A committee of local business people and political figures has formed to place an initiative on the November ballot asking if Covington residents want to convert its municipal government from its current city manager form to the more common mayor-council form.
If the measure gets on the ballot and is passed, it could have ramifications on the political power structure in Kenton County’s urban core and affect everything from everyday city operations to economic development to residents’ relationships with their elected leaders.
Chaired by local businessman Richard Dickmann, who owns the restaurant Smoke Justis, the committee is calling itself Covington Forward, has already filed the necessary paperwork with the county, and has received official support from several local leaders, including the current city commissioner and unopposed mayoral candidate Ron Washington.
Other figures who have expressed support include current Covington Mayor Joe Meyer; former Mayors Denny Bowman and Chuck Scheper; former City Commissioners Steve Frank, Shawn Masters, Steve Casper, Alex Edmondson, and Rob Sanders; and former City Manager Loren Wolff.
“By adopting the mayor-council plan, Covington’s government will be more efficient and accountable to the city’s residents,” Meyer said in a press release from the committee.
Covington’s current government is a city manager form of government, which consists of four elected city commissioners, an elected mayor and a city manager, who is appointed by the commission and who manages most of the day-to-day business of the city.
Under the city manager model, every commission member and the mayor has a vote in local policies. 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.
Covington is holding a primary election for the city’s board of commissioners, with 10 candidates vying for the four seats. The city operates on the city manager model, where the commission members and mayor share executive and legislative power, and the city manager is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the city. The city manager is a sworn office, but does not have voting power. The commission’s duties include setting the city’s budget, passing ordinances and other policies, making board appointments, and acting as representatives for the city’s public interest. Read more.
What’s a city commissioner good for, anyway? How Covington’s city government works
If the government converts, power would be redistributed between the legislators (i.e. the newly created city council positions) and the mayor. Under the current form, power is comparatively decentralized, spread evenly between the commission members and the mayor. Because everyone casts a vote, and no one has veto power or any other kind of unilateral power: The commission can only exercise power as a group.
“Commissioners are not involved in the day-to-day supervision of employees,” said Morgain Patterson, the Kentucky League of Cities director of municipal law, before the primary election in May. “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.”
In contrast, the mayor-council form of government invests executive power into the mayor’s seat. In doing so, it strips the officeholder of their vote on legislation (except to break a tie) but grants them the power to veto, although city councils have the power to override a mayor’s veto with enough votes.
Moreover, it grants the mayor’s office more direct control over the hiring and firing of city workers, including police and fire, and governing the day-to-day operations of the city. As a result, this model of government is sometimes referred to as the strong mayor form of government.
City councils in Kentucky can have anywhere between six and 12 council members; city commissions can only have four commissioners. About 53% of the cities in Kentucky use the mayor-council form of government, according to the Kentucky League of Cities. The other two major population centers in Kenton County—Independence and Erlanger—both use mayor-council governments.
Many of the supporters who spoke with LINK nky viewed the current city manager plan of government as sluggish and inefficient, as most of the major operations necessary to run the city were subject to a commission vote: every hire and fire and resignation, every equipment purchase, every public project.
As such, this requires more public meetings than other forms of government —currently, the city commission meets every week—supporters argued that by investing more power in the mayor’s seat, the city could run more smoothly.
Dickmann, for his own part, viewed such a change as necessary to keep up with economic head winds, citing the Central Riverfront Development site and other economic developments.
“Time is money,” Dickmann said.
“From a citizen’s perspective and from [the perspective of] a business owner,” he went on to say, “if I have land sitting there that is unoccupied by a company that could be paying taxes, that’s the money that we’re losing every day. And so what’s happening right now is things need to be decided, and there has to be someone that has an organized effort with the people who they’ve hired that have the experience and the knowledge to help make these decisions.”
“The argument that accountability and speed of governance could be improved is compelling,” said Brent Cooper, a Covington resident and business owner, and President of the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce.
Cooper qualified his statement by saying that this was an individual view and not reflective of the chamber’s view. The NKY Chamber has yet to release a position on the matter.
“As a Covington resident and business owner, I will be joining the current mayor, [presumed] mayor elect, other city commissioners and a number of my neighbors and fellow business owners in support of the Covington Forward effort,” Cooper said.
Washington also expressed his support of the effort to LINK nky, although he said he would agree to “govern in alignment with the choices made by the citizens,” whatever they choose.
“The mayor and council system of government allows for quick responses to the needs of the people and provides improved representation for our community,” Washington said.
In order to get the issue on the November ballot, the committee needs to gather a number of local signatures equal to at least 20% of the votes cast in the last city-wide presidential election. In this case, that would be 3,156 signatures, according to the Kenton County Board of Elections. The county must then verify that those signatures belong to registered voters who would be affected by the ballot measure. Any signatures from unregistered voters or voters who are not Covington residents don’t count.
If the committee’s petition is successful, the ballot measure itself would pose the issue in the form of a yes-or-no question: “Are you in favor of the City of Covington adopting a Mayor-Council Plan as defined by KRS § 83A.130?” (click the link for the text of the law laying out the mayor-council plan).
This is a developing issue, and LINK nky will continue reaching out to experts, supporters of the initiative, people against the initiative and current commission candidates as it develops.