Covington residents will vote on a ballot measure this November asking them if they would like to convert the city’s government structure from its current city manager form to a mayor-council form.
The result could have ramifications on the political power structure in Kenton County’s urban core and affect everything from day-to-day city operations to economic development to residents’ relationships with their elected leaders.
The ballot question will pose the issue in the form of a yes-or-no question: “Are you in favor of the proposal entitled ‘Petition for the City of Covington to adopt a Mayor-Council Plan’? Yes or No?”
The conversion has many advocates, including current Mayor Joe Meyer and sole mayoral candidate Ron Washington.
Five of the eight city commission candidates — Tim Downing, Shannon Smith, Cari Garriga, James Toebbe and Tim Acri — also have explicitly come out in favor of the conversion. Several former commissioners, a former city manager and several prominent business leaders have expressed support, as well.
Is it a good idea? Doesn’t Covington already have a mayor, anyway? Let’s explore the differences between the current system, the one being proposed and what a conversion may entail.
Who’s the boss?
Covington’s current government is a city manager form of government. Under it, a city manager manages most of the day-to-day business of the city and its departments. Four elected city commissioners plus the elected mayor, who has relatively little direct authority, appoint the city manager.
If voters approve converting the government, the four commissioners’ positions would be abolished and replaced with anywhere from six to 12 city council seats. The commissioners elected in November would write ordinances outlining details of the new government – including how many council seats the city would have – by the end of their two-year terms. Residents would vote to fill the new council seats in 2026.
Under the current model, both the commissioners and the mayor have 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 commissioners. The mayor cannot veto legislation.
In other words, executive and legislative power is spread evenly between the commissioners and mayor. No one has any unilateral power; the commission and mayor can exercise power only as a group.
That means every staff vacancy, every contract, every budget change, every street naming, every equipment purchase, every public project is subject to a commission vote. City operations, meanwhile, fall to the city manager and other professional city workers.
“Commissioners are not involved in the day-to-day supervision of employees,” said Morgain Patterson, director of municipal law for the Kentucky League of Cities, before May’s primary election. “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.”
The mayor-council form of government, on the other hand, is the older of the two systems and more closely resembles state and federal governmental structures. It invests greater executive power with the mayor. In doing so, it strips the mayor of a vote on legislation (except to break a tie) but grants that person veto power. (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 employees, and governing day-to-day city operations. As a result, this model of government is sometimes referred to as the strong mayor form of government. Although it would be possible for the council to hire a city administrator to help run the city, the mayor is expected to take on most of the responsibility.
Just over half of Kentucky’s cities have mayor-council governments, according to the Kentucky League of Cities. That includes the other two major municipalities in Kenton County – Independence and Erlanger.
Pros and cons
Proponents of the conversion view the city manager system as sluggish, opaque and inefficient.
“It means that five people really do get individually involved in many decisions big and little,” Mayor Meyer told the Latonia Business Association in July. “The result is confusion, uncertainty [and] delayed decision-making. With the change to the mayor-council form of government, there will be one boss for the executive function, not five. It’s clear and simple.”
The thinking goes that, by investing more power in the mayor’s seat, a centralized authority can accomplish things more quickly. This is especially true with economic development, where businesses sometimes have to wait for the commission or another city board to vote on relevant ordinances or approvals before setting up shop in the city. Ditto for professionals looking to work for the city administration.
Depending on how one looks at it, however, that could be a good thing.
“Council-manager government specifically was created in order to limit the amount of power that was accumulated in any one elected official,” said J.T. Spence, a former Covington commissioner and professor of philosophy and political science at Thomas More University.
He did not directly advocate for either government form when he spoke with LINK nky. Instead, he encouraged residents to think critically about whether a change was warranted before casting their votes.
After the interview, however, he submitted a letter to LINK nky more directly expressing his views on the topic and discussing the historical context of the reform movement that led to the establishment of the the city manager government in Covington in 1930, which aimed to ensure “that city hall was not dominated by any one special interest.”
“Americans have always been wary of concentrating power in any one person or group because power tends to corrupt,” Spence writes in his letter. “When concentrated, power also tends to limit what interests in the community have access to the public agenda. The idea that democracy benefits from a fragmentation of power and having more voices setting public policy is captured in the American constitution, generally referred to as the ‘balance of power’ between the executive and the legislature. Council-Manager government is a system that reflects this balance and it is important to note that a key value of a democracy is not about how fast a decision can be made, but how well it reflects the interests of the community.”
Only one commission candidate, former commissioner Bill Wells, expressed some trepidation about the potential for a conversion.
He did not outright say that he was against a conversion – he said that he would go with whatever the voters decided – but he did express concern about a rogue executive. In the current system, he said, three people have to make a bad decision for a bad policy to be enacted; with a strong mayor, it takes only one.
Anxieties about inefficiency are reflected in statements from conversion supporters, especially in the face of the city’s continued economic expansion.
“One of the problems with the current form of government is a lot has to be talked about in an open forum,” Richard Dickmann, owner of the restaurant Smoke Justis and chair of the committee backing the ballot measure. “And there is a line of command, so to speak, that doesn’t have any one person with authority. Any business person would know that [with] everyday business, it’s hard to run a business by committee.”
Spence, on the other hand, said voters should consider what the role of government is – to be efficient or to ensure representation and equity.
“Government’s principal job is not profit-making, per se,” Spence said. “It’s about creating a livable community where people feel connected and part of the community [where] their interests are represented. Businesses typically only have a more narrow idea about interests.”
“When people are looking at this, it’s not really that one form of government is better than another,” Patterson said. “It’s just a question of ‘How do you want your city to function?’”
We want to hear from you. Should Covington’s municipal government be changed? Fill out our form below with your thoughts and reasoning on the issue. We’ll publish a follow-up in coming weeks with your responses. Preference will be given to current Covington residents.