How the Movement to Improve Local Government Created Infrastructure That Excludes Most of It
By Alton Henley
Dean of Business, Montgomery College
ABSTRACT
The professionalization of local government over the past century was one of the great reforms of American public administration. It created city manager systems, credentialing programs, professional associations, and a knowledge infrastructure of journals, conferences, and training. But this infrastructure was built by and for professionalized governments—and it systematically excludes the communities that can’t afford professionalization. Today, roughly 75% of American municipalities operate without professional managers, outside the associations that conduct research, and beyond the networks that distribute knowledge and resources. The reform movement’s success created a trap: the communities most in need of support are structurally excluded from the infrastructure designed to provide it. This paper traces how professionalization infrastructure produces exclusion, documents the consequences, and asks what it would take to build systems that serve all local governments—not just the professionalized minority.
The Reform That Worked
In 1908, Staunton, Virginia, hired the first city manager in America. The innovation was radical: rather than elected officials or political appointees running city operations, a trained professional would manage municipal administration the way a corporate executive managed a business. The idea spread. By 1915, reformers had founded the International City Managers’ Association—now ICMA—to promote the model and support the professionals who practiced it.
The professionalization movement that followed transformed American local government. Over the next century, reformers built an entire infrastructure: credentialing programs that trained municipal managers, professional associations that connected them, journals that disseminated research, conferences that shared best practices, and technical assistance networks that helped communities improve. The corruption and incompetence that plagued machine-era cities gave way to something approaching professional administration.
By almost any measure, this was a success. Cities with professional managers tend to have lower costs, better bond ratings, and more effective service delivery. The research base on local government expanded enormously. Training programs produced generations of skilled administrators. The reform movement achieved what it set out to do.
But success created a problem that reformers didn’t anticipate: an infrastructure built by and for professionalized governments became, over time, an infrastructure that excludes everyone else.
The Structure of Exclusion
There are roughly 19,500 municipal governments in the United States. About 75% of them—more than 14,000 communities—have populations under 5,000. These small municipalities are governed by part-time mayors, administered by clerk-treasurers who handle multiple functions, and staffed by generalists who do whatever needs doing. They don’t have city managers. They can’t afford professional credentials. They rarely belong to ICMA or the National League of Cities.
The professionalization infrastructure was never designed for them. And as that infrastructure has grown more sophisticated, the gap has widened.
Professional Associations
ICMA has approximately 13,000 members—in a country with 19,500 municipalities. The gap isn’t random. Membership requires professional credentials or a position in a government that employs professional managers. A town of 800 governed by a part-time mayor and a clerk-treasurer can’t join. The association’s membership model was designed to serve professional administrators, and it does that well. But it structurally excludes the majority of American municipalities.
The National League of Cities has broader membership criteria, but even there, participation correlates with size and resources. Dues, conference travel, and staff time to engage with association programming—all of these create barriers for under-resourced communities. The associations aren’t hostile to small towns. They’re just not built for them.
Research and Surveys
When ICMA conducts a survey on local government practices, it surveys its members—which means it surveys professionalized governments. The 2024 ICMA survey on artificial intelligence in local government received 635 responses. Exactly 12 came from municipalities under 5,000 population. The survey wasn’t poorly designed; it reached the people it was designed to reach. But because ICMA membership correlates with professionalization, and professionalization correlates with size, the research systematically excludes small communities.
This pattern extends throughout local government research. Academic scholars draw samples from association membership lists because they’re convenient and comprehensive—for the professionalized population. Think tanks study cities with data infrastructure and accessible officials—which means cities with resources. The research base that informs policy and practice describes a minority of local governments as if they were the whole.
Training and Credentialing
The credentialing infrastructure for local government professionals—MPA programs, ICMA credentialing, specialized certifications—assumes a career path that small municipalities can’t support. A community of 1,500 people can’t hire an MPA graduate at a competitive salary, support their ongoing professional development, or offer a trajectory into senior positions. The credentials exist to serve professional managers; communities without professional managers exist outside the system.
Training programs face similar constraints. A three-day conference in a major city assumes travel budgets and staff coverage that small towns don’t have. Webinar series assume reliable internet and protected time to participate. Even the language of professional development—strategic planning, performance management, evidence-based practice—assumes organizational contexts that many small governments don’t possess.
Technical Assistance
Technical assistance programs—whether from associations, universities, or state governments—tend to reach communities with capacity to request and absorb assistance. Grant-funded programs require applications, which require staff time. Consulting engagements assume a point of contact with bandwidth to coordinate. Pilot programs seek partners who can document outcomes. At each step, the selection process favors professionalized governments, not because anyone intends to exclude others, but because the infrastructure was designed around assumptions that small communities don’t meet.
“The communities most in need of support are structurally excluded from the infrastructure designed to provide it.”
How the Trap Works
The professionalization trap operates through a self-reinforcing cycle. Each element strengthens the others, making the pattern increasingly difficult to interrupt.
Research describes professionalized governments. Because research draws samples from professional associations and accessible institutions, the knowledge base describes how professionalized governments operate. Findings are presented as insights about “local government” generally, even though they represent a minority of local governments.
Policy is designed for what research describes. Policymakers, reasonably, design interventions based on available evidence. If the research describes municipalities with city managers, finance directors, and IT departments, policy assumes those structures exist. Requirements that make sense for professionalized governments—data reporting, compliance documentation, competitive procurement—become barriers for governments without dedicated staff to handle them.
Resources flow to governments that can comply. Grant programs, technical assistance, and capacity-building investments require applications, reporting, and engagement that professionalized governments can provide. Small towns with a part-time clerk can’t compete for attention. Resources concentrate in communities that already have capacity, widening the gap they were meant to close.
Success reinforces the model. When professionalized governments succeed—winning grants, implementing innovations, appearing in case studies—the success validates the professionalization model. The communities that remain outside the system become, implicitly, failures to professionalize rather than evidence that the system doesn’t serve them.
The cycle continues. Each iteration reinforces the assumption that professionalization is the solution, even for communities where professionalization isn’t viable. The alternative—building infrastructure that meets communities where they are—becomes harder to imagine because the existing infrastructure so thoroughly dominates the landscape.
The Consequences of Exclusion
The practical consequences of the professionalization trap compound over time.
Knowledge Gaps
We know remarkably little about how small municipalities actually operate. How do they make decisions? How do they adopt new technologies? How do they manage fiscal stress? How do they serve residents? The research base offers limited guidance because the research base doesn’t include them. Practitioners in small towns can’t benchmark against peers, can’t learn from documented best practices, can’t access evidence about what works in contexts like theirs.
Policy Mismatch
Policies designed around professionalized governments often fail in contexts they weren’t designed for. Accountability metrics assume data systems that small towns don’t have. Reporting requirements assume staff capacity that doesn’t exist. Compliance frameworks assume organizational structures—procurement officers, HR departments, legal counsel—that small municipalities can’t support. When they can’t comply, they’re penalized for failing to meet standards that were never calibrated for their reality.
Resource Misallocation
Capacity-building investments flow disproportionately to communities that already have capacity. A foundation investing in local government innovation will find it easier to partner with a city that has an innovation officer than a town with a part-time clerk. The result: resources concentrate where they’re least needed, while communities that most need support remain invisible to funders. This isn’t malice—it’s the logic of an infrastructure designed around professionalized partners.
Professional Isolation
Administrators in small municipalities often work in isolation. They don’t have professional networks to consult, conferences to attend, or journals to read. When challenges arise—a new technology, a regulatory change, a fiscal crisis—they navigate alone. The knowledge infrastructure that supports professionalized administrators doesn’t reach them. They reinvent wheels that have been invented many times elsewhere, because no one built systems to share the knowledge.
The AI Test Case
The emergence of artificial intelligence offers a real-time illustration of the professionalization trap in action.
Unlike previous technology waves that required procurement processes and infrastructure investments, AI tools like ChatGPT are free and run in any browser. Adoption doesn’t require organizational decisions. Anyone can start using these tools today. This means AI is diffusing through local government—all local government, including the smallest towns—in ways that bypass traditional adoption pathways.
The response from the professionalization infrastructure has followed predictable patterns. ICMA surveyed its members about AI adoption—and captured almost no data from small municipalities. Research on AI governance frameworks assumes organizations with compliance staff and policy-development capacity. Training programs flow through professional networks that small towns don’t access. Technical assistance reaches cities with bandwidth to request it.
Meanwhile, in thousands of small towns, individual employees are making daily decisions about when and how to use AI—drafting correspondence, summarizing documents, answering constituent questions. These micro-decisions are, collectively, AI governance policy. But they’re happening outside any framework, without guidance, and without anyone tracking what’s being learned.
The professionalization infrastructure is responding to AI as it responds to everything: by serving professionalized governments and missing everyone else. The communities with the least capacity to navigate AI thoughtfully are receiving the least support in doing so. The trap is doing what it always does.
No One’s Fault, Everyone’s Problem
It’s important to be clear: the professionalization trap isn’t the result of bad intentions. The reformers who built ICMA wanted to improve local government. The researchers who sample from association lists are using efficient methods. The funders who partner with professionalized cities are seeking impact. Everyone is acting reasonably within the system they inherited.
But reasonable actions within a flawed system produce unreasonable outcomes. An infrastructure built to serve professional administrators, extended over a century, becomes an infrastructure that can’t see communities without professional administrators. The exclusion isn’t intentional—it’s structural. And structural problems don’t solve themselves.
The professionalization movement succeeded in its goal: it created a class of professional local government administrators supported by a robust infrastructure. But it never reckoned with the communities that couldn’t professionalize—the small towns, the rural counties, the places where the tax base can’t support a city manager and the population can’t justify one. For these communities, the reform movement’s success is irrelevant. The infrastructure exists; it just doesn’t reach them.
“An infrastructure built to serve professional administrators, extended over a century, becomes an infrastructure that can’t see communities without professional administrators.”
What Escape Would Require
Escaping the professionalization trap doesn’t mean abandoning professionalization. Professional administrators and the infrastructure that supports them have real value. The goal isn’t to tear down what exists but to build complementary systems that reach communities the existing infrastructure misses.
Research That Reaches Everyone
Studying local government means studying all local governments, not just the ones that belong to professional associations. This requires sampling from comprehensive frames like the Census of Governments rather than membership lists. It requires multi-modal outreach—mail and phone, not just email—that reaches communities without digital infrastructure. It requires survey instruments designed for generalists, not specialists. It costs more. But without it, the knowledge base will continue to describe a minority as if it were the whole.
Policy That Starts from Constraints
Policy designed for local government should start from the most constrained case, not the best-resourced. If a requirement can’t be met by a community with a part-time clerk and no dedicated IT staff, it’s not a policy for local government—it’s a policy for professionalized local government. Designing for constraints doesn’t mean lowering standards; it means building flexibility into compliance frameworks, tiering requirements by capacity, and ensuring that support is available for communities that need it.
Funding That Meets Communities Where They Are
Funders who want to support local government capacity need strategies that reach beyond professionalized cities. This might mean investing in intermediaries—state leagues, regional councils—that can aggregate demand and channel resources to small communities. It might mean simplified application processes that don’t assume grant-writing expertise. It might mean funding for the work itself, not just for documenting the work. Reaching the overlooked majority requires meeting them where they are, not waiting for them to develop capacity to access conventional funding.
Knowledge Systems Built for Generalists
The clerk-treasurer handling six functions in a town of 1,200 doesn’t need a journal subscription or a three-day conference. They need actionable guidance they can use in ten-minute increments. They need templates and checklists and plain-language explanations. They need peer networks that understand their context, not professional associations built for specialists. Building knowledge systems for generalists means rethinking formats, channels, and assumptions—starting from how people in small communities actually work.
State-Level Infrastructure
State municipal leagues already serve as connectors between small communities and resources they couldn’t access alone. Strengthening this infrastructure—funding state leagues to provide technical assistance, creating state-level resource hubs, building regional peer networks—could reach communities that national associations and funders cannot. The state level is where scale meets proximity, where resources can be aggregated and localized simultaneously.
A Different Definition of Success
The professionalization movement defined success as the spread of professional administration. By that measure, it succeeded—in a minority of communities. But there’s another way to define success: by the extent to which all local governments, regardless of size or resources, have access to the knowledge and support they need to serve their residents well.
By this measure, we haven’t succeeded. The infrastructure we’ve built serves a subset of local government. The majority—the 14,000+ municipalities under 5,000 population, the communities without professional managers or association memberships or grant-writing capacity—remain outside. They’re doing the work of local government every day, often with remarkable dedication and creativity. They’re just doing it alone, because the systems designed to help them were never designed for them.
The professionalization trap isn’t a reason to abandon the infrastructure that exists. Professional associations, academic research, and credentialing programs serve important functions for the communities they reach. But recognizing the trap is the first step toward building something more complete—an infrastructure that serves local government as it actually is, not just local government as reformers hoped it would become.
There are 19,500 municipal governments in America. A system that serves 5,000 of them isn’t a system for local government. It’s a system for a specific kind of local government. The professionalization movement built something valuable. Now we need to build the rest.
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Alton Henley is Dean of Business at Montgomery College, one of the largest community colleges in the United States. He writes about overlooked institutions—community colleges, small towns, and other organizations that serve the majority but are absent from the research, policy, and funding that claims to represent them.