Aurora’s Mike Coffman is among Colorado’s most capable mayors. He has an extraordinary skill set developed through decades of public service – in Congress, in statewide elected office, in the military.

Yet, as the top elected official in Colorado’s No. 3 city, Coffman is constrained by the the fact that he only presides over Aurora’s city government. He doesn’t actually run it the way his counterparts do next door in Denver or down I-25 in Colorado Springs and Pueblo.

In those cities, a “strong mayor” serves as city government’s CEO, with full authority over the municipal bureaucracy. Aurora’s mayor, by contrast, is essentially just another City Council member. He wields the gavel at meetings and breaks ties on council votes.

That not only limits the city’s ability to tap the true potential of a mayor like Coffman but, more fundamentally, it limits the accountability of city government to the people of Aurora. The city’s reliance on an unelected “city manager” – a common but outdated carryover from Progressive Era politics over a century ago – almost ensures that City Hall and the vast array of services it provides will be less attuned to public priorities and less responsive to public concerns.

With a strong mayor – a form of government ushered in by Colorado Springs and Pueblo voters in just the past dozen years – the buck stops at the mayor’s office. The mayor takes the blame when things go wrong and is under public pressure to make things right again.

As reported in The Gazette on Thursday, Aurora citizens who want that kind of public accountability at City Hall are now circulating petitions to place a strong-mayor proposal on the November municipal ballot. There are details to work out, but it’s a sound and smart idea that merits the public’s support. We hope it succeeds.

In a strong-mayor system, the city manager role is eliminated, and the mayor serves as the executive directly in charge of the city’s operations. A strong mayor drafts the city budget and presents it to the council for approval; hires and fires staff at City Hall, and appoints department heads. A strong mayor also wields veto power over council legislation that can be overridden by a super-majority council vote.

There are other benefits. Aurora’s current council is sometimes riven between a pragmatic majority that, commendably, wants to attend to the basics of local government, and a dissenting minority that embraces notions from the political fringe. It can lead to needless, marathon debates and epic standoffs. A strong mayor who just wants to take care of business – as do most Aurorans – could sidestep the spats and move ahead with urgent initiatives.

And while entrenched bureaucracies are a fact of life in all forms of government, at all levels, they’re less likely to idle, or operate obliviously on autopilot, when the boss who has ultimate hiring and firing authority over them has to answer to the press and public. That’s why one current council member’s criticism of a strong mayor, as reported in The Gazette – that it could prompt frequent turnover of City Hall staff – seems like a good thing in its own right.

If the proposal makes it onto the ballot and is approved, voters also would have to pick a new mayor. Whether that’s Coffman or anyone else, the office’s new job description would assure far greater accountability to the voting, taxpaying public. Aurorans deserve that.

Denver Gazette Editorial Board