At a news conference outlining her first 100 days in office, Mayor Stephanie Terry spoke of the importance of appointing strong department heads.
“These are important roles,” she said to the gathered media.
“ And so we want to do our due diligence to ensure that we have the right people and that we've fully vetted … which I think will be game changers for how we move forward as a city.”
Terry went on to replace nearly all the forward-facing department heads, with a new police and fire chief, a new deputy mayor, water and sewer utility director, public relations professional and others.
Overall she made about 20 appointments — some were incumbents — others were outsiders. Recently Terry appointed Sarah Dauer to replace longtime city attorney Marco DeLucio.
While assisted by a transition team, Terry made the final calls.
This is because Indiana is a “strong mayor” state, giving much of the administrative and executive power to the mayor.
Terry and every other mayor in the State of Indiana has this ability — to hire and replace department heads when they take office. It’s the same in Illinois but not most of Michigan, Kentucky or Ohio — at least not entirely.
“The mayor has an opportunity to really mold and shape the city, and to help it to reach full potential,” said Adrian Brooks, a member of Stephanie Terry’s transition team which assisted in this hiring and replacing effort.
This team was assembled shortly after she was elected.
“I know when Mayor Winnecke was mayor-elect, and we had his transition the first time, there were interview teams, and they interviewed candidates for all the different departments,” said former Deputy Mayor Steve Schaefer, who served throughout the Lloyd Winnecke administration.
He’s moved onto the private sector replaced by Lindsay Lacosto.
While this is often called a “strong mayor” form of government, others are called “weak Mayor” cities. Michigan cities and villages tend to use city managers for administrative duties in a “manager-council” form of government, or “weak mayor.”
Bob Jones was co-chair of the transition team.
“In a city manager government, they do all of the selections, and the mayor is more of a titular head. And it's not even a full time job.”
These mayors are voting members of the city council or the city commission with no administrative power. Ohio and Kentucky have a mix of both. Columbus, Ohio, for example, has a strong mayor system.
Henderson Kentucky is a manager-commission system. William “Buzzy” Newman was appointed by the city commission to handle day-to-day operations.
Some larger, older Kentucky cities like Louisville have a “strong manager” system instead.
Matt Hanka is professor of political science at University of Southern Indiana.
“The strong mayor system, more authority is given to the mayor over city functions over the bureaucracy," he said. "More budget authority is given to the mayor. Checks and balances still exists, you still have a council that must have confirmed appointments to the mayor pass a budget and those things.”
He said a “strong mayor” can provide a unified vision for the city.
“If you have a weak mayor, where you're letting legislators have more control, you do lack a clear policy direction, that there is something beneficial of having a unitary executive,” he said.
“Alexander Hamilton, when framing this constitution of ours, believed in the power of a unitary executive. And I think you can apply that to local government, that having a strong mayor system with a strong executive, albeit with having appropriate checks and balances.”
In the case of Evansville, the city council is the separate body that can check the mayor — override her vetoes and decline to grant her office funds.
In a manager-council form of government, the manager tends to be hired by a committee
“So they come in, and they don't have that knowledge and passion for the community that a Mayor Terry or mayor Winnecke had, who grew up here," Jones said. "City managers, they're hired guns, basically.”
William “Buzzy” Newman of Henderson actually agrees that this could be a problem. He said a hiring process of hopefully a local individual is very important.
But under a city manager, Henderson is experiencing robust growth and seeing new large employers like Pratt Industries Paper Mill.
“I think in the case of Henderson, if you look at its history, the last two city managers that have been employed are local, homegrown people," he said. "They had a vested interest in the community. And I can say over the history of time, the ones that have been brought in from the outside, didn't last long. And I think the longest tenured outsider that came in was probably four years.”
Newman said a strong cooperative relationship between the city council or city commission and the city manager can also decide how effective a city manager is.
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