WHAT'S THE MAYOR WORTH?

General George, a.k.a. Grand Rapids Mayor George Hearwell, thinks the job's worth $85,000 a year.  That's what he told the "Local Officers Compensation Commission", a gimmick the City Commission set up years ago to have a purportedly disinterested group of citizens to set the salaries of the City's elected officials so that those elected officials could skip out on having to vote themselves regular raises.

To justify the figure the General complained to the compensation commission, "I can't figure out how to be a good mayor and not give this thing forty to sixty hours a week."  Well, isn't that the General's problem and not ours?  After all, under the Grand Rapids City Charter the mayor's role as the City's chief executive is only ceremonial, otherwise he is nothing more than an at-large city commissioner whose authority is little different than his six fellow commissioners.  For that part-time job the mayor is currently paid $39,141 a year and receives the perk of the use of a City-owned automobile (which I believe the General has declined after Boss Logie's abuse of that perk).

Meanwhile, under the charter the real chief executive of the City is the city manager, who the taxpayers currently pay $138,721 a year.  In the wake of a scandal, in 1916 the citizens of Grand Rapids voted in the present charter which replaced the traditional "strong mayor" form of government with the "city manager" form.  The mayor, along with the city commission, retained the role of setting policy and overseeing City employees, while the city manager took over the day-to-day administrative role that had been the mayor's.  Thus, the job of mayor in terms of the time it required was greatly reduced.

Furthermore, over the past century the "open government" philosophy has fractured the city commission's policy-making authority and distributed big chunks of it to a multiplicity of boards and commissions.  Although the city commission retains authority over these other bodies through the powers of appointment, budget, and appeal, the practical effect of this broad distribution of governing power has been additional reductions in the mayor's workload.

However, the General's predecessor, Boss Logie, re-fashioned a "strong mayor" type of office during his twelve-year regime by cobbling together through his person as a member of the City Commission and as many other boards and commissions he could wrangle a seat upon a great deal of authority not formally assigned to the mayor.  He supplemented this authority by exercising much more intrusive oversight of the city manager and staff.  Logie then cemented these disparate bits of power with the secret to his success, his obnoxious personality as an overbearing, self-important p---k with an agenda to use his power to reward favored parties who implemented his vision of a renovated downtown.

The General appears to have adopted Boss Logie's conception of the mayor's office.  Granted the General has the requisite obnoxious personality in his preening self-righteousness, and he also has an agenda -- i.e., the reduction of River City to the squalor of a people's republic -- but he lacks his predecessor's ruthlessness to fuse together in his person the fractured pieces of authority he must cling to under the current city charter.

The plain fact of it is that Grand Rapids does not need both a full-time strong mayor and a full-time city manager.  While they are good arguments for returning to the "strong mayor" form government, such as making an elected official directly accountable for the performance of the City's hired staff, we have done well under mayors working part-time in the manner intended by the city charter.  Often overlooked is the important fact that the City's population has not significantly increased over the past five decades.  So, the form of municipal government that worked in the '60s, '70s, and '80s can still work fine now.

All we need from a mayor is commonsense and dedication to duty, not a revolution to justify a big paycheck.

Comments

[Batman]

Heartwell knew what the job paid when he ran for mayor. It is dishonest of him to now say it doesn't pay enough.

[The Executive Director]

Hi, Batman.

Dishonest? Let's say disingenuous, because Heartwell did sit on the fence during the 2003 campaign to amend the City Charter to create a "strong mayor" form of government. If he thought that was the proper type of mayor for this City, he should've have committed himself publicly to that instead of weaselly silence.

Regards,
Bill Tingley
Executive Director

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