Forms of North Carolina City Government
Materials on Selected Choices Under the Charter Change Statute
Citizens, elected officials, and city staff are often interested in the likely effects of choosing one or another option under the charter change statute. This section summarizes published research on the effects of various choices within five sets of options, as well generally-recognized effects. The five sets of options are summarized below, in Word format.
Resources
North Carolina law permits cities, towns, and villages to use either partisan elections or any one of three versions of nonpartisan elections. In partisan elections, candidates run as nominees of specific political parties or as independents. Each political party selects its nominees in primary elections restricted to voters registered as affiliated with that political party. In nonpartisan elections, the candidates’ party affiliation is not listed on the ballot and the political parties generally don’t provide support for the candidates. This form of election emerged during the Progressive Era as a way to remove politics from city administration (Davidson and Fraga, 1988).
North Carolina law permits cities, towns, and villages to elect their governing board members through at-large elections; through district elections using either voting districts or residence districts; through elections that use “blended” districts, in which primaries are on a district basis and elections on a residence district basis; or through some combination of at large and district.
In at-large elections, voters from across the city vote for candidates running for office and the candidates do not represent a specific district within the city. Davidson and Korbel (1981) explain that the concept of at-large elections was originally developed by the Progressives. “While a major purpose of the structural reform was to take city government out of the hands of neighborhood and ethnic leaders, thus centralizing it under the control of businessmen, the ostensible reasons were the lofty goals of abolishing corrupt machines and bringing efficiency and businesslike principles to local government.”
When cities, towns, or villages use district elections, some or all members of the governing board represent specific districts within a city. With voting districts, only voters who live in a particular district may vote for candidates running for the seat representing that district. In residence districts, candidates must reside in the district but all voters in the city vote in the election for that district’s board member. In blended districts, which are used in voting systems with primaries, candidates must reside in the district, only district voters may participate in the primary, but all city voters participate in the general election.
In mixed systems, some number of candidates are elected on an at-large basis and some are elected on a district basis. The districts might be either voting districts or residence districts.
G.S. 160A-101(5) permits a city to have a governing board comprising anywhere from three to twelve members. In the following discussion, a board of 3, 4, or 5 members is considered small, while one of 8 members or more is considered large; a 6- or 7-member board might be considered as part of either group.
Under the original model of the council-manager system, the mayor was elected by and from the governing board, which is currently how North Carolina county boards of commissioners and boards of education elect their presiding officers. In council-manager cities, however, the direct election of mayor has become an increasingly popular adaptation. Frederickson, Johnson and Wood (2004) note: “The distinct majority of cities with council-manager statutory or charter legal platforms have altered those platforms to provide for the direct election of the mayor.” Direct election of the mayor is also the overwhelming choice among cities and towns using the mayor-council form of government.
North Carolina law permits cities, towns, and villages to use either of two forms of administration: mayor-council or council-manager. In the mayor-council form the governing board is not only responsible for policy making but also day-to-day administration of the town, including hiring and firing town employees. (In national terms, this is a “weak mayor,” system, in which the mayor presides at council meetings but has no executive power.) Under the council-manager form the governing board is responsible for policy-making while the manager is responsible for policy implementation and for managing the employees and operation of the town. Some mayor-council towns use a hybrid model in which the board hires a town administrator whose job is similar to a manager; however, the administrator’s authority is by delegation from the board rather than by statute.