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.
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.
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:
- No single executive. Five bosses, five fiefdoms. Streets could fight water; finance could starve parks; nobody owned the whole city.
- Legislators running departments. A person elected to “fix the streets” also voted on the police budget. Politics and operations were the same job.
- 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.
- Weak checks. The same five people made the law and executed it.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why the city kept changing—compressed
- 1910: Progressive reform. Ward council and patronage looked corrupt and slow. Commission = “run the city like a board of directors.”
- 1985: Commission looked amateur and fragmented for a modern capital city. First citizen review committee recommended a strong elected executive plus a hired administrator.
- 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.
How you actually change it later
Form-of-government change in Topeka is not a council motion. The path is:
- Citizen Government Review Committee studies the charter and sends recommendations. It cannot enact anything.
- Governing body accepts, rejects, or rewrites.
- A charter ordinance (two-thirds of the governing body) is required to alter the form.
- 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.
Questions worth taking into a future citizen commission
If the goal is evaluation rather than nostalgia, these are the useful tests:
- 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.
- Who does a citizen call when a department fails? If the honest answer is “it depends,” the form is already leaking accountability.
- Is the mayor supposed to lead, or chair? Topeka has never settled this. 1989–91, 2014, 2015, and 2017 were all the same argument.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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