It's Not About the Person — It's About the Structure
By Henry McClure
Topeka, Kansas operates under a council-manager form of government. That is not a minor administrative detail. It is the deliberate structural choice voters made more than two decades ago when they abandoned the strong-mayor system. The entire point of that form is to separate political leadership and policy-making (the elected mayor and city council) from professional, nonpartisan administration (the city manager). When the city manager sits as a director on the board of Go Topeka — the private nonprofit that receives and administers the bulk of the community's economic-development tax dollars — that separation collapses. This is not a personnel issue. It is not about any individual currently holding the office. It is a structural, policy, and ethical problem that would exist no matter who occupies the city manager's chair.
What Council-Manager Government Actually Means
Under the council-manager system used by Topeka (and the majority of American cities of our size), the elected City Council — including the mayor — sets policy, adopts the budget, and provides political direction. The city manager is hired by the council as a professional chief executive to implement those policies, manage day-to-day operations, prepare the budget for council consideration, and give objective advice. The manager serves at the pleasure of the council and can be removed by a simple majority.
The International City/County Management Association (ICMA), the professional body that sets the ethical standards for city managers nationwide, is crystal clear on the role: the manager must remain politically neutral, avoid activities that undermine public confidence in professional administration, and carefully manage any conflicting roles that create even the appearance of a conflict of interest. The manager is not a politician. The manager is not an advocate for private organizations. The manager is the professional hired to execute the will of the elected body without becoming entangled in the advocacy apparatus that seeks to influence that body.
What Go Topeka Actually Is
Go Topeka is not a city department. It is not a government agency. It is a private nonprofit organization — what is commonly called an NGO (non-governmental organization). Many Topekans have never heard the term, but it simply means a private entity that is not part of government yet often receives public money and performs functions that look governmental. Go Topeka operates under the Greater Topeka Partnership umbrella. It holds a long-standing service agreement with the Joint Economic Development Organization (JEDO), the public body created by interlocal agreement between the City of Topeka and Shawnee County.
JEDO is funded primarily by a half-cent countywide sales tax. Those are taxpayer dollars. JEDO then contracts with Go Topeka to design, market, and administer the community's economic-development programs, incentives, and recruitment efforts. In short: public money flows through a public body (JEDO) to a private NGO (Go Topeka) that then recommends, structures, and helps deliver the very incentive packages and development priorities that the City Council and County Commission later vote on — and that the city manager is responsible for implementing on the city side.
This arrangement already raises legitimate questions of accountability and transparency. Placing the city's top professional administrator on the board of the very NGO that lives off those tax dollars multiplies the problem.
Why Dual Service Is Inappropriate
The city manager sits, by virtue of the position, on the Go Topeka Board of Directors. That means the same individual who:
• Prepares and recommends the city budget that may include local matching funds or related economic-development line items; • Advises the mayor and council on the merits of specific incentive agreements, land deals, and development policies; • Implements the council's decisions once they are made; and • Is responsible for the performance of city departments that interact with Go Topeka and the projects it promotes
…is simultaneously a director of the private organization that is the primary recipient and implementer of those same programs. The dual role creates an inherent tension between the manager's duty of undivided loyalty to the City of Topeka and the fiduciary and strategic duties that board membership imposes toward Go Topeka's institutional interests.
Even if every vote is recused and every conversation is carefully walled off, the appearance of conflict remains. Appearance matters. The ICMA Code of Ethics specifically addresses “conflicting roles” and requires members to avoid participating in matters that create either a conflict or the perception of one, and to disclose such situations so the governing body can manage them. Serving on the board of the principal economic-development NGO that contracts with the public sector is precisely the kind of dual role the professional standards caution against.
This Is About Form of Government, Not Personalities
It is essential to be clear: this is not a call to fire or replace any particular city manager. It is not a personal attack. The problem exists because of the position, not the person. Any city manager who accepted a board seat on Go Topeka would face the identical structural conflict. The correct remedy is institutional: the City of Topeka should adopt a clear policy that the city manager (and likely other senior city administrators) shall not serve as voting or non-voting directors on the boards of private organizations that receive substantial public economic-development funds or that regularly advocate before the City Council on matters the manager must implement.
Elected officials — the mayor and council members — are political actors. They campaign, they take positions, they sit on boards if they choose. That is their role. The city manager is deliberately insulated from that world so that administration can remain professional, continuous, and nonpartisan. Putting the manager on the board of the community's most powerful economic-development NGO erases that insulation and turns the professional staff into part of the advocacy network. That is the opposite of what the council-manager form was designed to achieve.
Why It Matters for Ordinary Topekans
Most residents do not follow the bylaws of the Greater Topeka Partnership or the service agreement between JEDO and Go Topeka. They simply expect that when public tax dollars are spent on economic development, the process is transparent, competitive, and free of insider advantage. When the city's top administrator is simultaneously a board member of the organization that helps design and deliver those programs, public confidence erodes — whether or not any actual impropriety occurs. In a city that already struggles with trust in local institutions, the optics alone are damaging.
Moreover, the arrangement blurs the line between public policy and private organizational strategy. Go Topeka has institutional interests: maintaining its contract, growing its programs, demonstrating success to keep the sales-tax funding stream flowing. The city manager's sole institutional interest must be the City of Topeka and the policies adopted by its elected council. Those two interests are not always identical. When they diverge, the dual-hatted official is placed in an impossible position.
A Simple Fix
The solution is straightforward and requires no charter amendment. The City Council can, by simple resolution or policy, direct that the city manager shall not serve on the board of Go Topeka or any similar private economic-development organization that contracts with JEDO or receives substantial public funds for services that the city manager must implement or oversee. The mayor and council members remain free to participate as they see fit; they are elected politicians. The professional administrator should not.
This is not “politically incorrect” in the cultural sense. It is politically incorrect in the original, structural sense: it is incorrect under the political form of government Topeka chose. The council-manager system exists precisely so that professional administration remains independent of the political and advocacy networks that surround economic development. Putting the city manager on the Go Topeka board violates that design. It should stop.
The issue is not who holds the office. The issue is the office itself and the form of government that created it. Get the structure right, and personalities become far less important.
