections on his career (see http://icma.org/en/icma/

about/anniversary/experience), quality, dedication, and

professionalism are also hallmarks of the profession. I

share these more qualitative elements that are embraced

by members of our profession because, although dif-

f‌i cult to measure, they might add to “f‌i lling the lacuna”

in helping us understand why communities adopt or

abandon the council-manager government.

I think it is important to note that in the past 10 years,

28 communities have adopted the council-manager

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 73, Iss. 5, pp. 736–737. © 2013 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12128.

Bonnie Svrcek has been deputy city

manager for the City of Lynchburg, Virginia,

since 1999. She also currently serves as

president of the International City/County

Management Association. She graduated

from the University of Maryland with a

bachelor’s degree in housing and applied

design, received her master of public

administration degree from the University

of Southern California’s Washington Public

Affairs Center, and most recently completed

the State and Local Government Excellence

Executive Education Program at Harvard’s

Kennedy School of Government.

E-mail: bonnie.svrcek@lynchburgva.gov

Commentary