City Council
Intergovernmental Collaboration
In order to be effective leaders in arenas like housing, economic development, and healthcare, mayors must work with other government officials to promulgate successful policies. Prior years of the Menino Survey have delved into mayoral relationships with higher levels of government, notably state legislatures and governors, as well as federal agencies and Congress. Perhaps the most important and unavoidable partner in pursuing policy at the local level is the city council. This makes mayors’ relationships with their city councils paramount to effective governance.
A large majority of mayors report having a cooperative relationship with their city councils. An overwhelming majority of mayors, 83 percent, believe their relationships with their city councils are either cooperative or very cooperative, with only 11 percent describing their working relationship as adversarial. Mayors thus largely believe that they have an effective and willing partner in their city councils.
Figure 26: Relationship with the City Council
What best describes your relationship with your city council (or the rest of your city council)?
Two-thirds of mayors believe that their ideological leanings align with those of their city council. Sixty-four percent rated their city councils’ ideology as “about the same”as theirs. Sixteen percent of mayors described their city councils’ ideologies as more conservative than their own. And 19 percent believed their city councils were more liberal than themselves. In most cities, mayors largely see their preferences as aligned with those of their councils. Similarly, this likely helps to explain mayors’ views that their relationships with their councils are cooperative.
Figure 27: City Council Ideology
How does your city council (or the rest of the city council) compare to you ideologically?
Large majorities of mayors believe they wield at least some influence over their city council. Further confirming mayors’ positive perceptions of their relationships with their city councils, only 4 percent of mayors believe that they had little or no influence over them. In contrast, 23 percent feel that they have a great deal of influence, and 30 percent describe themselves as holding “a lot” of influence over their city councils. Taken in concert, these results suggest that mayors believe they can work well with their city government partners to accomplish important policy goals and that when they work together, mayors believe that it is they themselves who shape the discussion.
Figure 28: Influence Over the City Council
In general, how much influence do you have over decisions made by the city council?
According to mayors, some groups are well-represented by their city councils, while others — notably Asian Americans, Hispanics, low-income people, renters, and immigrants — are underrepresented. We asked mayors how well their city councils represent the interests of a series of income, racial, and age groups. Mayors exhibited striking variation. Strong majorities of mayors believed that the voices and perspectives of Democrats, high-income people, middle-income people, and senior-citizens were proportionally represented by their city councils. In contrast, majorities of mayors worried that Hispanics, Asian Americans, immigrants, low-income individuals, and renters are under-represented by their councils. Interestingly, mayors appear hesitant to describe any group as over-represented; only a quarter of mayors labeled Democrats and senior citizens as over-represented by their city councils — by far the highest for any grouping. In sum, while mayors believe that their city councils are largely good governing partners, they have some reservations about the representativeness of these legislative bodies on at least some important dimensions.
Figure 29: Representation on the City Council
How well are each of the following voices and perspectives represented on the city council?