“This is a crisis. This is an example that our structure is broken.”
Councilman Chris Smitherman
Cincinnati City Manager Harry Black got philosophical last week when asked to describe his relationship with Mayor John Cranley. “It’s like two artists trying to paint a painting,” he said. “They may see things differently.” If City Hall is the canvas in this scenario, it’s safe to say the two guys with paint brushes are making a mess. They don’t like each other, don’t work well together and don’t share a vision for the city they serve. It’s as if abstract American painter Jackson Pollock and French impressionist Claude Monet were trying to paint the same portrait at the same time.
Yet Black and Cranley may be stuck with each other for a while — and the city with them — because Cincinnati’s unusual form of government offers no easy way out of this lousy relationship.
The city’s charter is built around the premise that local government should have two power centers, one revolving around the mayor and one around the city manager. Together, they’re supposed to lead the city.
The structure works fine if the mayor and city manager get along, but it can fall apart if they don’t.
And lately, they really don’t.
“This is a crisis,” said Councilman Christopher Smitherman, a frequent Cranley ally who wants to change the charter. “This is an example that our structure is broken.”
Two leaders share power
Smitherman and others say the deep flaws they see in the city’s charter went mostly unnoticed for years because mayors and city managers have mostly played nice with one another since voters approved the current structure in 1999.
Even those who pushed for change almost two decades ago say the system they settled on is far from ideal. It’s a compromise, they say, between those who favored keeping a strong city manager and those who wanted a strong mayor.
“We should have one person in charge and everyone knows who’s responsible for success or failure,” said Chip Gerhardt, a Republican who was involved in the last revision of the charter.
“I think we’re watching now the result of our unique form of government and an unfortunate situation that’s occurring at City Hall,” said Gerhardt, a lobbyist and member of the Hamilton County Board of Elections. “Our form of government allows this kind of thing to happen.”
So how did Cincinnati end up with this hybrid system? The beginning of the answer goes back more than 100 years, when the city was run by George Cox, an old-school city boss in the mold of New York’s William Tweed. At the start of the 20th century, no one got elected in Cincinnati without the blessing of Boss Cox, a Republican saloon owner who bought votes and plundered city coffers.
Progressives eventually stopped his political machine and installed a new form of government with a strong city manager appointed by City Council. The idea was to keep politics out of the day-to-day operation of city government.
For the most part, it worked. The city cleaned up corruption and was recognized nationwide for good government.
But times changed and some grew concerned about the distance between an unelected officeholder and voters. With the old city bosses long gone, they argued it was time for an elected mayor to be chief executive.
Gerhardt and a dozen other young up-and-comers were at the forefront of that effort in the late 1990s. They formed Build Cincinnati and proposed a massive overhaul: a strong mayor with a City Council elected from districts, rather than citywide.
When that didn’t win enough support, they compromised. The result was a stronger mayor, rather than a true “strong mayor,” who would work alongside the city manager.
The mayor now has his foot in both the executive and legislative branches of city government. He sets council’s agenda, holds limited veto power over council actions and hires a city manager, subject to council approval.
But the city manager still has final say on hiring and firing department heads, administrative policy and running city operations. And he can’t be fired or bought out of his contract unless the mayor and five of the nine council members agree to do it.
If that sounds like a recipe for potential conflict, ask Cranley and Black how it’s working out.
“How we elect the mayor and council contributes greatly to the problems we’re having now,” said Tyrone Yates, a Hamilton County Municipal Court judge and former councilman who opposed the changes in 1999. “It makes all of their jobs more difficult, more stressful and more complicated than it needs to be.”
No movement to change
A task force took a stab at recommending changes a few years ago, but nothing came of it. The group’s biggest suggestion was to make the city manager report directly to the mayor.
“We should have a more pure form of government,” said Alex Linser, a Democrat who worked on the task force. Linser, Hamilton County Commissioner Denise Driehaus’ chief of staff, wouldn’t comment on the spat between Cranley and Black, but said it shows the weakness of the current system.
“It creates these stalemates,” he said.
In some ways, though, the stalemate is exactly what’s supposed to happen in the current system if personalities or politics get in the way. It’s not a bad thing, some say, when neither the mayor nor city manager can simply force out the other because they don’t like each other.
Former City Manager Gerald Newfarmer said the system has its problems, but the old structure wasn’t perfect, either. He saw firsthand how the lack of strong political leadership allowed council members to argue to the point of paralysis on big issues.
He supported the charter adopted in 1999 because it kept a strong city manager while giving council a political leader who could help get things done. That’s how it was supposed to work, anyway.
“There’s no right way to do it,” said Newfarmer, who now runs a consulting firm that advises local governments nationwide on best practices. “What is required is that people of goodwill make the system work well.”
These days, though, goodwill is in short supply at City Hall. Cranley has publicly called for Black’s dismissal and Black has said he’s not going anywhere — at least not without 18 months’ severance. And that compromise doesn’t currently have support from a majority of council.
So for now, Cranley and Black will keep struggling to coexist, like two artists sharing a canvas.
No one is optimistic about how their work will turn out. When asked about the state of his relationship with Black last week, Cranley shook his head.
“This is as depressing as hell,” he said.
Reporter Sharon Coolidge contributed.
“This is a crisis. This is an example that our structure is broken.”
Councilman Chris Smitherman
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