Cleveland City Council is trying to get its own house in order, rolling out a consultant-backed plan to straighten out years of confusion over who does what inside council offices. At a meeting of the newly revived operations committee, members vented about murky job descriptions, sluggish contracting, and a setup where staffers can end up answering to several councilmembers at once instead of one clear supervisor. The proposal would create a new head of administration and reorganize staff into legislative, communications, and administrative teams.
As reported by Cleveland.com, consultants from the Cobalt Group, including Patti Choby and Heather Burton, laid out a blueprint that would put most day-to-day operations under that single head of administration. Under their plan, council members would send requests to division directors, who would then assign work to staff, while the clerk of council would retain direct control of the legislative process.
Questions about staffing and oversight surfaced repeatedly during this year’s budget hearings, leading to sharp exchanges between Council President Blaine Griffin and other members. Signal Cleveland reported Griffin warning that “15 people trying to make a decision” is not efficient, and several councilmembers said in public they did not feel they were getting reliable support from staff under the current setup.
What the changes would look like
Under the proposal, staff would be grouped into dedicated teams for legislative work, communications and administration, with division directors handling assignments so individual councilmembers would no longer direct staff day to day. The operations committee has restarted its oversight role this year to vet those recommendations, according to the council’s public calendar and records. The City Record also lists the committee and the membership that will guide that review.
Consultants and background
The Cobalt Group is a small, Cleveland-based consulting firm that describes its work as organizational development, leadership coaching, and capacity building, with its website emphasizing that local focus. See Cobalt Group for background on the consultants involved. A past investigation detailed that the firm had been paid more than $360,000 over a six-year span for earlier council work, a point raised in coverage of the current review by Cleveland.com.
What’s next
Council members say the operations committee will keep reviewing the reorganization through the summer and is expected to reconvene on implementation questions in September. Leaders are looking for tighter job descriptions, clearer reporting lines, and a concrete timeline for shifting duties to division directors so constituent services, contracts, and legislative work move more predictably. Signal Cleveland and the council’s calendar indicate the body will return to these items later in the year as staff and members draft formal changes.
If adopted, the reorganization would mark a noticeable shift in how City Hall handles everyday business, moving council offices toward a more centralized, manager-directed model instead of the current system, where individual members can assign staff directly. Officials say the goal is straightforward: clearer lines of authority and quicker follow-through on neighborhood projects and city services.
