Author: Financial Management Resource Bureau
The DLS Financial Management Resource Bureau (formerly the Technical Assistance Bureau) has offered financial management advice to municipalities across the state for over 30 years. To share this guidance more broadly, we thought it would be helpful to highlight some of our more useful, timely, or interesting recommendations for the benefit of City & Town readers.
In most Massachusetts towns today (251 of 292 towns, or 86%), a professional manager has been appointed by the select board to act as the community’s chief administrative officer (CAO). A CAO in this context refers to a position with locally delegated powers broader and higher level than those typically given to a select board assistant, executive secretary or town coordinator. Among the 251 CAO appointments are 179 town administrators (71%), 68 town managers (27%) and four incumbents with unique titles (2%), such as Norwood’s general manager or Wellesley’s executive director. Within this group, there are 163 officeholders (65%) whose powers and responsibilities have been formally codified in a bylaw, special act or town charter. For the remaining 88 (35%), the position’s role is defined only through a job description or employment contract.
On a day-to-day basis, the town administrator, town manager, or similar position acts on behalf of its chief executive, the board of selectmen. The CAO is further directed, in most communities, to coordinate the activities of all town departments, regardless of their appointing authorities. M.G.L. c. 41, § 23A enables a select board to charge the administrator with “any duties as may be requested” and to “act by and for the board in any matter which it assigns.” This obviously allows a wide degree of leeway, and in practice, the specifics of the administrator role can vary quite a bit from town to town.
Certain drawbacks are associated with an administrator title that lacks a solid, public definition. At times of changeover in select board members or the CAO, the position’s responsibilities or powers may be subject to revision, and potentially undermine continuity in local government procedures. The absence of an official outline for the position, especially when it is newly created in a town, can also present special challenges to the appointee’s effectiveness by allowing for confusion among employees and residents about the extent of the office’s duties and authority, as well as the town’s reporting lines of accountability. Furthermore, the town is at a disadvantage when there is a vacancy in the office, since experienced, highly qualified CAO candidates are most attracted to openings in which the role is unambiguous and well established.
For these reasons, the Division of Local Services (DLS) promotes the practice of codifying the CAO title in a bylaw, special act, or charter. When drafting one of these options, local decisions must be made about the extent of the powers and duties to assign the CAO. In addition to specifying the position’s appointing and supervisory authority, other provisions typically considered include the CAO’s role in relation to the annual budget process, capital planning, personnel administration, collective bargaining, procurement, ongoing financial management, policy analysis, and information technology oversight.
The simplest, most efficient way to codify the local CAO position is through a bylaw presented to town meeting by the select board in a warrant article. Once approved by town meeting, the bylaw must be validated by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office before it goes into effect. Forty-two of the 163 towns with a codified CAO title used a bylaw, representing 26% of that group.
In 91 towns (56% of the codified group), a town charter spells out the local CAO’s duties and powers. In contrast to bylaws, a charter is formalized only pursuant to a lengthy, deliberative process, as provided for in the Home Rule statute, M.G.L. c. 43B. A charter’s scope is also much broader since it is intended to define all the main pillars of the local government framework, including delineating the roles and relationships of the primary elected and appointed officials within the structure. The charter is drafted by either an elected charter commission or appointed government study committee and then must be ratified by the state legislature and town meeting, as well as local voters depending on the drafting route chosen.
The third codification option is a special act. In the absence of an effort to establish or modify a charter, the rationale for choosing this vehicle over a bylaw relates to the special act’s higher standing. Once approved by town meeting and the state legislature, a special act cannot be revised without a drawn-out process. Given this, the select board in a town pursuing this route typically appoints a broadly representative, ad hoc committee to consider the act’s potential provisions and then draft a proposal based on the resulting consensus. There are 30 towns that have established their CAOs through special act, equating to 18% of all the codified administrators.
For a town considering codifying its CAO position, a survey of comparable communities is a good place to start. The DLS website has a Community Comparison report maker that can be used to assemble a group of peers to research for their codification status, methods, and provisions.
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Editor: Dan Bertrand
Editorial Board: Marcia Bohinc, Linda Bradley, Sean Cronin, Emily Izzo, Lisa Krzywicki and Tony Rassias
| Date published: | August 18, 2022 |
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