Determinants of a City Manager’s Tenure in Office

Appointed officials in municipalities influence policy decisionsand the distribution of services that affect everyday life. So stability or turnover ofappointed officials is likely to affect efficiency and effectiveness of criticalservices like police protection, fire fighting and prevention, land use regulation, andpublic utilities. Seeking to explain the relationship between four groups of variablesand appointed officials’ long or short terms in office, quantitative data collected froma random sample of appointed municipal officials in North Carolina were analyzed usinghierarchical logistic regression. Tenure in office divided at median years in office wasthe dichotomous dependent variable. Four groups of independent variables related to theperson, the job, the city, and election systems were entered hierarchically in fourlogistic regression models. Qualitative data collected from the same appointed officialsfurther explain the results of the quantitative analysis. Results show that competencein formulating and implementing budgets and city government experience lead to longerterms in office, higher education leads to shorter terms in office, and politicalvariables have no significant effect on appointed officials’ job security in NorthCarolina. This is useful information for city managers setting long-term career goals,citizens judging local governments’ service delivery, and elected officials makingdecisions about appointments and terminations