Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

Congratulations to the winners of Tuesday’s election and thanks to all the candidates who ran. A campaign is a great opportunity to hear ideas from all parts of our community, and good ideas should survive an election even if candidates who have voiced them don’t.

A bad idea we should bury is that the Haines Borough Mayor “isn’t intended to do much.” Assembly candidate and former Mayor Mike Case said that in last week’s CVN, and others have been saying as much since the Haines Borough adopted a “manager” form of government in 2002.

This notion of Mayor as figurehead perhaps stems from a misunderstanding of the differences between a “strong mayor” and “manager” form of government. Under a “strong-mayor” style of government, the Mayor hires employees, including an administrator, and supervises them. Under a manager form of government, a professional manager oversees staff, including hiring and firing of most employees.

Local governments historically were organized under strong mayors but the manager-led model has gained ground because too many mayors used their power as a rewards system for their cronies; people who helped the Mayor get and stay elected got good-paying jobs in the government. Often, this arrangement didn’t bode well for the services that those people were supposed to deliver, as cronies figured their only real job was to help the Mayor win elections.

Also, mayors weren’t always the best at handling personnel.

When the City of Haines and Haines Borough merged in 2002, the voters endorsed a switch from strong Mayor to a manager form of government.

But there’s nothing in our manager form of government that intends that a Mayor be weak or not do much.

The Mayor is the most powerful elected official of the borough, holding executive authority under borough code to represent the community, to preside at assembly meetings (including setting meeting agendas), and to vote in the event of a tie vote of assembly members. The Mayor also is granted the voters’ highest trust in the form of a veto – the power to single-handedly overturn assembly decisions.

Further, the Mayor is the borough’s only elected official who gets an office in city hall, as well as a significant salary – $15,000 per year. (Assembly members get paid the equivalent of about $3,000 per year.) Having an office in city hall is important because the Mayor is the only person serving in the government administration building who answers directly to voters.

That’s an important distinction. Government workers can keep their jobs without geting much done. Not so for mayors. When the public’s business goes awry or goes undone, the Mayor – who citizens rightly look to as the community’s chief – tends to get voted out of office. A Mayor interested in reelection will represent citizens to staff and serve as a watchdog of citizen interests inside city hall, including making sure the public’s work gets done.

Ideally, the Mayor also serves as a kind of partner to the manager and staff. Professional managers are often outsiders, hired for their administrative and personnel skills and their objectivity, all critical to getting things done. What managers often can’t know, and what good mayors should provide, is the knowledge of how things get done within the perameters of community history, politics, and other localized factors.

For many of the same reasons, it’s critical for the Mayor to participate during assembly deliberation, to help lead discussion, to ensure all citizen views are represented and to serve as a “seventh brain” at the table, raising relevant or overlooked points.

Within this context, think of government as a machine for completing the town’s business. The assembly directs the machine. The manager and staff are the machine’s gears. The Mayor is the oil, allowing the gears to turn with minimal friction. In a small town rife with personal politics and second-guessing, a mayor’s participation, knowledge and social skills are critical.

Haines needs an active, involved Mayor who intends to do a lot, including to help guide the community forward. Anything less is a disservice to the position and to our town.

- Tom Morphet