Share tactics: How PA cities deal with changing balance of power dynamics

While there’s no shortage of high-profile power struggles between the branches of government in Washington, D.C., and Harrisburg, the battles between power players at the municipal level remain less well-known – and less understood.

Mayor-council relationships, from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh to the Lehigh Valley and beyond, have shifted over the decades, leading to an evolution in the power structures at play in cities of all sizes. 

“Each mayor exists in a different system or different kind of system, but one thing that is true of mayors in every type of system is they struggle with the power-sharing with their city council,” Allentown Mayor Matt Tuerk, a member of the U.S. Conference of Mayors Advisory Committee, told City & State. “There’s a saying that every city council person wakes up in the morning and they take a look in the mirror and they see the mayor of the city.”

Ambitious councilmembers or not, third class cities in Pennsylvania have varying forms of mayoral input, with each structure lending itself to political dynamics and fragile frameworks that are ever-changing. 

And after some localities – including Allentown and Scranton – were left to deal with the fallout from their respective mayors’ corruption convictions, the form of government and the power of the executive have become hot topics in cities of all sizes.

Lay of the land

The commonwealth’s cities are divided into three classes, with Philadelphia, home to more than 1 million residents, the only city of the first class.

Pittsburgh, with 307,000 residents, is the commonwealth’s only second class city, categorized by having between 250,000 and 1 million residents – though Scranton is considered a second class A city with between 80,000 and 250,000 residents; hundreds of other cities and municipalities make up the Keystone State’s third class localities.

First class, second class and second class A cities have a strong mayor system of local government with home rule charters – governing documents that outline a municipality’s structure, much like a constitution. Charters effectively transfer municipal affairs from state law to a local charter approved by voters, detailing the services and responsibilities of the local government. 

According to the Pennsylvania Department of Community & Economic Development, more than 80 Pennsylvania municipalities have home rule charters, including cities like Allentown, Easton, Reading and, of course, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

Through their charters, these localities essentially bargained with the state over which powers the city assumes, including county functions, and laid out the powers the mayor and council are granted. A “strong mayor” in a mayor-council form of government has broad power to appoint and remove certain commissioners and department heads, leaving the legislative authorities – such as passing a balanced budget – to councilmembers. 

Third class cities, on the other hand, can be governed in three ways: the aforementioned mayor-council form of government; a commission form; or a council-manager form, where all authority is lodged with a council composed of five, seven, or nine members elected at-large for a four-year term.

In a typical mayor-council system, a mayor, treasurer and a controller are elected, with the mayor serving as the chief executive for the locality. Mayors in this structure, while overseeing city departments, can veto ordinances but can be overridden by at least two-thirds of council vote – which is the case in at least nine commonwealth cities. 

Regardless of structure, the mayor-council relationship can be a rocky one. As one longtime political consultant told City & State, many mayors today face the challenge of implementing “modern, responsive governance.”

It’s the personal and political tensions that often hinder effective governance, he said: “A lot of the dynamics are personality stuff, with very little substantive issues.”

Philly special

As Pennsylvania’s lone first class city, Philadelphia stands on its own in many ways. But thanks to having one of the few full-time city councils, Philadelphia’s legislative body is unique in the ways it grapples with power. 

“Our government charter lays out a structure of government that puts a lot of power in the mayor and their appointees, and that creates a lot of opportunity for mayors to shape what happens within the City of Philadelphia,” Andrew McGinley, vice president of external affairs at the nonpartisan good government group Committee of Seventy, told City & State. “There are relatively few checks or limitations that come through Council when it comes to those powers … Staffing is going to shape every level of government as it impacts people, and under our charter, the mayor has pretty broad appointment powers with very few appointments actually needed to go through council approval.”

In this “strong mayor” form of mayor-council government, the city council must approve an annual budget, but the way dollars are spent is largely up to the executive. Like in Philadelphia, these city councils vote on a fiscal number and certain appropriations, but those appropriations are mostly lump sums doled out to individual departments. And as mayors oversee those departments, the authority on how those funds are specifically allocated is ultimately determined by the executive. 

“In so many ways, a budget is a way for a legislative chamber to shape policy. And one of the unique things here is that in our budget, council’s ability to shape programs within city government through the budget is pretty limited,” McGinley said. “Council can question (budget) decisions, hold budget hearings and push back on some of it, but ultimately, the mayor has a ton of authority there, and spending is going to impact policy outcomes just as much as appointments are, if not more.”

The seemingly unilateral authority over the final spending of taxpayer dollars is one of the main drivers of the power conversation, as well as the reasoning behind some local moves to rearrange the local governing structure. 

“The budget says what proposed expenditures shall be, but it doesn’t require that they be organized in a particular way where council would be able to specify (spending) in a particular way,” Tuerk said. “I’m a little like the Mayor of Philadelphia in that respect – I kind of have ultimate authority over how we spend money.” 

Local levers

Tuerk said that in his conversations with other mayors across the U.S., it became clear that the dynamics between a mayor and their city council can often be boiled down to supporters and opponents. 

“No matter the form of government, city council people seem to fulfill that same role. Some of the city council people are the foil to the mayor. Some are close confidants of the mayor,” Tuerk said. 

Philadelphia City Council leaders have worked over the past decade to gain more power, through both legislative amendments and the deferential style of some mayors, mainly to create more transparency behind the mayor’s moves and certain offices with a history of mismanagement. 

The back-and-forth between the mayor’s office and council members can be contentious at times, especially when programs will have a disproportionate impact on one area of the city. But McGinley said that Philadelphia City Council seemed to be in “lockstep” with Mayor Cherelle Parker throughout the latest budget process. 

“That goes back to the (then-mayor) Ed Rendell and (then-City Council President) John Street version (of council), when they figured out ways to just work together and be sort of a united front to address a lot of challenges,” McGinley said. “I know that there were some tensions between the Nutter administration and past council presidents, and the Kenney administration ran into some issues over time.”

Philadelphia City Council’s more recent efforts to require legislative approval for certain appointments, including a recently approved measure to create an independent, council-approved Philadelphia Prison Community Oversight Board, are a direct response to what lawmakers saw as a lack of accountability on behalf of previous political appointees. 

“It’s the sort of thing where Council will try to flex some additional authority when they don’t like the decision a mayor is making,” McGinley said. “Much of it comes down to the personalities and the politics of the day … I’m not sure that there’s a larger trend – I think a lot of it has to do with who is in each role.”

Elsewhere, in different structures, city council members are also making moves to rid the mayor of certain powers or legislative duties. Cities like Allentown and Scranton have become enmeshed in ongoing power struggles after corruption plagued their respective City Halls. 

In 2017 in Allentown, and in 2019 in Scranton, residents saw their respective mayors get arrested and charged on federal corruption charges. As part of the fallout, Allentown adopted a city ordinance establishing a two-term limit for the mayor, which now applies to Tuerk.

And in both Allentown and Scranton, Tuerk and Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti have had their individual struggles dealing with tenured politicians trying to keep the executive in check. 

“Especially as an outsider, there’s so much resentment by the establishment,” the political consultant, who wished to remain anonymous, told City & State. “The gravy train ran in a lot of these places for a long time – (where politicians) helped people’s family members and friends get contracts and jobs. Voters sort of have had enough of it and picked people who were responsive, forward-thinking and wanted to clean it up … That is a major cause of the friction.” 

Mayor of Easton

Not far from Allentown is Easton, another third class city in the Lehigh Valley in the midst of a unique power struggle. 

Easton’s strong mayor form of government was upended in November 2007 when voters adopted a Home Rule Charter making the mayor a voting member of a city council and expanding council from five to seven members – creating a mayor-council form of government. Since then, the city’s mayor has also served as both chair and a voting member of the city council. The intent of the system – to create a more professionalized and efficient local government – was admirable, said Easton City Councilmember Frank Pintabone. But the results in the last nearly two-decade span say otherwise. 

“They ended up making a weak mayor form of government where the city administrator has a little more control,” Pintabone, who has led the push to reverse the 2007 change, told City & State. “You have the executive and the legislative together. The mayor works with his staff of directors to come up with legislation, then he sits on council, he’s part of the executive session, he’s part of the discussion, and then he has a vote on it … It just muddies it up.”

Thought to produce more collaboration between the branches, Easton’s move has been met with more than mixed reviews. Easton Mayor Salvatore J. Panto, Jr., who has served seven non-consecutive terms, has been in power on both sides of the structural spectrum. 

Pintabone says the longtime mayor is not the problem, but preventing future issues is the motivation behind the push to get the mayor off city council. 

“As a council member, if I want to put something on the agenda, I go to the president of the council to (have them) either put it on the agenda or not put it on the agenda. The mayor makes those decisions now in this form of government,” Pintabone said. “The mayor’s position overseeing the executive and legislative branches of government just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to anybody.”

Pintabone argued that the intent of the mayor’s involvement in city council was to ensure power wasn’t consolidated within one person or councilmember, but the opposite can be the case.

He adds that transparency laws and livestreaming make the idea of a unilateral takeover of local government “far-fetched.”

“I know politics was done in backrooms with the people in control. Fortunately, we don’t have that anymore,” Pintabone said. “It’s really hard for someone to take all the power and rule as a dictator locally. I think the key is electing good people who want to work.”

Effective establishment

Personal and political beefs aside, the idea of good government stems from the concept of collaboration. Tuerk said developing a trusting relationship with council is, in his mind, the cornerstone of effective local government. 

“I am a believer in this system of government where the council gives the mayor a set amount of money to spend and some ideas on how to spend it, but the mayor ultimately has the authority to spend the money as the executive,” he added. “In a functional world, you collaborate with City Council on how you spend those dollars.”

“You can’t just unilaterally spend, or they’re not going to pass your next budget, because they know they can’t trust you,” he added.

Outside of more modest checks on power and the executive, even councilmembers uninterested in higher office may find someone else’s time in the spotlight as reason enough to throw a wrench in their policy plans. 

The political consultant told City & State that regardless of structure, establishment-based lawmakers who are “stuck in their ways” will always hold their collective nose at the idea of implementing ambitious ideas, especially if it’s a new mayor just getting into office.

“You do a good job on the campaign and you want to do real stuff for people, and suddenly, the council thinks, ‘Oh, they’re getting too much of the limelight. We want our power back, or we need more power,”’ he added. “If you run too fast or too far, someone wants to take your head off.”