When county administrator Verna McDaniel announced her retirement in February, her bosses on the county commission asked her to stay while they searched for a successor. But they also played a wild card: “We’re having conversations about having an elected county executive rather than an appointed county administrator,” says commissioner Conan Smith.

Since its founding in 1824, the county’s been governed by elected commissioners and run by hired staff. Why change now? One commissioner who asked not to be quoted by name says it comes down to leadership: with power split between elected and appointed officials, “We hide behind the administrator, and the administrator hides behind us.”

Ann Arbor commissioner Andy LaBarre, who raised the issue, says now’s the best time to have the discussion: “We don’t want to do it in the middle of [an administrator’s] term when somebody could get offended.”

LaBarre is all for the change. “We elect people to make life-and-death decisions in the sheriff and prosecutor,” he says. “We should add the administrator of the general fund, and we should empower them to lead the county and be accountable directly to voters.”

“I’m worried because the county is a $200 million endeavor, and that’s a lot to manage,” responds commission chair Felicia Brabec, who prefers the present system. “Plus it takes certain qualities to be an administrator, and I worry some of those things would get lost when there’s campaigning.”

“I’m on the fence,” says Smith. “The pros are largely political. The citizenry get direct control rather than by proxy, and it allows the board to focus on the budget … The flip side is there’s a tremendous risk of putting someone in charge who has no skills.”

Even LaBarre concedes that downside: “You could elect an idiot.”

County governance, corrected

“Commissioners haven’t been around since 1824,” Tom Bletcher emailed in response to our April Up Front on the debate about switching from an appointed county administrator to an elected county executive. Until the 1960s, he explained, “Counties were governed by the Elected County Officers, with the advice and consent, primarily budgetary, of what was referred to as the ‘Board of Supervisors,’ which met more or less quarterly, adopted a budget in October, and heard the annual reports of the County Officers … the board was comprised of the Supervisors of the County’s Townships, with appointed representatives of the Cities within the County.”