ORIENTATION FOR NEW CITY AND COUNTY MANAGERS
Local Government Organization
See the following articles from the School of Government’s publication, County and Municipal Government in North Carolina.
Article 1: An Overview of Local Government
In North Carolina, the dominant forms of local government are cities and counties. Both cities and counties are general-purpose local governments—their governing boards are elected by the qualified voters of the city’s or county’s geographic area; they have the power to levy taxes; they can regulate conduct through laws called ordinances (this ability is called the police power and is discussed in Article 4); and they are authorized and, especially with counties, sometimes required to provide a broad range of services to their citizens. While there are some other types of local governments in the state that have at least one of the listed characteristics (for example, sanitary district boards the boards of education that govern school administrative units are elected; boards of health can enact regulations related to health and airport authorities can enact rules governing conduct on airport property; and a wide range of entities from water and sewer districts to hospital authorities provide services), no other local governments are general purpose in the way that cities and counties are. As noted above, city and county jurisdictions overlap in North Carolina.
Article 3: City and County Governing Boards
A county’s or city’s governing board holds ultimate authority to act for the local government. It decides what services the county or city provides and at what level. It establishes the county’s or city’s fiscal policy by adopting the annual budget ordinance, and it levies the unit’s taxes. It adopts the county’s or city’s ordinances. In addition to exercising these sorts of broad policy-making responsibilities, a governing board typically decides numerous separate administrative matters. Thus it may authorize the local government to enter into a contract, buy or sell a parcel of property, award successful bid on a purchase or a construction project, or accept the dedication of a street or utility easement.
Article 4: The Police Power
The term police powerwas used by United States Chief Justice John Marshall as early as 1827 to describe the sovereign powers retained by the states when they delegated some of their authority to the federal government under the U.S. Constitution. This retained, or residual, authority of each state government consists of its power to regulate the conduct and affairs of those who are in some way governed by the state.
Article 5: Leading and Governing in Council-Manager Counties and Cities
North Carolina has a long tradition of using a professional manager to assist the elected leadership in governing their community and to ensure efficient and effective local government. Hickory and Morganton first adopted the council-manager plan as part of their charters in 1913, just one year after the first charter adoption of the plan in the country by Sumter, South Carolina. Another twenty-three North Carolina cities had adopted the plan by 1940. By 2002, all but thirty-seven of the 189 cities with a population over 2,500 had appointed a manager under their charters, including all twenty-three of the largest cities in the state.
Article 7: The Attorney and the Clerk
The attorney and the clerk are mainstays of the governing board as it attempts to govern wisely and well. Together city and county attorneys and city clerks and clerks to the board of county commissioners help to ensure that local government activities are carried out in a legally correct manner. The documents created and maintained by the attorney and the clerk provide the written record needed to ensure that the board is accountable to the city’s or county’s citizens and to other public and private officials. Ideally the attorney and the clerk work as partners with the manager and the board, the attorney advising on the legal consequences of board actions, the clerk keeping a record of those actions, and both officials ensuring that proper procedures are followed to enable the corporate entity, the city or county, to “speak” and “act” clearly and effectively.
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