When Hiring a City Manager – Remember Transparency

from Local Focus - 2nd Quarter 2022

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By David Clyne, Oregon City/County Management Association Senior Advisor

As a retired city manager and attorney with 40 years of public service and currently in service as an OCCMA Senior Advisor supporting the profession, I have thought a lot over the years about what goes into the proper recruitment of a city manager. Cities throughout Oregon, with few exceptions, employ city managers and are faced with the challenging proposition of recruitment from time to time. When undertaking such a recruitment, all of a sudden you are supposed to be a human resource professional, making one of the most profound decisions you will be faced with on behalf of your community. And the members of your community all of a sudden have lots of “free advice” and certainly want to be engaged in the decision. So how does that work? Many of our city leaders come from the private sector, where it seems it would be very troubling to hire

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According to Oregon law, finalists for the city manager position must be known publicly in advance of the interviews.

a chief executive by asking your customers, workforce, unions, and/or shareholders to weigh in on that decision. So why engage the public on this decision? Of course, you know at least one answer to this: transparency. Ultimately, the city manager is not only an employee of the city council, but they are an employee as well of the community that is being asked to pay those six-figure city manager salaries. Additionally, I would also argue that it is just the right thing to do to foster a collaborative climate in our communities and enhance the opportunity for a successful leadership team. Candidates for city manager positions know—or should know —this. If they are currently employed somewhere else, most understand that by the time they are considered finalists in a recruitment process they need to have had the “conversation” with their existing communities to prepare them as well for a possible change in leadership. None of us like surprises, and this certainly includes city councils that have adopted annual budgets and multi-year plans on the advice of the city’s management. Another reason to be public in the hiring of a city manager: it’s the law in Oregon. Yup. The funny thing is that many of the public sector recruiters don’t even know this. We’ve all been trained to look at the limited bases for executive sessions in ORS 192.660 (2) et. seq. Clearly (2)(a) provides the opportunity to meet privately to interview the candidates. However, city leaders also need to take a look at (7)(d) and particularly (7)(d)(C), which has been legally interpreted to mean that the finalists for the city manager position must be known publicly in advance of the interviews in executive session. Moreover, the public must have an opportunity in advance to comment on the finalists (not finalist). Typically, that has come to mean the final two or three candidates under consideration. So, in summary, keep the hiring of city managers transparent because it’s best practice and it’s the law. Also, for lots more information on this topic, the LOC has a recently updated resource on its website, A Guide to Recruiting a City Administrator, (bit.ly/3MXeRHA). About the Author – Mr. Clyne served as city manager in the city of Independence for nearly nine years before his retirement in 2018. Most recently, her served as interim city manager for the cities of Newberg, Falls City and Gresham, and taught at Western Oregon University. He’s also served as an OCCMA Senior Advisor since 2019, and today is dedicating himself to an actual retirement.