Well, I'm not sure either of us has been declared CM admin. He's a java developer using Eclipse with the Subclipse plug-in. My e-mail suggested a solution with Tortoise SVN, since he's running Windows. His PM runs linux, and I pointed to an alternative method with the command-line method in that same e-mail. Today, we discovered just how simple it was to do from the Eclipse IDE.
From my point of view, I feel a developer should own their code. If they want to make a branch, they just do it. If they want to merge that branch, they have the user interface in front of them that provides the capability. If I was a developer, I'd want that control. It's simply bizarre to me that there is some abstract line separating these tasks into a "development" and "administrator" domain. I can maintain the server, and the database that makes up the repository, and make sure it's backed up, but it doesn't sit well with me to start messing with their files.
What really bothered me is that he AND his project manager were claiming it was an issue with the "server". (I came in to find his PM getting "Working copy is locked ... " error on his linux machine, and had to explain what "working copy" meant.) Considering I took a two-week old working-copy, ran an "update" (without server errors), a "copy" from the previous revision (without server errors) and a "commit" (again, no errors) ... I fail to see how the server was at fault. For 3 years they've had some strange reluctance to embrace Subversion the way I expected.