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Increasingly, I hear local government managers talk disparagingly and with frustration about the councilmembers they work for. I also observe elected officials thrusting managers into the policy lime-light – either in response to council ineptness or through a conscious choice. These trends challenge the viability of democracy in a professionally administered local government – a form of government whose rationale is deeply embedded in a healthy respect for politics and in the belief that in some increasingly indistinct yet fundamental way there is a difference between politics and administration. These observations lead me to the following conclusions: 1. Legislative bodies do not fully perform their legitimate role of allocating values because issues coming before them are more complex, conflictive, and ambiguous than ever before. 2. Managers play an increasingly political role in professional local government in response to the abdication or ineptness of political leadership by elected leaders. 3. Despite the need for political leadership and the ideal position the manager is in to fill this void, democracy suffers as legislative oversight is weakened. 4. While we cannot expect to see councils regaining the legislative oversight the Progressives idealized during the reform movement, we are seeing a democratization of administration that is legitimizing the political role of the administrator.

For years, we who are involved in local government have treated citizen engagement as an option to enhance policymaking and community building in local government. I would argue that now engagement no longer is an option; it is imperative. It is made mandatory by the challenging and often confusing context of contemporary local governance, increasingly characterized by the ad hoc presence of foundations, nongovernmental organizations, private firms, and other nongovernmental actors in processes and decisions that significantly affect community development and well-being. If we are to anticipate effectively and plan for coherence in community building as an overarching goal of professionalism in local government, we must find a way to channel toward the collective good the diversity of actors, their energy, and their collaborative minds. One way to do this is through a significant commitment and more systematic approach to planned citizen engagement. To understand the role of engagement, first we must distinguish two types. The initial form is spontaneous. This is the expression of citizenship that local government professionals have grown to expect and often dismiss as emotion driven, self-interested, and influence yielding. Planned engagement, an alternative form, has taken time to reach a place of legitimacy in the administrative arsenal in part, I would maintain, because we lump all engagement under the same rubric—the one we would prefer to avoid! But we must realize that planned engagement is different. It leads to an expression of the rational community mind as it deals with issues of community importance, as a balance to the emotion that comes from the heart in spontaneous engagement.

It has been acknowledges for a long time that city and county managers play a prominent role in policy making. It can be no other way. Managers set the council's agenda, for example, by calling the governing body's attention infrastructure issues of which it would not otherwise be aware. They develop alternatives for the council, and they make policy recommendations. This is expected of them, and they do it well. These administrative activities support the councils policy-making responsibility and its problem-solving capacity. Over time, local government professionals have effectively integrated this influential policy role with the sober, analytical, politically neutral foundation of their profession. But what happens when the manager is expected simultaneously to lead staff in an objective analysis of a complex project and to build political support for it? A case-study format is ideally suited to describing both the context and some ways of thinking about the role confusions produced when a local government manager is thrust into a political role. To address the question "What happens to a politically neutral chief administrative officer when expected to act politically?" I analyzed scholarly research, examined documents, read newspaper accounts, and interviewed several public servants, including Dennis Hays, chief administrative officer of the Unified Government of Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas (KCK).

The Local Government Management Fellows (LGMF) Program was begun in response to demographic trends predicting significant retirements of experienced local government executives. This will occur at the same time as political, economic, and social trends worldwide are thrusting into prominence the role of the local and regional governance. ICMA, in partnership with the International Hispanic Network, the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, and the National Forum for Black Public Administrators, established this one-year fellowship program – a full-time work experience – with participating local governments in order to give the best and most recent M.P.A., public policy, or public affairs master's-degree graduates an attractive opportunity to learn about and enter the local government management profession.

Local government professionals find themselves in the middle of two dynamic forces: administrative modernization and citizen engagement. Attention to one without recognition of the other renders governance ineffective. The key to effective professionalism in local governance is bridging the gaps in governance that these two trends create.

City management professional have identified four changes that have occurred over the past 10 years in their roles, responsibilities, and values. First, community building has become part of the city management professional's role and responsibility. Second, managers ave increasingly expected to facilitate participation and representation, and to develop partnerships. Third, there is less adherence to the council-manager plan as the "one best form "of government. And last, the manager's internal administrative vole has become more process oriented. At a time when the value of government is being questioned these changes provide direction for strengthening the local government professional's legitimacy in the eyes of citizens.

This study examines the different attitudes of newly elected officials and senior incumbents on variables that are considered to be the building blocks of the relationship between local elected officials and professional civil service staff. council respect for the city's professional staff; a clear understanding of the roles of council and the staff, and the governing body's commitment towards working as a group and toward consensus. Governing body members who have served for eight or more years show greater respect for staff, have greater role understanding, and value teamwork among their colleagues more than their newly elected counterparts. While there are differences, the attitudes of long-term officials appear to change little while in office. They enter office with the building blocks of their own success. These findings are based on a cross-sectional and modest longitudinal survey research design, supplemented by in-depth interviews.

What is different about politics and administration? The answer is found in the ways public officials experience and think about their work rather than in their behavior, according to John Nalbandian. Here, he differentiates ''constellations of logic'' that separate politics from administration and suggests that successful council-staff relations in local government depend upon the presence of a ''translator,'' usually the chief administrative officer. After outlining the elected official's role as an arbiter of values and community builder, Nalbandian suggests that professional staff's success in recognizing council needs-as the governing body experience them-and then configuring staff support within that context.