Russell Arben Fox: For Wichita, debate over term limits just scratches the surface
Wichita City Council member Jeff Blubaugh probably didn’t expect his proposal to extend term limits currently in place on the council (from two terms to three) to attract so much negative attention, nor to go down to such a complete defeat (the vote was 7-0 against, with Blubaugh himself joining in). Still, if his strategy was simply to raise the issue and get people talking, he’s done well. There is much to talk about regarding our city council, and an argument over term limits just scratches the surface.
Wichita has a council-manager form of government, with six council members elected from various city districts and a mayor elected at large, all of whom have equal votes, and all of whom place significant authority in the hands of an appointed city manager. Blubaugh points out that such an arrangement occasionally leaves term-limited council members — for whom serving on the council is a part-time job — entirely dependent upon the historical knowledge and bureaucratic expertise of the city’s permanent staff. In this, he’s not wrong.
Still, his wish to balance things out by extending the amount of time (and thus, presumably, the bureaucratic clout) council members have at their disposal to pursue the agendas they were elected upon seems to miss the forest for the trees. How much difference would a change from eight possible years of service to twelve possible years really make? Perhaps the time is ripe to look at other cities and make some deeper comparisons.
Leave aside such major mid-American urban agglomerations as Kansas City (with a metropolitan area population of over 2 million) or Oklahoma City (with nearly 1.5 million). Consider instead just our peer cities — mid-sized cities which center more rural regions within their states: cities like Des Moines, Iowa; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Fort Wayne, Indiana; Boise, Idaho; Colorado Springs, Colorado; or Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. Every one of those cities — with the exception of Des Moines, the smallest, at barely two-thirds the size of Wichita — have a strong mayor form of government. That is, the mayor is elected separately from the city council, does not sit and vote with them, and instead wields real executive authority on behalf of a citywide mandate, rather than having most power outsourced to the city manager.
The city councils in these cities are similarly strengthened, given increased legislative responsibility and authority to balance out an empowered mayor. They also are made more immediately connected to the people they represent. They do this by increasing the size of the council, either by shrinking the size of the districts the council members represent, or by adding at-large members to supplement those elected from specific districts. And as for term limits? Only one of the above cities have them — and that’s for the mayor, not the city council.
Every city is different, of course, with a political culture that develops organically over time. Still, the idea behind a strong mayor system is an acknowledgment that as cities grow in size and diversify, distinct interests and agendas will emerge, and hence the city’s law-making body must be able to effectively and democratically represent — and, where appropriate, challenge — that wide range of interests. And similarly, you need a mayor democratically empowered to respond to, implement, or sometimes reject the results of such a contentious process.
“Contention,” of course, scares some people; their ideal is a city government that never, ever rocks the boat. But treating a city of hundreds of thousands of people as a homogenous hamlet with only small-scale disagreements wouldn’t fit the reality of these cities, and their form of government acknowledges that. Perhaps we should ask such a large question of Wichita as well.
This story was originally published December 11, 2019 at 11:33 AM.