Clarence Ridley (1929–1956)

Clarence Ridley’s background included service as city manager of Bluefield, West Virginia; research work with the Institute of Public Administration in New York City; and time to get his Ph.D. in public administration at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. He was the first person to hold the ICMA post full time. Thanks to the Spelman Fund, a component of the Rockefeller Foundation, ICMA was financially able for the first time to set up an office with three full-time staff.

Ridley was an entrepreneur and builder. Working closely with Orin Nolting, the assistant director, Ridley brought out the first volume of The Municipal Year Book in 1934 (its 40th volume was published in 2014). In 1935, Ridley and Nolting launched the Municipal Management Series, the ICMA “Green Books,” with The American City and Its Government.

This book was intended to introduce city managers, most of whom were engineers by education and experience, to a new world of city government. Ridley fervently believed in on-the-job training for city managers, finance directors, police and fire chiefs, public works directors, and other managers as well.

Running a tight ship. In the 1930s, nickels and dimes were counted carefully. ICMA survived the Depression financially, but Ridley and Nolting ran a tight ship. Even minor expenditures were scrutinized in detail. Ridley was not a tightwad, but he expected justifications and results.

It’s important to note, however, that he was always courteous and friendly when he had to say “no.” He was a friend to staff proposals. I was never put down, ignored, or laughed at for my ideas.

During this time of tight finances, ICMA benefited greatly from the Spelman Fund, named after Laura Spelman Rockefeller. The fund was a life saver for ICMA and a dozen other associations representing public officials and such functional areas as public safety, property assessment, urban planning, and municipal finance.

It also financed an office building to house those organizations. Located at 1313 East 60th Street in Chicago, the building came to be known as “Thirteen Thirteen.”

The fund initially paid all ICMA expenses, with the grant reduced gradually each year, until it ended after 20 years. ICMA’s Management Information Service was set up in the mid-1940s in anticipation of the termination of grants.

Filling an information gap. One of Ridley’s most important contributions was his attendance at state manager meetings, where he filled an important information gap for managers and other members. We forget that in those times, most council-manager communities were isolated, both geographically and functionally.

Local government management often was a lonely job. The transportation and communication modes that we now take for granted—widespread air travel, the interstate highway system, the computer, the Internet—did not exist.

At state manager meetings, Ridley was like a nineteenth-century gospel preacher bringing news about salvation through management with an assist from Washington. Although at the time the New Deal included federal programs specifically aimed at local government problems, Washington was as psychologically remote as Moscow.

Ridley helped managers everywhere by providing information, insights, and even a bit of gossip to get managers, and their communities, moving along the road of federal-local relations. He brought the outside world to the front door.

Orin Nolting (1956–1967)

Orin Nolting was ICMA’s ambassador, a world traveler, who spread the word about council-manager government. He was especially active in Western Europe, where city managers may have enjoyed higher public approbation and professional respect than was true in the United States.

Nolting was quite at home in this environment, which built on public and political standing and organizational authority. Local government officials in Europe and elsewhere were eager to learn about city managers and the ways in which they worked, and Nolting was a good teacher.

At home, Nolting was a by-the-book director. The management “bibles” are cool toward this management style, arguing that too much in the way of innovation and development is lost. But it was a time for review and absorption.

A fiscal hawk. Nolting was skilled at significant elements of ICMA operations, including membership, the Institute for Training, the Management Information Service, and ancillary activities. And even more than Ridley, Nolting was a fiscal hawk. At times this could be a major aggravation for the ICMA staff, but Nolting always came through when it counted.

Here’s one of my favorite anecdotes. I was working with a California author on a chapter for a new edition of the fire services book. We needed to work together for a day or two on a particularly troublesome chapter.

The only cost would have been airfare of $200. The author would have met me at the airport and put me up at his home. Nolting said “no.” My nose was out of joint for a long time.

Several months later, I worked with a graphic designer who came up with a splendid new “look” for the ICMA training books: professional typography, inviting illustrations, a brand new format, and bright green covers. It would raise the cost of printing the books by thousands of dollars.

I went into Nolting’s office expecting a lengthy argument. I described the proposed change, produced samples, and laid out the additional costs. When I was finished, Nolting smiled and said, “Fine. I like it. Go ahead.”

To sum up, Nolting’s fiscal caution was aggravating, but he came through where it counted—the stabilization and professionalization of ICMA’s programs and products, and, in the end, the accumulation of a comfortable financial surplus.

Mark Keane (1967–1983)

Mark Keane was, in many ways, the managers’ manager. He was acutely aware of the pivotal position of the manager in guiding the flow of public activities through ideas, proposals, policies, actions, and effects.

He had been the city manager in Shorewood, Wisconsin; Oak Park, Illinois; and Tucson, Arizona, so he knew the territory firsthand. He had a keen sense of interrelationships. The council-manager world had broadened to include other governments, citizen associations, and educational institutions.

A personal and professional force. Keane understood the force of professionalism. Management skills were being supplemented with political and professional skills. We sometimes forget how much the cultural environment had changed by the 1960s. Not only in theater and the arts, but also in education, employment, gender relations, race relations—the list is long.

Successful managers are like Keane: They can identify and work with both the political and cultural values of their cities and counties.

Turning to the personal side, Keane exercised authority with warmth—a partnership to achieve goals. He always listened. He strongly believed in gender equity and racial equality, and that showed up in recruitment and staff development at a time when women and racial minorities were underrepresented in professional jobs.

Keane can be credited with significant accomplishments:

The National Training and Development Service. NTDS was established with foundation grants to help governments develop the self-contained capacity to plan, organize, and conduct employee training as a permanent part of governmental operations.

Public Technology Incorporated. PTI was formed to help governments, especially local governments, locate, develop, and exploit scientific findings that would foster and expedite local government operations.

The ICMA Retirement Corporation. ICMA-RC was established in the early 1970s under Mark Keane’s guidance and with a grant from the Ford Foundation, to meet the need of city and county managers to have well-funded, financially sound, portable retirement plans. While managers could participate in state-administered plans, they frequently moved from city to city, often in different states, sharply reducing their financial benefits. ICMA-RC was—and is—a national program for public employees that enables them to transfer accumulated retirement assets between employers.

The “Big Seven.” Keane founded and organized the Big Seven, a group comprising the executive directors of associations representing state governments, state legislators, governors, counties, mayors, and cities—plus ICMA. It provided both immediate and long-term advantages; information exchange; news about federal government actions; joint activities; and a sharing of professional, social, political, and administrative news.

Memorable Results

The Big Seven continues to roll along. ICMA-RC is a huge financial and employee benefit success, today serving more than a million participant accounts and roughly 10,000 retirement savings plans across the U.S. PTI has evolved into the Public Technology Institute and continues its work in technological developments affecting state and local governments.

During the tenure I shared with Clarence Ridley, Orin Nolting, and Mark Keane, the array of leadership skills that characterized these ICMA executive directors built the foundation for one of the most cosmopolitan and effective associations of public officials in local government.

David Arnold was a member of the ICMA staff from 1949 until his retirement in 1985. 

WILLIAM HANSELL (1983–2002)

He connected with people everywhere he went and had an uncanny ability to remember personal details about their lives, even if he had not seen them for a year or two.

Bill taught me a lot. I watched the master politician tell his colleagues in the Big Seven national associations, “I’m not a politician.” They laughed, because he knew politics better than most of them. Bill was a risk taker, which gave me the courage to take more risks myself. He always made time for people, calling members who had lost their jobs or who were struggling with a personal or professional issue.

STRATEGIC INITIATIVES

I’ve had the privilege to work for three ICMA executive directors and each one has been a strategic leader. Bill’s legacy as executive director is as large as his personality was. He pressed ICMA to stretch itself financially to become a building owner with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and ICMA-RC.

When we moved into our new building in 1990, ICMA also launched a strategic planning process, signed an affiliation agreement with the Hispanic Network, initiated a citizen education project, established a Future Visions Consortium, hired a public information officer to focus on council-manager government advocacy, embarked upon its first major international project with the U.S Agency for International Development, and changed its name to the International City/County Management Association. That’s what life was like with Bill Hansell at the helm.

Perhaps the most significant contribution Bill made was to give ICMA members a greater focus on their professional development. In 1994, following a two-year Dialogue on the Profession, ICMA established the ICMA University, a comprehensive approach to lifelong learning. To better define and recognize local government managers and their commitment to continuous professional development, ICMA established a voluntary credentialing program in 2001.

A MASTER OPTIMIST

Bill described himself as riding a tricycle on the information highway in a November 1995 issue of PM magazine “Director’s Desk” column: “I’ve been hearing new words and phrases like fax me, PCs, laptops, e-mail, the information highway, and cruising the ‘net. It all scared the daylights out of me. Here I was, trying to lead ICMA into this new era, and I didn’t even know how to turn on a personal computer, let alone know what the thing could do!”

Although Bill retired from ICMA in 2002, he remained active and even accepted appointment as the executive of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, in 2012, filling out an unexpired term. His health took a precipitous decline in 2013, but he found the energy to write a tribute from his hospital bed to former ICMA Executive Director Mark Keane, who passed away in April 2013. Bill resigned from the Lehigh County position in May before he passed away in June 2013.

Bill had an infectious optimism. As he wrote about the promise and the peril of new technologies in that November 1995 PM, he said, “If you find all of this intimidating, don’t! Jump in, the water’s fine, and it’s even a lot of fun.”

 Elizabeth Kellar is president/CEO, Center for State and Local Government Excellence, Washington, D.C.