Letter: Village works better with professional leader

The Orland Park (OP) referendum to be voted on April 4 asks if the village should keep its current council-manager government. If the referendum fails, OP's council-manager government would be replaced by a de facto mayor-council government (called a trustee-village government in Illinois). This makes the mayor rather than the village manager the chief executive and administrator.

Good-government reformers developed the council-manager form to make it harder for elected officials to engage in corruption, by inserting a neutral professional between the politicians and vulnerable decisions.

Further, very seldom would elected office holders have the needed professional experience and education.

And, since elected office holders are directly responsible to their voters (and therefore their financial backers), they would be more likely to make decisions based on interest group and partisan benefits instead of sound economics.

One need only look at managerial incompetence and corruption in Chicago and other mayor-council cities to see what happens when politicians rather than professionals run them. A recent study reported that mayor-council municipalities were 2.3 times more likely to have corruption convictions than council-manager municipalities (https://doi.org/10.1111/puar.13050).

All empirical studies I Googled reported that after accounting for other influences, council-manager towns were more efficient, had lower tax rates and had stronger finances.

In short, OP is better served with a mayor and council limited to (a) making policy and (b) hiring/evaluating/firing a village manager. The professional manager as the village's CEO implements the policies of the mayor and council, leads the town's operations and hires his own subordinates.

That's exactly what happens now under OP's extant council-manager system.

So on the referendum question, should OP keep its current council-manager model, I hope you will vote "yes."

Larry Porter

Orland Park