Duties of the County Administrator

As advisor to the board of supervisors, the county administrator keeps the board informed of the county’s financial and administrative conditions and presents, with recommendations, various policy options for the board’s decision. Sound policy decisions cannot be made in a vacuum, and no other county employee has the opportunity for such a broad, overall view of county operations as does the county administrator. The board should expect the county administrator to bring before it positive proposals for action, based on principles of public management.

For the board to disagree with the administrator’s recommendation or to develop its own policy alternatives does not indicate a loss of confidence. Rather, it means only that the board, which is politically accountable, prefers a different course of action that recognizes the impact of the political element. Representative government cannot exist without give-and-take in political decision making, and the governing body’s sensitivity to political necessity is the means by which the public will is expressed. It is the county administrator’s function to provide the board with objective management recommendations so that the board will have available all the information it needs to make a decision.

Finally, as the public representative of the board, the county administrator represents the governing body corporately and politically and interprets the board’s action to the public and to any number of commissions, boards, or other bodies with which the board of supervisors may have responsibilities on both state and local levels. The administrator must be careful, however, to represent the board as an official entity, not to take a position that conflicts with that of the board, and not to commit the board to a course of action without authority to do so.

From the Virginia County Supervisors’ Manual

Fifth Edition, Revised by Martha Johnson Mead