Washington City/County Management Association

Awards

The Washington City/County Management Association has a longstanding tradition of recognizing the achievements of its members in the field of public management. For over twenty years the association has considered nominations for awards for distinguished achievement for managers, administrators and assistants in the following categories:

The Excellence Award - Manager or Administrator recognizes an outstanding administrator or manager who has enhanced the effectiveness of local elected officials and consistently initiated creative and successful programs.  Two Excellence Awards will be made; one to a member with a jurisdiction greater than 10,000 and one to a member whose jurisdiction is less than 10,000.

The Outstanding Assistant Award  recognizes outstanding achievement and exemplary work by a local government professional who provides valued assistance to a chief local government administrator/manager and who has made significant contributions toward excellence in leadership.

The Advancing the Profession Award recognizes a member who has demonstrated significant success in advancing one of the following initiatives: Intergovernmental Cooperation; Diversity; Open Government; or Organizational Culture.

Awardees will have taken initiative to effect change in one of these program areas and have achieved improvements that benefit the organization and the community at large.

The Innovations in Local Government Award recognizes a local government that has successfully achieved continuous improvement through performance management, performance budgeting, lean management, strategic planning, or other transformational tool.  

Finally, in 2008 the Washington City/County Management Association established the L. Joe Miller Award for Distinguished Public Service to recognize outstanding leadership as a local government professional manager.  The award is named in honor of the late L. Joe Miller.  Joe was a long time city manager of Bellevue WA during its formative years (1961-1977). He is considered one of its founding fathers of WCMA.  Joe was the President of the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) in 1975. He also served as the Board President of the Municipal Research and Services Center of Washington (MRSC) for several years during the 1990’s following his retirement from paid public service. Joe also served in many other distinguished capacities. Those who worked with him in any capacity remember him as an absolutely helpful individual who always had a positive and cheerful presence no matter what was going on.

The WCMA board deliberately set a high bar in creating this award.

The individual must have been:

  1. A member of ICMA for at least 30 years,
  2. A Washington City/County Management Association (WCMA) member for at least 20 years,
  3. A City or County Manager or Administrator for at least 15 years – with at least 10 of those years having been in the state of Washington,
  4. A President or Vice-President of ICMA,
  5. A President of WCMA. 

There have been 9 recipients of this award:

Richard Cushing

Joni Earl

Bob Jean

Al Locke

Eldon Marshall

Erling Mork

Andrew Neiditz

Dave Rowlands

Richard Zais