Francis McGrath, the definition of a city manager

If you look in the AP Stylebook to find out whether to capitalize city manager*, you find his name as the example, the paradigm: "City Manager Francis McGrath." When people ask me what I think about Tulsa changing to a council-manager form of government, I think of Francis McGrath.

For 34 years, from 1951 to 1985, Francis McGrath served as the city manager of Worcester, Mass., the Bay State's second largest city. At the time of his retirement, he was the longest-serving city manager in America. When Worcester converted to a council-city manager form of government in 1950 (approved by voters in 1947), McGrath, a school principal, was hired as assistant to the first city manager, Everett Merrill, and then was promoted to city manager the following year after Merrill his planned short-term stint to launch the city's new form of government.

In the spring of 1983, at the end of my sophomore year, I found a short term job to help pay the bills. It involved a research project for MIT's Urban Studies Department, surveying municipal government officials about the impact of Proposition 2½, a 1982 referendum that limited the ability of a city or town to raise property taxes without a vote of the people. After a training run to New Bedford with a professor and another student, I was on my own to contact and interview officials in the City of Worcester and the Town of Amesbury.

The final interview of the day in Worcester was with McGrath. I don't remember what we discussed, but I remember him sitting behind a massive and ornate desk. What I saw confirmed what I'd heard: This was (or at least had been) the seat of power in Worcester city government. McGrath was no mere administrative functionary. That said, by 1983, he was feeble, in his mid-70s, and just two years from retirement.

What follows is a collection of quotes about McGrath's career, which were hard to find.

John B. Anderson: Who Was This Francis J. McGrath?: An appreciation of the City Manager upon his retirement in 1985, from "In Honor and In Celebration". This quote stood out: "Turmoil showed in the council as well, as turnover was substantial in the elections of 1973 and 1975, working to the advantage of the manager."

After Worcester's voters approved a change to a new municipal charter, Plan E with council manager government, in 1947, the major task facing the council elected in the city elections of 1949 was to select a manager for the city. The council, chaired by Mayor Andrew B. Holmstrom, was aware of the importance of their choice, yet they were alert also to the need to act with some speed. Government had to be in place at the beginning of 1950. They turned to a local businessman, Everett F. Merrill, as the fIrst city manager. Merrill, head of a local steel company, in turn, needed to organize an executive administration. As his chief assistant he picked Francis J. McGrath, who, when Merrill resigned early in 1951, would be elected to succeed him.

Who was this Francis J. McGrath?

He was, like many of his contemporaries, a veteran of World War II, in which he served in the Navy, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander in charge of naval radio stations in the Caribbean. He had returned from the war to his position as a school principal, moving from Union Hill School to Elizabeth Street School.

McGrath had been an educator since the early 1930's, teaching at Bartlett High School in Webster before joining the Worcester system in 1939. In that same year he had married Mary Wickham. Teaching was not a surprising career for Francis McGrath: his three sisters were all teachers and his father had been a custodian at North High School. Indeed, looking at Francis McGrath growing up on Blanche Street on Vernon Hill, one sees a man being shaped by values of family and faith and heritage. He grew up in an Irish-American family in which the idea and often the ideal of public service was a major stimulus.

In a family such as his, Francis McGrath followed the traditional road, first to Saint John's High School, then on Temple Street, not far from the foot of Vernon Hill and then on to Holy Cross from which he graduated in 1930. As Francis McGrath walked from home to high school and later to college, it is likely that he thought of the world in fairly conventional terms: be faithful, work hard, respect public service, guard your integrity. With a Master's Degree from Boston College in hand, he started his career.

Clearly, though, something more was at work. There was ambition: the move from Webster to Worcester, the appointment to principalships and the rise in rank in the Navy show that. In the thirties, Francis McGrath had done more than teach. He had been an announcer at the Mechanics Hall wrestling matches. After the war, he directed the city's Summer recreation program in 1946 and 1947, and, far more important, he was coordinator of the city's Centennial celebration in 1948. That was a golden year-the sadness of the world war behind people, the economy reviving and consumer goods in adequate supply, the darkness of the Cold War and the bloodshed of the Korean War still to be felt. Worcester could celebrate its hundred years as a city with enthusiasm and excitement. Francis McGrath later estimated that the centennial sponsored 126 events. Their success and the success of the Centennial celebration drew attention to this forty-year-old Worcesterite. Interestingly, among the vice chairmen of the centennial were Everett Merrill, the future City Manager and two men, Ralph Duffy and James D. O'Brien, who would be members of the first Plan E council. Emile Rousseau who would also serve on the fIrst Plan E Council was the director of the Centennial's Industrial Exposition. Two more members of the future council were on other centennial committees.

The centennial's success and what must have been McGrath's organizational skills apparently recommended him to Merrill as Merrill assumed office in January 1950. On leave from the School Department, McGrath turned his energies to establishing the new administration.

As he had promised when selected, Merrill stayed on as manager for a little more than a year; on March 20, 1951 he submitted his resignation to be effective on April 15, 1951. In his letter of resignation, Merrill wrote, "Especially do I commend the seemingly untiring work of my executive assistant, Mr. Francis J. McGrath, who has had a large part in whatever success has attended my administration." He went on to express his "gratitude" for McGrath's "loyalty and friendship."

McGrath must have been pleased at Merrill's commendation as he prepared his candidacy to succeed him. McGrath, of course, was not alone in seeking the manager's job. Applicants from across the country submitted letters, were subject to private investigator inquiries, and were interviewed by the council. With Merrill's support, McGrath had an inside track and soon the newspapers were reporting that despite the calls of the League of Women Voters and the Citizens Plan E Association to move slowly, that Councillors Burrows, Duffy, O'Brien, Rousseau and Mayor Holmstrom were leaning toward his selection.

In his interview with the Council, McGrath offered as references a number of prominent local businessmen, naval officers and Merrill. The Council seemed unimpressed with the nonWorcester applicants, and despite some final pressures to consider others, the Council voted to elect McGrath manager in a decision which one councillor said answered the question "why let it drag on?"

Following an executive session, the council voted unanimously in public session to name Francis McGrath as Worcester's second city manager. He was sworn in on April 24, 1951, beginning one of the longest tenures of any chief executive of an American city; by the time he left office on February 1, 1985, Francis McGrath had served nearly thirty-four years.

The Worcester McGrath came to manage in 1951 was bustling. Its population reached an all time high in the 1950 federal census (203,000), its industries were strong, sharing in the post war boom, its role as a retail center was unchallenged. Yet Worcester, like its region and the nation, was on the edge of significant change. Population would shift to the suburbs, old industries would die and the car would transform the shopping habits of all Americans. When McGrath retired, Worcester had changed: it had fewer people, its economic base was in services and its retail role had diminished.

But, before the changes, there were extraordinary demands to be met. The depression and war had left a legacy of needs: schools for a growing population, services better tailored to the community's needs, facilities for municipal services. Later, as change was apparent, there came the need to rebuild and revitalize the city, the goal of reversing decline.

The 1950's saw major work on the city's school plant which would ultimately lead to the construction of 24 new schools and additions to nine others. Beyond that, the record of public facility construction was extraordinary: seven new fire stations, including a new headquarters, a new police headquarters, a new main library, 3,000 units of elderly and public housing, parking garages and parking lots, three major redevelopment projects, and the Centrum. There was little that this builder's hand did not touch.

Construction was only one side of Francis McGrath's work for Worcester. In his second winter in office, he introduced the winter parking ban to aid in snow plowing. In 1953, the city's police department was reorganized, adapting it to the needs of a highly mobile society. Later, other city departments would be reorganized as well.

Change and action of the magnitude under way in Worcester during the McGrath years could not occur without a base of public support, and Francis McGrath knew this. His relations with the council were secure until the mid 1970's, and he had a deft hand in dealing with the public at large. As astute a politician as any of his contemporaries, McGrath understood the need for public support of his actions. In the 1950's he participated in a series of little town meetings to deal with neighborhood issues and for almost his entire term as manager he broadcast a radio program, Meet Your City Manager, which gave him an opportunity to talk directly to the public. He accepted invitations to all kinds of events, he answered thousands of letters, never relying on form answers, and his door was open to one and all. Until the revaluation controversy led to harassing phone calls, his home phone number was listed in the Worcester directory.

Court ordered revaluation in the early 1970's posed one of McGrath's most difficult challenges. For years Worcester, and other Massachusetts cities, had allowed valuations to depart from the market value of property, generally very much to the benefit of home owners. Owners of businesses and newer homes found themselves at a disadvantage and following a law suit which concluded that Worcester's assessments violated the state constitution, the city was ordered to revalue property; the process was long and slow. The city manager found himself bearing the brunt of council and citizen complaints, asserting that there was an effort to "make the manager the scapegoat for revaluation." For the first time he was subject to a motion of confidence, winning it 8 to 1, although not without some suggestion that the road was not so easy as it had been before. Turmoil showed in the council as well, as turnover was substantial in the elections of 1973 and 1975, working to the advantage of the manager.

The building of the Centrum made life difficult for the manager in the late 1970's. Like the revaluation issue, McGrath saw himself taking blame unfairly, but also, like revaluation, the completion of the project eased tensions for the manager. By 1984 he was willing to contemplate retirement, announcing in June of that year that he would retire by year's end. In fact, of course, that date was extended a month to the end of January 1985.

Although there was talk from time to time of Francis McGrath going to another city as its manager, the only serious possibility of his leaving the position seems to have been in the mid 1960's when he considered the position of Superintendent of Schools. In the end he stayed with the job he loved so much. One of his few excursions outside of city affairs came when he served as head of Governor John Volpe's effort to secure a sales tax, but here he probably saw himself serving his city as much as his state. Worcester could not have had a more loyal son.

When news of Francis McGrath's retirement became known, there was an outpouring of praise of his tenure: "exceptional," "far sighted," and "outstanding" were the typical adjectives used by civic leaders to describe him. A survey commissioned by the Charter Commission, which had been elected in 1983, concluded "few municipal officials would be disappointed by the impressive favorability ratings garnered by McGrath at the conclusion of such a long term of service." Sixtyfour percent of the survey respondents had characterized McGrath's work as good or excellent.

As the retirement day neared, McGrath announced, lest there be any doubt, that he would remain, "a strong executive until the day I walk out the door." No doubt that was one of the reasons for his success: a firm hand eager to remain at the helm. But there were other reasons.

Francis McGrath remained true to himself; he had been elected to do a job and he had done it. The virtues he learned as a child and a young man remained with him: hard work, loyalty, devotion, faith in God. He had begun his career as manager asking for God's help and he ended it saying "God's been good to me." He advised his successor that he would need "a lot of prayers, a lot of tolerance, a lot of understanding and a good sense of humor." These were the things which had kept Francis McGrath going and successful. There was a commonplace quality to concepts like integrity and cooperation, but as Worcester learned they were not commonplace in Francis McGrath; this mixture of values and personality produced an extraordinary figure, a man whose mark on the city has no equal.

The Albert B. Southwick, Worcester Telegram & Gazette, 2010: McGrath paved the way

In 1950, Worcester was just starting a new chapter in city affairs: Plan E government. It replaced the old system that had been in place for more than 50 years. In that era, partisan politics ruled the day. The mayor, the board of aldermen and the City Council were all elected as Republicans or Democrats. Although Worcester was probably not any worse off than most cities at the time, City Hall, under either Republican or Democrat mayors, was shot through with politics and log rolling. Rumors of corruption were widespread.

The Plan E movement was part of a reform wave that swept the nation, especially after World War II. Nonpartisan council-manager governments were installed in hundreds of towns and cities across the land. In Worcester, the campaign was led by a group of academics allied with local business interests, including this newspaper....

Mr. McGrath, former principal of Elizabeth Street School, was not the first choice for the new post of city manager. Business interests settled on Everett Merrill. But Mr. Merrill was diagnosed with cancer in late 1950 and had to bow out. Mr. McGrath was his assistant. His chief accomplishment had been in 1948, when he supervised the celebration of Worcester's centennial as a city. He seemed to know something about administration. He was a political unknown and had no enemies. The City Council selected him, probably expecting a short tenure.

Within a few years, he was running the city as it had never been run before. He became politically impregnable. The old pols didn't like it and mounted two referendum campaigns in 1959 and 1967 to get rid of Plan E and change the charter back to a "strong mayor" system. But those drives were seen as attacks on Mr. McGrath and his popularity guaranteed that both would fail. ...

The council-manager system stipulates that the City Council sets policies that the manager carries out. Mr. McGrath followed that to the letter. He never openly intruded his own ideas into council discussions. But after the first few years there was no doubt as to who was calling the shots at City Hall. He became one of the most powerful city managers in the country and the most dominant chief executive that Worcester has ever had.

Yet it never went to his head. He never, as far as I remember, ever held a grudge, even against those pols who hated Plan E and everything about it. He was a crackerjack administrator and also a keen student of local politics. He understood Worcester and its people better than anyone else ever did. In fact, he enjoyed politics mightily and played it to the hilt, always being careful not to overstep the Plan E rules. He went to an endless number of funerals, wakes, local organization meetings and neighborhood gatherings.

He was noted for his skill in preparing and manipulating city budgets. In years when funds were short, the city sometimes seemed to be headed for financial disaster when, in the nick of time, Mr. McGrath always somehow discovered extra funds just sufficient to cover the gap....

In my opinion, the most important part of the McGrath legacy was his integrity. He became noted across the state for his incorruptibility. Politicians in Boston marveled at each new example of Mr. McGrath's refusal to play the old patronage wheeling-and-dealing games. That made a huge difference here in Worcester, especially as his tenure stretched from years to decades. In the '20s and '30s, this city suffered years of political logrolling and downright corruption. Under Mr. McGrath, that gradually ended. The horse parlors on Front Street, the City Hall link to Shrewsbury Street racketeers, the dubious public works contracts all faded away. Worcester gradually got used to the idea that honesty at City Hall was the norm and would be in the future.

Whither Worcester? (Commonwealth Magazine, Fall 2004

If and when Worcester converts its municipal government from city manager to "strong mayor" rule--a change some hope will take place as early as next year--it will be easy to pinpoint the moment when the move got its start. It was March 16, the day the Worcester City Council unceremoniously dumped City Manager Thomas Hoover, who had served in his post since 1994. Earlier in the day, Hoover received a letter signed by eight of the 11 city councilors demanding his resignation. At the weekly council meeting that evening, Hoover gave it to them. A few weeks later, a group calling itself Voters in Charge launched a petition drive, demanding for a change from manager to mayor. "Worcester needs a leader, especially now," declared Marianne Bergenholtz, chair of Voters in Charge, in a May 25 announcement. "And our history of the past 20 years shows that managers manage, they don't lead."

It was not the first time the city's legislative body had fired its CEO. If anything, the dismissal of Hoover's predecessor, William "Jeff" Mulford, was more dramatic and bitter, the climax of years of quarreling between the manager and the council. And it was not the first time city manager government has been called into question. Worcester has long been obsessed with its method of municipal organization, with all manner of civic complaints--about representation, leadership, accountability, and especially economic development--channeled into one question: Mayor or manager?...

A switch to strong-mayor governance is something that Worcester has considered on three other occasions over the 55-year history of city-manager government--known here as Plan E, after the alphabetized options for city government allowed under state statute. But now, a shrinking business tax base and a longing for a kind of entrepreneurial leadership that has been lacking under the Plan E system have the conversation about charter change once again picking up steam, with even some longtime defenders of professional--i.e., nonpolitical--city management now giving up the ghost.

But questions remain: Does Worcester really need a strong mayor? Or does the city need a strong leader? And if it's the latter, will changing the form of government make any difference?...

Plan E was supposed to take party politics out of City Hall.

In 1947, the Republican power structure joined forces with academic and good-government reformers--including the heads of Clark University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and the T&G--to push for a new form of municipal government, one that had been added to the options available under state law in 1938. Plan E consisted of an elected city council (nine members, all of whom would be elected at large) and an appointed city manager, who would actually run municipal operations. That November, Worcester voters approved the binding ballot question by a vote of 42,000 to 22,000--a margin of nearly two to one....

McGrath was not well known at the time (the backing of Merrill was crucial to his selection), but he would become a legendary figure in Worcester politics, serving for 34 years, the longest tenure of a city manager in US history. While Plan E was supposed to remove party politics from City Hall, McGrath was anything but apolitical. "The number of wakes and weddings he attended must have numbered in the thousands," Southwick wrote about McGrath in a T&G column last year. "Local celebrations and large public events alike usually found him on hand. Wherever he went, he was greeted by name by persons of all walks of life, as the saying used to go. He was scrupulously honest and, for all his prominence, unassuming. It never went to his head."...

For supporters of Plan E, McGrath proved the virtue of council-manager government, but that didn't mean the system went unchallenged during the McGrath reign. In 1959, voters rejected a binding ballot question to dump Plan E by a margin of just 4,000 votes--35,000 to 31,000. Three years later, a similar proposal for mayoral rule went down to defeat by a 12,000-vote margin--42,000 to 30,000. Each time, the proposed shift drew ferocious opposition from the nonpartisan Citizens Plan E Association, a good-government group that defended the council-manager system for a quarter-century.

It was when McGrath retired that Plan E began to unravel in Worcester, though it has not done so completely. Back in the early '80s, Worcester Fair Share, a citizen-action group, held public forums to highlight the fact that the vast majority of the members of the city council, the school committee, and other city boards and commissions lived on the city's affluent West Side. Fair Share's political-education campaign led the city council to appoint a charter commission.

In 1985, the charter commission produced a compromise that seemed inherently unstable: keep a "strong" city manager but allow voters to directly elect the mayor--a post that, as simply chairman of the city council, was previously little more than ceremonial. To become mayor, a candidate would have to win office as a city councilor, then in a separate mayoral tally, outpoll any other city councilors who also declared themselves candidates for mayor. The voters approved the binding ballot question--which also called for 11 city councilors, five to be elected from districts rather than at large--by a nearly two-to-one margin that November.

The two-headed government often leads to gridlock.

In a sense, Worcester's hybrid form of government is the weakest possible "weak mayor" system, since the mayor has no true authority beyond wielding the gavel at the Tuesday night council meetings, but it also weakened the city manager. The mayor is actually a "super-councilor," empowered by voter mandate as the titular head of Worcester municipal government. The appointed city manager has the legal power, but the elected mayor has the political power. The result is a two-headed government, with ample--and frequently realized--opportunity for confrontation and gridlock....

By 1999, in fact, the governmental meltdown that was occurring under the hybrid Plan E--Worcester is the only city in the Commonwealth with such an arrangement, as Cambridge and Lowell maintain traditional council-manager governments--led to yet another push for a switch to a "strong" mayor with the power to run city government. This time, the campaign was driven by not only much of the city's political establishment--with the assistance of University of Massachusetts pollster and veteran political consultant Lou DiNatale--but also some prominent business leaders, including John Nelson, former chief executive of Norton Co. and Wyman-Gordon Co. Nelson was the kind of establishment figure that used to make up the Citizens Plan E Committee, which disbanded about 25 years ago. But run by power brokers more used to operating behind the scenes than in the spotlight, this campaign for strong-mayor government was over before it started....

Oddly enough, Condron traces the decline of city-manager government to the days of Francis McGrath. "He kept ceding power to the council to be able to continue in his role," Condron observes. "As the council developed that power, they didn't want to give it up--and they haven't given it up." The result, he says, is gridlock.

"There should be only one [steering] wheel on a bus, and then somebody drives the bus," says Condron. "Here we have 12 drivers, including the [city] manager, with 12 different agendas." Because of that, Condron notes, City Hall stumbles over its own feet when it comes to new commercial/industrial business and development. Businesses and developers looking to invest in Worcester "find it difficult because of that multi-headed monster," he says....

Even for some who are now longing for a mayoral strongman, the ideal municipal leader seems to be more an empowered city manager than a glad-handing pol from the neighborhoods. City Manager Mike O'Brien, says industrialist Morgan, "is off to a great start, and maybe he could be your mayor." Condron says much the same thing about the new city manager. "I think he's a great, energetic young person who would make a terrific strong mayor of the city," says Condron. "And I felt Tom Hoover would have made a great strong mayor of the city."

Or is it really Francis McGrath they're all pining for?

"Some people claimed he really was the mayor," recalls Demitrios Moschos, a Worcester attorney who served as McGrath's right-hand man from 1968 to 1980. "He envisioned his role in a political context--not as an administrator and not in simply seeing that things were accomplished, but also in developing support for things to be accomplished."

Kenneth J. Moynihan, Worcester Telegram & Gazette, 2007: To balance budget, manager pulled a 'wabbit' out of 'hat':

In Worcester political lore, a "rabbit" is a sum of money unexpectedly liberated from the deep recesses of the city's financial basement. The deep recesses are where they store what is called the "hat."

The magician who pulls the rabbit from the hat is known as the "city manager." Each time it happens, City Hall veterans tell their stories about the master magician, Francis J. McGrath, who served as city manager for more than 30 years.

This generation of rabbit aficionados has its opportunity in the wake of City Manager Michael V. O'Brien's announcement that there will, after all, be no need to raise property taxes to cover the last $1.9 million in the city's spending plans for fiscal 2008.

The city manager does not like this rabbit language, because it suggests that he has been less than candid with the councilors, holding back on information that would, when it is released, redound to the credit of the manager. Some councilors don't like it either, because it gives the impression that they got snookered. So, without using the "r" word, I would like to offer a critical examination of the sudden resolution of the city's budget problems. I begin with a Sept. 25 observation by the T&G's City Hall reporter and columnist Nick Kotsopoulos: "Unless some new revenues make their way to the city coffers in the next few months, the council may end up having to find a way to balance this year's municipal budget, which is almost $2 million out of whack."

Wormtown Taxi on foresight and politicians

There's an interesting article in today's T&G that's a followup to the annual town - gown noise that's made on College Hill. This noise occurs every autumn at City Hall.

Today's article, though, brushes up against what I consider to be the funniest part of any town - gown relations, ie- the vast abyss between those who run the city and those who run the colleges. One key difference is that those who run the city typically can't see much further than the next election cycle. Usually, they can't see much beyond next week's meeting agenda.

Those who run the colleges, on the other hand, look at how their policies and plans will work over the course of years, decades, lifetimes, and beyond.

I mean, even someone who lasted as long as former City Manager Francis J. McGrath won't be thinking on a time scale that can successfully subsume an entire neighborhood.

Heh... if politicians could see that far ahead... well, then they wouldn't be politicians, now, would they?

Update(8:45am): But then again, there's always the immediacy of the moment.

Bob Achorn: Worcester Telegram & Gazette, April 22, 1989:

For more than 30 years, Francis J. McGrath was city manager here, and a powerful one. From the beginning, McGrath was shrewd enough to build a strong political base. He knew great numbers of Worcester people. He seldom missed a wake. He went to every ceremony and was normally called on to speak - sometimes when the "ceremonial" mayor sat silent and steaming in the front row. At his best, and for many years, McGrath was on top of every city issue, including those in the School Department where his writ supposedly did not run. He did a great job, and the public knew.

Unfortunately, that upset a number of ambitious councilors. They were determined that McGrath's successor, Mulford, would not build the same kind of political strength. Essentially, he must stick to his knitting, and not try to be all things to all people.

Stephen Maher, InCity Times, October 8, 2008: Francis J. McGrath versus the Worcester mafia:

In 1949 the council compromised and picked Everett F. Merrill, "..a popular local businessman. He had a genial personality, had many friends all over Worcester and committed himself to clean, businesslike government but would not guaranty to stay on the job very long."

Merrill in 1950 issued a general order to clean up illegal gambling. Nothing happened. Under pressure from the Telegram, taxpayer groups and honest politicians like Sweeney, Merrill "loudly and publicly ordered the police to crack down. They did. The horse parlors were shut. That part of the illegal operations was torpedoed, or at least further driven underground."

"Merrill was a broad-brush type, not one to fret over City Hall trivia," says Achorn. "He hired Francis J. McGrath as his assistant and detail man. Fifteen months later, McGrath took over and served 35 years as city manager. To the end, he was privately proud of his endless efforts to keep the city government out of the clutches of the mob."

[Newspaper Publisher Robert] Achorn's 1999 memoir is an extraordinary historical document. The picture of McGrath as a bulwark against the Mafia goes a long way towards explaining an enduring mystery of Worcester politics: why the Worcester Telegram gave such strong support to both McGrath and Plan E. Stoddard's support of Plan E was so vehement that in 1959 the Citizens for Plan E Association (CEA) President "told a National Municipal League Conference at Springfield, Mass. that the one-sided support of the Telegram and Gazette had helped crystallize opposition to CEA. This statement of course disturbed Stoddard."

But McGrath's vision pleased Stoddard: a streamlined city government that invested heavily in infrastructure. During McGrath's 33 years in office Worcester built 42 new schools, including an entire secondary school system. McGrath was able to do this because of Stoddard's strong editorial backing. As Binstock noted: "[W]hen the city manager [McGrath] commits himself to a project, the press is usually behind him solidly."
McGrath understood the newspaper's power. "It would be tough if they did hammer me," he admitted.

McGrath treated the Telegram as another political constituency, perhaps his most valuable one. Like an old-fashioned Irish ward boss visiting a neighborhood saloon, McGrath would saunter across the street from City Hall to the Worcester Telegram editorial offices, where he would regale the staff with jokes both raunchy and ethnic.

If Stoddard got a City Manager uninfluenced by the Mafia and dedicated to improving Worcester's infrastructure, the Irish politicians got from McGrath city jobs for their relatives and campaign workers. As the McGrath era progressed, two power elites evolved in Worcester. One consisted of White Anglo Saxon Protestants who controlled the newspapers, most banks, and industries. The second were Irish Catholic politicians, who controlled city government and the city's labor movement. But if McGrath is remembered today, it is primarily for the longevity of his 33-year reign.

McGrath died on November 14, 1993, at the age of 85. For library subscribers, here is his obituary in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette.

This post was created on September 30, 2011, but languished in draft limbo until May 12, 2021. I suspect I was waiting for an opportunity to tidy it up and add a photo. As it's not timely, I'm leaving it dated as originally drafted. An observation to conclude: Cities with a council-city manager form of government seem either to treat the city manager as a scapegoat, cycling through city managers once every two or three years, or else the city manager becomes dominant and entrenched, using his position to make councilors who support him look good and to embarrass those who oppose him.