Covington is the only city in Kenton County holding a primary this month.
This year, the city has 10 candidates for the city’s board of commissioners, and results from the primary will knock two candidates out of the race, leaving eight to compete in November for the board’s four seats.
Although the commission has a primary, it is nonpartisan, and candidates need not declare a party affiliation to run. All candidates in the May primary are running as nonpartisans.
The rule for triggering a primary in Kenton County is straightforward: double plus one. In other words, there need to be double the number of candidates for a given office plus one more candidate to trigger a primary. There are four open commission seats on the Covington Board of Commissioners. Double that number of seats – eight – and add one more – nine – to calculate the number of candidates required to trigger a primary. The field has that beat with one to spare.
Covington’s City Government
Even though the spotlight is on commission candidates, Covington does not operate on a city commission model or on the more common mayor-council model, under which executive and legislative powers are separated in the positions of the mayor and council members, respectively. Instead, it operates on the city manager model.
Under that model, every commission member and the mayor has a vote in local laws. Mayors are responsible for running meetings, signing contracts and acting as the public face of the city, but they share executive and legislative power with the board. Because the mayor casts votes on laws and policies, the person sitting in the mayor’s seat has no veto power, unlike mayors under the mayor-council form of government.
Additionally, unlike the mayor-council and city commission models, city manager governments are required by law to have a full-time administrative officer, the city manager, who directly oversees the departments and workers in the city (although some cities who use the other two forms of government often have a city administrator or city manager anyway). The city manager is appointed through a full vote of the board of commissioners and is responsible for much of the day-to-day operation of the city.
The city manager is a sworn office, but, as a non-elected official, the manager doesn’t have voting power. Still, city managers hold a lot of sway in how a city is run, especially since the commission and mayoral positions do not have required full-time hours. (Mayors and commissioners often work full-time jobs outside of city hall.)
Covington’s current city manager is Ken Smith. “So generally, it’s running the day-to-day operations, but I don’t make decisions for the city or for the people of Covington that aren’t spelled out,” Smith said.
That means if you’re a Covington resident with a workaday issue related to the city (e.g., potholes, downed signs, flickering traffic lights and so on), you’d probably have more luck checking in with the city manager or the head of the appropriate department for help, even if your first instinct is to call your elected officials. Chances are, they’d probably refer the problem to city staff, anyway.
The city manager’s other major duty is recommending a city budget and carrying it out once the board votes. The commission has the power to discard a recommended budget or other proposal with a majority vote. The city manager also can’t enter into contracts on behalf of the city, although he can make recommendations.
The Board of Commissioners
“It’s a serious job that I wouldn’t suggest anybody take on unless they were genuinely wanting to – because you’re not going to make any money – genuinely wanting to serve their local government,” said current Covington Commission Member Steve Hayden, who is not running for election.
Commissioners’ duties include setting the city’s budget, passing ordinances and other policies, making board appointments, hiring and firing city workers – from the city manager down to the newest police recruit fresh out of the academy – and generally acting as representatives for the city’s public interest.
It’s important to remember, however, that there is no unilateral power on the city commission. The commission acts and exercises power only as a group; it needs a majority vote to do anything, including making personnel decisions.
“Commissioners are not involved in the day-to-day supervision of employees,” said Morgain Patterson, the Kentucky League of Cities director of municipal law. “They cannot independently hire or fire an employee. They cannot make unilateral decisions on the needs of the city. The board of commissioners really only acts as a complete body in and of itself. They don’t have independent authority per se.”
As an illustration, Hayden talked about how surprised he was by the degree to which commissioners were constrained in their individual decision-making and their ability to collaborate outside of public meetings. That’s because meeting laws often force commission members to discuss things in the open, rather than behind closed doors.
“The working it out together thing is just not what I thought it was going to be,” Hayden said. “So you’re still on your own, and sometimes you’re on your own until you’re on the dais and into the comments section or something like that.”
“I do think that, in any form of government, there can be tension because of the desire for more ability to affect policy on an individual basis,” Patterson said, “but that’s not really the way our cities, or even our state, are set up.”
To Hayden’s point, Patterson said the position tends to attract people with a genuine interest in public service.
“Nobody’s getting rich off this,” Patterson added. “[People] do it because they love their cities, even if they don’t always agree on the specific approach.”