The long read: Is it time for executive mayoralties?
An AI-generated image of a mayor working at their desk.
One of the things that continues to stick with me since my time on Kāpiti Coast District Council is the gap between what powers communities think their mayors and councillors have, versus what influence they actually have. Communities think their elected representatives can do a lot more to steer the ship of [local] state than is actually the case, and the common refrain that council chief executives have too much power relative to elected representatives who hold a mandate from their communities speaks to an uncomfortable truth: we have a power imbalance in local government.
It’s important to remember that this power imbalance is by design. The relationship between elected representatives and the administrative side of local government in New Zealand is a collaborative governance model. This particular model really came into fruition as part of the 1989 local government reforms. As such, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the elected governing bodies of councils were seen as being more akin to a corporate board appointed by shareholders, with the Chief Executive being simultaneously their only employee, their main advisor, and the instrument through which they could try to direct their combined will. It was once described to me that the governing body’s job is to chart the course, but its the Chief Executive’s job to take the helm and direct the ship’s crew.
In the collaborative governance model, power is shared both between the mayor and other elected members on the governing body, but also between the governing body and the chief executive. While collective responsibility isn’t technically a thing for these governing bodies, it does exist to some extent in terms of how codes of conduct require elected members to behave in relation to their chief executive, council staff, and how they discuss council decisions in public.
For 77 out of our 78 councils, the Chief Executive effectively has a monopoly on all the resources of the council organisation. Auckland is the one exception to this where the mayor’s office has ring-fenced funding with staff who effectively report directly to the mayor’s chief of staff - but more on this later.
All you really need to know at this point is that in a collaborative governance model, mayors are the first amongst equals in terms of their fellow elected representatives, and that their role is primarily one of political and governance leadership.
Enter the executive mayoralty.
An executive mayoralty differs from our current system by combining the roles of political leader (mayor) with administrative head (Chief Executive). This gives mayors much more power and more of an ability to directly lead and drive their agenda. In an executive mayoralty system, the mayor typically has significant powers to lead both the political side of council (the governing body and its committees) as well as the operational side of the council (being able to hire and fire staff, restructure the organisation, directly manage budgets, set policy priorities, and oversee implementation of council decisions).
Mayors in an executive mayoralty system have much more independent decision-making capability. They have a much more clear leadership role. While around the governing table they may still only have one vote and the casting vote as a tie breaker, the ability to marshal and direct the operational resources of the council organisation to drive their agenda is what elevates them to being more than first amongst equals with their fellow elected representatives.
In executive mayoralties, the mayor becomes the central focus of the council far more than under a collaborative governance model. Examples of executive mayoralties in practice include any number of mayoralties in the United States, executive mayoralties are fairly standard - such as the mayors of Los Angeles or New York who are simultaneously the head of the executive branch of government and the chief executive of the city. The New Zealand Initiative’s Nick Clark also cites Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia as an example of somewhere that’s moved from the collaborative governance model to an executive model.
In reading this, you might think it’s a bit of an either or situation, but as hinted at before, we do have a compromise model already at play in New Zealand - Auckland.
As part of the Auckland local government reforms of 2009/10, the Auckland mayoralty was created with a bespoke set of arrangements that set it apart from its equivalents around the rest of the country. The Local Government (Auckland Council) Act 2009 not only expanded on the role of the mayor with regards to leadership within the council and outwards to the communities it serves, but it also enshrined a requirement to “establish and maintain an appropriately staffed office of the mayor.”
What’s more, the Act also specifically ring-fenced funding for the mayoral office too, “being an amount not less than 0.2% of the Council’s total budgeted operating expenditure for that year”. Assuming that this refers to the Council specific expenditure and not the overall council group (and I’m honestly not sure which it is), that means there’s at least $7.4m available each year for operating the mayor’s office. That’s money that can be spent on hiring people like a chief of staff, communications and policy advisors, and executive assistant. It can also support the undertaking of engagement activities independently of council’s standard operational channels and commissioning independent research and advice, which supports the Auckland mayors additional roles around taking a much more front-footed approach to developing the city’s annual and long-term plans.
0.2% resulting in $7.4m for the mayoral office might be a decent amount for Auckland Council, but it quickly becomes apparent that model would be a tougher ask for smaller councils. If you applied the same funding model elsewhere it could still work for Wellington ($1.6m), or Christchurch ($2.1m), but outside of the main metro councils it becomes unworkable. A medium sized metro council like Porirua would see $262,000 for the office (which would net you two, maybe three staff depending how you cut it), while a council like Gore District could only muster $66,000.
So while the Auckland model works for larger councils, it doesn’t scale particularly well for the rest of the sector.
The Auckland model can be seen as a hybrid, combining elements of an executive mayoralty with the underlying fundamentals of the collaborative governance model. It works in Auckland because the scale of the funding available for the mayor to undertake their mayoral duties allows the Chief Executive to essentially offload some of the work they would normally task their own staff with doing to the mayor’s own people. It essentially enables the mayor to be a proper alternative centre of power and resources to the Chief Executive without being a fully fledged executive mayoralty.
Greater London’s mayoralty is another hybrid example, where the Mayor of London is also the chief executive of the Greater London Authority. While London’s mayoralty has many elements of an executive mayoralty, the arrangements also bring through significant checks and balances from the collaborative model too.
It should be acknowledged that there are trade offs with either approach.
For decision-making, the collaborative model encourages inclusive approaches and diverse perspectives to be considered, though this can result in slower processes from the need to work towards as much consensus as possible and navigating shifting political alliances. Executive mayoralties should offer faster and more decisive decision making because of the mayor’s ability to act independently, but it also risks cutting councillors out of the process or pushing them to the background and acting basically as accountability police on the mayor, which does devalue the role of a councillor.
With regards to leadership styles, the collaborative model puts an emphasis on shared leadership with the mayor largely being a first amongst equals and the council being able to function despite the mayor at times. But this can also mean that a lack of a central figure to lead the council results in poor governance dynamics or even chief executives stepping outside of their roles to fill the void - sowing the seeds for future conflicts and this is something we’ve seen unfold publicly at a few councils around the country. Executive mayoralties purport to offer strong and decisive leadership as a contrast to this, with the mayor as the central organising figure and being able to drive their agenda properly, but its success also hinges on the capabilities of the person elected to the role and could lead to paralysis if the person elected proves unable to handle both their political and administrative roles.
There are also risks and benefits around accountability for both models. The collaborative approach encourages elected members to be jointly accountable, but it can also stifle accountability through the pressure of trying to adhere to an entirely imagined collective responsibility like Cabinet has. Mayors also get put in an awkward position here, caught between the mandate they’re elected by the entire city or district to implement and the lack of tools to actually do that, not to mention being at the mercy of the make up of the governing body. On the flipside, it might be easier to hold a single executive mayor to account for successes and failures of a council, but the concentration of power from both the political and administrative roles in a single position might lead to reduced scrutiny or oversight.
Put simply, the trade offs are efficiency vs inclusivity and strong leadership vs shared accountability. Whilte non of these are insurmountable - you can put in place checks, balances, and backstops in each model to mitigate its risks - but there’ll always be sacrifices involved and it pays to be upfront about these. For example, you could put recall elections in place for executive mayoralties to be a check on them going too far, but then you need to figure out how to make those practical if we stick with our very short three-year term, as a recall election (if successful) then needs to be followed by an election of a new mayor, which creates timelines that would see you butting up with the end of the term anyway.
It is almost a horses for courses approach. The larger, more populated, and more complex a local government area is, the more likely it is an executive mayoralty might be the best way to cut through those complexities to keep things moving. However for smaller districts and cities which don’t have those same behemoths to navigate, the collaborative model tends to assert itself more.
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of the executive mayoralty model, as I feel it’s an obvious way to make the powers of elected representatives reflect the actual expectations communities have for what they can do. However, it’s also very much a case of only being able to see it working where there is the scale for it to be effective. That would tends to be around our medium to large metropolitan centres - say around 100,000 people or more.
Even then, I feel there is something in the New Zealand psyche that would naturally chafe at the idea of too much power and authority being concentrated in mayors to the possible detriment of more inclusive and collaborative decision-making. Likewise, I suspect executive mayoralties will result in a much more overt political party presence in our local democracy and much more entrenched ideological blocs in councils - which is fine, it just might not be something our communities are so keen on. Much like local government amalgamation, it’s politically an easy win to put yourself in opposition to proposals for executive mayoralties or collaborative governance models based on the various examples of them not working either here or overseas, but that’s true of any reform processes. They’re all inherently political debates and, as much as my technocratic self wishes otherwise, there’s likely no single perfect solution that’s objectively better than the others.
This is where it would be interesting to see how we could make Auckland’s more hybrid model work elsewhere in the country without over-burdening our smaller territorial authorities, especially at smaller councils where 0.2% of budgeted operating expenditure isn’t really going to go far but they also don’t really have much money to spend on this type of model anyway.
Which brings me back to a point I keep making - we need to have a free and frank discussion as a country about what exactly we want local government to do, should we have a single or multiple tiers of local government, how we should fund and finance local government, what should the responsibilities and powers of our elected representatives be, should they have more or less influence over operational matters, and how to we ensure transparency, accountability, and system-stewardship of this all.
It’s why I find it so frustrating that $11.8 million was spent on the Future for Local Government review only for it to deliver a lacklustre report that was quickly discarded by the new Coalition Government. It’s why I also tear my hair out at the disconnected, single issue, small and iterative approach we now seem to be taking to changing things in local government.
Our local government system is facing massive challenges, and it needs big ideas and bold solutions to address those.
Unfortunately, political courage is something that seems to be in ever shorter supply these days.
