Topeka did not drift from commissioners to a city manager. It voted out the commission form in 1984 because five elected department heads could not run a modern city as one enterprise.

 Topeka has not had one form of government. It has had four. The “street commissioner / water commissioner / police commissioner” era you remember is the commission form, used from 1910 to 1985. The city left it for reasons that still show up in today’s fights over the city manager and the mayor.

This is a research synopsis you can take into a Citizen Government Review Committee process later.

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The four eras

Period	Form	Who ran day-to-day	Who set policy
1857–1910	Mayor–Council	Mayor plus appointed officers (street commissioner, marshal, fire marshal, water superintendent, engineer)	Mayor + ward council
1910–1985	Commission	Five elected officials who were the department heads	Same five people
1985–2005	Strong mayor–council–CAO	Elected mayor, with a hired Chief Administrative Officer	Mayor + 9 district council members
2005–present	Council–manager (Topeka charter hybrid)	Appointed city manager	9 district council members + at-large mayor

City budget books and old city pages all use this same four-era sequence. Voters rejected a city-manager plan five times before they finally adopted one: 1929, 1952, 1962, 1964, and 1969.

Topeka is also unusual in Kansas: the charter requires a Citizen Government Review Committee about every decade. Staff have said Topeka is the only Kansas city that does this on purpose. The 2025 committee already reported; the governing body is still picking through those recommendations in 2026.

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What the old “commissioner” government actually was

Two different things get mixed together in memory.

Before 1910, under mayor–council, Topeka already had a street commissioner, city marshal, fire marshal, engineer, and water-works superintendent. Those were appointed officers, not independently elected department bosses. Early directories list them by name.

In 1910, Topeka switched to the Progressive Era commission plan (Galveston after the 1900 storm, then the Des Moines model). Kansas authorized it for first-class cities in 1907 and tightened the law in 1909. Topeka adopted it at a special election on November 2, 1909. First commissioners took office in 1910. First commission mayor was Julius B. Billard.

The structure was simple and concentrated:

• One mayor and four commissioners, all elected at-large, usually on a nonpartisan ticket.
• After the election, the five of them assigned the departments among themselves.
• Typical Topeka split, reported in 1911:
  • Mayor: police and fire
  • Commissioner: water works and street lighting
  • Commissioner: streets and engineering / public improvements
  • Commissioner: parks, public buildings, sanitation
  • Commissioner: finance and revenue

They were both the city legislature and the department heads. They passed ordinances, levied taxes, hired and fired, and ran streets, water, police, and fire themselves. Civil service was part of the Kansas first-class-city commission law. Salaries in the early years were modest (about $2,500 mayor / $1,800 commissioners in one contemporary report).

That is the government people mean when they say “we used to have a street commissioner and a water commissioner.” Those titles were not side jobs. They were five elected executives sitting as a board.

Nationally this form was sold as businesslike reform: kill ward machines, collapse a large council, put named people in charge of named departments, add initiative/referendum/recall. Kansas cities piled onto it between 1908 and 1911. Topeka was part of that wave.

Why cities later abandoned it

The same features that made it attractive in 1910 became the case against it by the 1970s–80s:

1. No single executive. Five bosses, five fiefdoms. Streets could fight water; finance could starve parks; nobody owned the whole city.
2. Legislators running departments. A person elected to “fix the streets” also voted on the police budget. Politics and operations were the same job.
3. Amateur administration as the city grew. A miller, barber, ironworker, merchant, and house-mover could run a 1910 city of ~44,000. A late-20th-century city with utilities, federal grants, labor contracts, and a professional police/fire force needed different skills.
4. Weak checks. The same five people made the law and executed it.
5. The form itself was dying nationally. Birmingham, Tulsa, and Topeka are all cited as cities that left commission government for mayor–council. Very few mid-size U.S. cities still use classic commission government. Portland is the famous holdout, and even Portland has spent decades arguing about it.

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Why Topeka left the commission form in 1984–85

This was not a sudden impulse. It came out of the first Citizen Government Review Committee (1983–84).

• 16 members, appointed by the four commissioners and the mayor.
• Six public hearings, weekly meetings from August 1983 through March 1984.
• Recommendation: replace commission government with a strong mayor–council–chief administrative officer plan.
• That went to the November 1984 ballot and passed. The new form started in 1985. Doug Wright, already mayor under the old system, was re-elected into the new one.

What they were buying:

• A citywide elected chief executive (the mayor) who hired the people around him, more like a governor than a fifth commissioner.
• A nine-member district council so neighborhoods had a seat, instead of five at-large department heads.
• A hired CAO under the mayor for professional administration, without giving the CAO independent executive power.

The 1983 committee also talked city–county consolidation. That part went nowhere; later state law made consolidation much harder.

The next review committee (1989–91) did not change the form again. Its fight was the one that never goes away in Topeka: what is the mayor’s job versus the council’s job? The governing body adopted some of those recommendations and ignored others. That pattern is still the rule. The committee writes; the council and mayor decide.

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Why Topeka left the strong-mayor form in 2004

This is the change that produced the current system, and the one most tied to personalities.

Trigger: Mayor Harry “Butch” Felker’s second tour (2001–2003) ended in ethics/fraud allegations and removal. The council named James McClinton interim/successor mayor. Council members used the scandal as the opening to put form-of-government on the ballot.

Mechanics:

• July 20, 2004: council passed Charter Ordinance 94 (6–3). Then-Mayor McClinton was told he could not vote on it. Bill Bunten later argued that was illegal because the “governing body” was 10 people and a charter ordinance needed two-thirds of 10, not 9. That fight is now time-barred.
• November 2, 2004: voters approved council–manager about 66% to 34% (city sources also say “2 to 1”). Effective April 2005.

What changed on paper:

• The mayor stopped being chief executive.
• The CAO, who had reported to the mayor, was replaced by a city manager hired and fired by a majority of the governing body.
• The manager hires/fires department heads, prepares the budget, and runs operations.
• The mayor kept the four-year at-large election, ceremonial role, meeting gavel, some legislative recommendation power, intergovernmental face, and a veto on certain home-rule ordinances.

McClinton declined to run for a full term and said future mayors would “basically cut ribbons and shake hands.”

The academic write-up in More Than Mayor or Manager is blunt: Topeka did not switch because council-manager is theoretically perfect. It switched because strong-mayor politics had produced scandal and a credibility problem, and voters reached for the Progressive remedy they had rejected five times before—professional management, weaker elected executive.

Buyer’s remorse showed up quickly

By 2017, former Mayor Bill Bunten—who had supported the 2004 change—had flipped:

“I now believe the No. 1 person in government, at any level, should be an elected official. … If there’s an agenda by a majority of the council, the manager’s decisions may not be the best ones, and the mayor has little input. A strong mayor answers to the voters.”

Mayor Larry Wolgast kept the manager form but described the real-world gap: residents still treat the mayor as the executive (“Can you take care of this?”), while the charter says the mayor has no administrative powers. He called the mayor’s role “still being worked out by the people of Topeka.” A 2015 charter change expanded the mayor’s vote. Power struggles over the manager’s authority (including a 2016 fight over lending executives) have been recurring.

That is the system you are looking at now.

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What Topeka actually has today (not textbook council-manager)

Textbook council-manager: council is the legislature; manager is the CEO; mayor is often chosen from the council and is mostly a chair.

Topeka’s charter version is a hybrid:

• 9 district council members + 1 at-large mayor = 10-member governing body.
• Mayor is citywide elected, not picked from the council.
• Mayor votes with the body on most items, but home-rule ordinances are a special case (veto / when the mayor votes is a running legal puzzle even for city attorneys).
• Deputy mayor, chosen by the council, assigns committees—real power.
• City manager is the one employee the governing body hires and fires. Staff have described it as the manager having “10 bosses all the time.” That is exactly the micromanagement problem you named.
• Manager appoints police chief, fire chief, public works director, and the rest.
• Charter still requires periodic citizen review of the form itself.

So the 2004 vote did two opposite things at once: it professionalized administration and left a citywide mayor who looks like an executive to the public but is not one on paper. Every mayor since has tried to enlarge that space. Every council majority has tried to keep the manager as their employee, not the mayor’s.

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Side-by-side: what each form is good and bad at

Commission (1910–1985)
Strengths: Clear names on departments. Fast decisions in a small board. Voters could punish the street guy or the water guy directly. Simple org chart.
Weaknesses: No one ran the whole city. Department silos. Elected people as operating managers. Politics inside every utility and public-safety shop. Form aged poorly as the city got more complex.

Strong mayor–CAO (1985–2005)
Strengths: One elected official answers to the whole city. Can set direction, hire a team, be the public face of economic development. Matches how residents already think government works.
Weaknesses: Quality depends entirely on who wins. Felker is the exhibit. A mayor who wants to “control the world” can do it. Council can become a spectator or a war camp. Professional staff turn over with each mayor.

Council–manager (2005–now)
Strengths: Professional CEO, continuity when mayors change, council theoretically stays in policy not potholes, ICMA-style administration that most Kansas large cities use.
Weaknesses in the Topeka version: Manager serves 10 elected bosses with district incentives. Council can micromanage hiring, contracts, and project-level decisions. Mayor has a citywide mandate but limited tools, so the office either becomes ceremonial or becomes a rival power center. Accountability is blurry: if streets fail, is it the manager, the district council member, or the mayor who cannot fire the public works director?

Your diagnosis matches the structural complaint, not a fringe one. Bunten, Wolgast, and the 2010 academic case study all described the same tension: professional management versus an elected person the public can hold responsible.

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Why the city kept changing—compressed

1. 1910: Progressive reform. Ward council and patronage looked corrupt and slow. Commission = “run the city like a board of directors.”
2. 1985: Commission looked amateur and fragmented for a modern capital city. First citizen review committee recommended a strong elected executive plus a hired administrator.
3. 2005: Strong mayor looked personally dangerous after Felker. Voters bought professional insulation from politics—the same manager plan they had rejected five times.

Each change solved the last crisis and created the next one.

• Commission solved machine politics and created fiefdoms.
• Strong mayor solved fiefdoms and created personality risk.
• Manager solved personality risk and created a 10-boss professional who can be boxed in, plus a mayor with a mandate and a short leash.

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How you actually change it later

Form-of-government change in Topeka is not a council motion. The path is:

1. Citizen Government Review Committee studies the charter and sends recommendations. It cannot enact anything.
2. Governing body accepts, rejects, or rewrites.
3. A charter ordinance (two-thirds of the governing body) is required to alter the form.
4. A citywide vote is required to actually change the form, as in 1984 and 2004.

The 2025 CGRC already finished a cycle (report around mid-2025). From 2026 Policy & Finance packets, they recommended no change to the number of council members, election method, or terms. They did recommend a city auditor, cleaner follow-up on board recommendations, redistricting-commission changes, and better city–county cooperation language. Some of that is still moving through committee. A member of that 2025 committee also said on the record that they had not heard a case for dropping the manager in a city this size.

So the next full “should we change the form?” window is the next charter review cycle—unless the governing body puts a charter question on a ballot sooner.

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Questions worth taking into a future citizen commission

If the goal is evaluation rather than nostalgia, these are the useful tests:

1. Who can fire the police chief and public works director, and in front of whom? Under commission: the board. Under strong mayor: the mayor. Under manager: the manager, unless the council leans on him.
2. Who does a citizen call when a department fails? If the honest answer is “it depends,” the form is already leaking accountability.
3. Is the mayor supposed to lead, or chair? Topeka has never settled this. 1989–91, 2014, 2015, and 2017 were all the same argument.
4. Can a manager serve 10 bosses and still manage? If the council is in the weeds on staff and contracts, you do not have council-manager. You have a nine-member commission with a hired clerk called a manager.
5. Would returning to elected department heads recreate 1970s silos? Streets vs. water vs. police as political brands is exactly why the 1983 committee killed the old form.
6. Is the real problem the form, or the incentive structure? District council + weak at-large mayor + at-will manager is a design that rewards district casework and majority stacking, not citywide operations.
7. What problem are you solving this time? 1910 = patronage. 1985 = no CEO. 2004 = corrupt/strong mayor. A new change needs a similarly clear diagnosis, or it will just be the next pendulum swing.

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Bottom line for the file

Topeka did not drift from commissioners to a city manager. It voted out the commission form in 1984 because five elected department heads could not run a modern city as one enterprise. It voted out the strong mayor in 2004 because the elected enterprise leader had just blown up. The current charter tries to keep professional administration and a citywide mayor at the same time. That compromise is why the manager can look micromanaged and the mayor can look like he wants to run the world: the charter gave each of them half a job, and both keep reaching for the other half.

You pay the half-cent at the register, anywhere in Shawnee County.

The countywide half-cent, in plain English

If you buy something in Shawnee County, you pay it. Topeka, Auburn, Silver Lake, Rossville, and the country roads. It is one half of one percent. It is not the city’s one-cent tax. It is not the city’s separate half-cent for street maintenance. Those are different taxes. This one is the county’s.

Voters created it in steps.

• November 7, 2000: a quarter-cent, for economic development.
• 2004: that quarter-cent was replaced by a half-cent, starting January 1, 2005, for economic development and named road and bridge work.
• November 4, 2014: voters extended the half-cent for fifteen years. It runs from January 1, 2017, through December 31, 2031. The campaign was “Vote Roads. Vote Jobs. Vote Zoo.”

Where the money goes before anybody spends it

The state collects the tax. Kansas law then divides a countywide sales tax between the county and the cities inside it. Topeka and Shawnee County signed an interlocal agreement that puts those shares back together for the uses on the ballot.

That pile is not one check to one office. The 2016 agreement split it:

• $5 million a year for economic development, $75 million over the fifteen years
• $45 million for the Expocentre
• $32.5 million for bridges outside the city
• $10 million for the Topeka Zoo
• $3.5 million for the bikeways plan
• and the named street projects

What JEDO is

JEDO is the Joint Economic Development Organization. It is not a company. It is a board the city and the county created in 2001 to watch this money.

Seven people vote: the three county commissioners, the mayor, the deputy mayor, and two city council members. The other six council members sit in the room and do not vote. Auburn, Silver Lake, and Rossville pay the tax. They do not get a seat.

JEDO’s own page says the half-cent is for economic development. That sentence is incomplete. Economic development is one slice. Roads, bridges, the zoo, the Expocentre, and the bikeways are the rest.

What GO Topeka is

GO Topeka does not levy the tax. GO Topeka does not sit on the ballot. GO Topeka is a private nonprofit, tied to the Greater Topeka Partnership and the Chamber. JEDO hires it to spend the economic-development slice.

The agreement people were shown set that slice at $5 million a year. GO Topeka’s own 2024 budget then booked $10,985,862 as “Economic Development Sales Tax,” and labeled that about 16 percent of the countywide half-cent. That is the allotment. Incentives, salaries, marketing, and the grants and sponsorships come out of that check, not out of a separate charity fund.

The path of one dollar

1. You pay the half-cent at the register, anywhere in Shawnee County.
2. The state collects it and divides it between the county and the cities.
3. The interlocal agreement pulls the program money under JEDO.
4. JEDO keeps the road, bridge, zoo, and Expocentre money on those projects.
5. JEDO pays GO Topeka the economic-development allotment.
6. GO Topeka writes the checks.

The voter approved the tax. The elected board holds it. The private contractor spends the jobs slice. Those are three different steps. A banquet check is written at step six, with money that left your receipt at step one.

The countywide half-cent, in plain English

Tf you buy something in Shawnee County, you pay it. Topeka, Auburn, Silver Lake, Rossville, and the country roads. It is one half of one percent. It is not the city’s one-cent tax. It is not the city’s separate half-cent for street maintenance. Those are different taxes. This one is the county’s.

Voters created it in steps.

• November 7, 2000: a quarter-cent, for economic development.
• 2004: that quarter-cent was replaced by a half-cent, starting January 1, 2005, for economic development and named road and bridge work.
• November 4, 2014: voters extended the half-cent for fifteen years. It runs from January 1, 2017, through December 31, 2031. The campaign was “Vote Roads. Vote Jobs. Vote Zoo.”

Where the money goes before anybody spends it

The state collects the tax. Kansas law then divides a countywide sales tax between the county and the cities inside it. Topeka and Shawnee County signed an interlocal agreement that puts those shares back together for the uses on the ballot.

That pile is not one check to one office. The 2016 agreement split it:

• $5 million a year for economic development, $75 million over the fifteen years
• $45 million for the Expocentre
• $32.5 million for bridges outside the city
• $10 million for the Topeka Zoo
• $3.5 million for the bikeways plan
• and the named street projects

What JEDO is

JEDO is the Joint Economic Development Organization. It is not a company. It is a board the city and the county created in 2001 to watch this money.

Seven people vote: the three county commissioners, the mayor, the deputy mayor, and two city council members. The other six council members sit in the room and do not vote. Auburn, Silver Lake, and Rossville pay the tax. They do not get a seat.

JEDO’s own page says the half-cent is for economic development. That sentence is incomplete. Economic development is one slice. Roads, bridges, the zoo, the Expocentre, and the bikeways are the rest.

What GO Topeka is

GO Topeka does not levy the tax. GO Topeka does not sit on the ballot. GO Topeka is a private nonprofit, tied to the Greater Topeka Partnership and the Chamber. JEDO hires it to spend the economic-development slice.

The agreement people were shown set that slice at $5 million a year. GO Topeka’s own 2024 budget then booked $10,985,862 as “Economic Development Sales Tax,” and labeled that about 16 percent of the countywide half-cent. That is the allotment. Incentives, salaries, marketing, and the grants and sponsorships come out of that check, not out of a separate charity fund.

The path of one dollar

1. You pay the half-cent at the register, anywhere in Shawnee County.
2. The state collects it and divides it between the county and the cities.
3. The interlocal agreement pulls the program money under JEDO.
4. JEDO keeps the road, bridge, zoo, and Expocentre money on those projects.
5. JEDO pays GO Topeka the economic-development allotment.
6. GO Topeka writes the checks.

The voter approved the tax. The elected board holds it. The private contractor spends the jobs slice. Those are three different steps. A banquet check is written at step six, with money that left your receipt at step one.

Read them as two different opinions. One is your case. The other is the one they will wave at you, and it does not say what they will claim it says.

2017-015 is about leftover money, not the program

Attorney General Opinion 2017-015 was written October 30, 2017, to Lisa Robertson, then City Attorney of Topeka. She asked two questions.

1. Does the law prohibit the City from spending excess sales-tax proceeds on items that were not listed on the ballot?
2. If it does, may the City decide what counts as “economic development”?

The ballot she put in front of the Attorney General is the 2004 ballot, not the ad and not the 2014 renewal. It repealed the quarter-cent the voters passed on November 7, 2000, and replaced it with a half-cent from January 1, 2005, through December 31, 2016. The listed uses were economic development plus seven named road and bridge jobs: Wanamaker, 45th, Croco, 29th, 21st, the Topeka Boulevard bridge and county bridges, and the 46th and Topeka Boulevard intersection.

Derek Schmidt’s answer is narrow. K.S.A. 12-187(g) requires the purpose on the ballot. The 2004 interlocal then pooled the City’s share and the County’s share and spent that pool on economic development and those seven projects. K.S.A. 12-189 says that once a special project has been paid for, revenue above the cost of that project goes to the general fund. K.S.A. 12-192 puts a city’s apportioned share in the city general fund.

The holding, in the opinion’s own words, is that nothing in Kansas law requires Topeka to spend that excess on the ballot list. Once the listed purposes were satisfied and the leftover dollars hit the general fund, the governing body could spend them for a public purpose.

Question 2 was never answered. Because excess money was no longer tied to the ballot list, the Attorney General said it was unnecessary to decide who defines economic development.

What 2017-015 does not hold:

• It does not say the economic-development stream itself may be spent on anything the board calls worthy.
• It does not define economic development, and it refused the chance to.
• It does not mention GO Topeka, grants, banquets, churches, or scholarships.
• It does not construe the tax that started January 1, 2017, and runs toward 2032. The opinion is about the tax that died December 31, 2016, and about dollars left after that tax’s projects were done.
• It does not say “we are still performing the contract” equals “the spending is legal.” That sentence is the Mayor’s, not the Attorney General’s.

If someone tells you 2017-015 freed the half-cent, hand them the first sentence of the question Robertson asked. The word is excess. Excess means money above the cost of a finished, pledged project. It does not mean this year’s GO Topeka appropriation.

2001-014 is the purpose rule

Opinion 2001-014, March 21, 2001, to Senator Jim Barone, is the one that matches the ad.

The synopsis is one sentence long. A city or county may use retailers’ sales-tax proceeds for economic development, provided the electorate approves such use.

The rest of the opinion is deference, and you should know it before they quote it at you. The Attorney General said public funds may be used for what promotes the public welfare, courts defer to a governing body on that, and economic development is a valid public purpose. He then said a city could give sales-tax money to a school if the governing body found that better schools attract industry. A court would probably not second-guess that finding.

That is as far as it goes. The electorate still has to approve the use. Home rule lets a board color inside “economic development.” It does not let a board repaint the ballot. A later opinion, 2012-017, says the same thing from the other direction: there is no statute that lets a city or county change the purpose of a sales tax the voters already adopted. You repeal it, or you pass a new tax. You do not amend it by practice.

2001-014 will be their best quote, and it is a real quote. A board gets room to decide that a workforce class, a site, or even a school lab is economic development because it helps land a payroll. A court will not micromanage a close call. A Freedom Fund table, a church dinner, or an awards-night sponsorship is not a close call unless someone is willing to write, in public, that the dinner is what brings the plant. 2001-014 requires that determination. It does not presume it. And 2017-015 left the definition question open on purpose.

How the two opinions fit the checks

Opinion	What it decides	What it does not decide
2001-014	Economic development is a lawful use of a sales tax only if voters approved that use. A board gets deference on close calls that actually serve that use.	It never mentions banquets, grants, or GO Topeka.
2017-015	After the 2005–2016 tax’s pledged projects were paid, leftover dollars in the City’s general fund were not frozen to the old ballot list.	It never defines economic development. It never frees the annual JEDO appropriation. It never reaches the tax now in force.

The Howey checks were not leftover bridge money. They were paid out of the live economic-development contract, the money JEDO sends GO Topeka to carry out the program. That stream is still inside the purpose the voters approved. 2017-015 says the purpose controls until the project is paid and a true excess exists. 2001-014 says the purpose is economic development, and only economic development, because that is the use the electorate approved.

Put the two opinions together and the question the Mayor would not ask is the only question left: is a banquet economic development under the ballot the voters actually marked? 2017-015 refused to answer it. 2001-014 says the voters’ approval is what makes the spending lawful. Neither opinion is a permission slip for the civic list.

Duncan day to day - The corner he painted himself into

 Duncan did three things at once. He refused the joint opinion. He restated the City’s position that the papers are lawful. He handed you the next move and then stepped away from it.

What he got right

He cannot order the County Counselor. City and County counsel work for different clients. A “joint written opinion” was always a political ask, not something a mayor can command across the street.

Jayhawk Racing Properties, LLC v. City of Topeka, 313 Kan. 149, 484 P.3d 250 (2021), is the Kansas Supreme Court case. City of Olathe v. City of Spring Hill, 316 Kan. 64, 512 P.3d 723 (2022), is the follow-on. Both draw a line: a council may not bind future councils to a governmental / legislative policy. It may bind them to a proprietary / administrative deal (pay a sum, buy a thing, maintain a service). Those cases do not say every multi-year city contract is void. Duncan is correct that citing them is not a blanket kill-shot.

An Attorney General formal opinion is requested by an elected official or a government agency, not by a private citizen acting alone. That is the AG’s published rule.

A policy review is not a confession that the contract is illegal. Do not treat his “we may look at allocations” sentence as a legal admission.

What he ducked

Your question was never only “is C-2019-01 a piece of paper that exists.” It was: may half-cent money pay banquets, church dinners, and awards tables. He did not answer that. He answered a different question — are the interlocal and the service agreement facially lawful — and then said the City would not keep performing if it thought they were invalid.

That last sentence is circular. Continuing to write checks does not prove the checks match the ballot. K.S.A. 12-187(g), AG 2001-014, and AG 2017-015 already exist. They were written for this kind of tax, and 2017-015 was written to Topeka about this tax. He does not need a new City Attorney memo to know the purpose stays on the ballot.

Jayhawk and Olathe also cut against him on the auto-renew. Those cases say one board cannot lock the next board into a governmental policy with no end date. Contract 2019-01 rolls forward unless someone gives 180 days’ notice. If hiring GO Topeka and defining “economic development” as whatever the contractor’s budget contains is a policy choice, a later JEDO can end it. That is the opposite of “we must keep performing.”

The corner he painted himself into

He told you the useful review is the Attorney General. He is Mayor. He is an elected official. He can request that opinion this afternoon. So can Cook, Hiller, any commissioner, the County Counselor, or the City Attorney.

If he will not request it, the sentence to use is: You named the referee and then declined to make the call.