The high turnover rate in the Haines Borough manager’s position doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with the people who live here.
There’s a larger possibility that the problem is structural and not personal. After all, both “liberal” and “conservative” assemblies have fired managers for a range of reasons and the people on those assemblies couldn’t have all been mean-spirited, dysfunctional axe-hurlers.
Speak with members of the assemblies who’ve terminated managers and you’ll find many, if not most, firings boil down to this: Without strict supervision, managers tend to go off on the their own. When assemblies tire of reining them in, they’re fired.
As I’ve explained in previous essays on this site, the assembly is usually at least partly to blame for these breakdowns. Each of the six assembly “bosses” of the manager has a different relationship with the manager and a different perspective on the manager’s performance. Bringing them to agreement is difficult, as are manager evaluations.
Until a majority of four assembly members vote to fire a manager, it’s tough to get a clear picture of how a manager stands with an assembly.
Part of the dynamic is that the manager can have more power and influence that any one or two assembly members, but never more power than four who are in agreement. So by the time four members agree their relationship with the manager doesn’t work or can’t be fixed, it’s over.
Also, since consolidation of our two local governments into one in 2002, the manager has wielded greater power, arguably more power day-to-day authority than any other individual in town and more than any other, single government official ever did previously.
But while giving more power to the manager, consolidation allocated no matching amount to the assembly, tipping the relationship between the two toward an unbalanced, precarious and fateful spot.
Here’s a small example of how the relationship changed. Back in the 1990s, before government consolidation, the Haines City Council would end each of its meetings with a “direction to manager (or administrator)” agenda item.
It was a time during the meeting for managers to report what they would be doing in the next two weeks and for the city council to tweak that in accordance with what they believed needed doing. In effect, it was a time set aside every two weeks for the council and administrator to agree on priorities and to clarify the manager’s walking orders.
For some reason, “direction to manager” fell off meeting agendas for a decade or more until I helped resurrect it while serving as a borough assembly member in 2016. The disappearance was evidence of a subtle shift of roles during that period – assemblies gradually adopted more of an advisory role to the manager and less of a supervisory one.
The shift was understandable. Under the consolidated government, managers had more employees, more responsibilities and more spending authority than ever. They could do more. That took pressure off the assembly and mayor for holding the town together, and, as volunteers, they didn’t object to the prospect of working less.
But relationships between strong employees and weak supervisors rarely end well, as we’ve learned.
The key to returning balance to this relationship is strengthening assembly power. I initially thought that perhaps the designation of an “assembly chairman” or “assembly president” might help harness and focus assembly authority. The chairman’s job would be to expedite assembly business and serve as a representative of the entire group.
But here’s another option that might work better: Return the mayor’s position to how it functioned when the borough was created decades ago, when the mayor was elected by assembly members and served as its seventh member and president.
This is how the Haines school board president position works now, and it appears to function well. Under this arrangement, the mayor would be a regular, voting member of the assembly, but also serve as chair at meetings. For the extra work involved, including serving as our local government’s official representatives, the mayor’s job would keep its extra pay and office at city hall.
Such a change would add another brain during assembly discussions and would make the mayor a liaison between the assembly and manager. To eliminate any misunderstandings, these duties could be spelled out in code. Something like: “It is the role of the mayor to help the manager carry out the directives of the borough assembly.”
As a member of the assembly and its chair, the mayor would be expected to ride herd on the assembly and manager both, helping smooth out any wrinkles in the relationship. Further, as an active, voting member of the assembly and its elected chief, the mayor would automatically be in tune with the will of the assembly and the direction it was moving.
This is an arrangement that works for our school board. At one time, it also worked for the Haines Borough Assembly. Maybe it’s time we look at it again.