Cleveland's government consists of a mayor and a 21-member city council. All are elected to four year terms, with voters electing the mayor city-wide and council members by ward. The Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority was the first such government agency in the United States and a model adopted by other urban areas.
Cleveland has had a long but intermittent tradition of reform government, beginning with Tom L. Johnson, who was elected in 1901. Noteworthy among Johnson's reforms were the introduction of public transportation and the establishment of a publicly owned power plant, which still operates today. Another Cleveland resident, Florence E. Allen, became the first woman to serve on a state supreme court. She was subsequently appointed a federal judge. A colorful chapter in reform was inaugurated in the late 1920s when Eliot Ness became commissioner of public safety; Ness is best remembered today for fictionalized accounts of his battle against organized crime. In 1967 Carl Stokes (the great-grandson of a slave) defeated Seth Taft (the great-grandson of a U.S. president) to become the first black mayor of a major American city.
