AJC Article About Metro County Administrators

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday had an interesting article about Atlanta area county administrators. The article was actually about the administrator of Cobb County being lured to work in Paulding County, but the article discusses metro administrators in general.

The interesting tid bit I read was that the chief counsel for the Association County Commissioners of Georgia (Jim Grubiak) estimated that the average length of tenure for a county administrator is three to four years. His additional quote was, “The life span is volatile. There’s a demand to replace whoever resigned with someone who has a good reputation.”

Here’s a fact for comparison. Across the country, the average tenure for a city or county administrator is more like 6.9 years (scholarly study here). If the AJC’s quoted statistic is true (and I have my doubts that it was based on any survey data), it doesn’t show much for the state of professional government in Georgia, and especially in metro Atlanta. I’m also not terribly fond of making it sound like all administrators resign as opposed to leaving peacefully.