Republicans on the St. Joseph County Council say the common cause coalition is pushing a rule change that gives the council president too much power to keep items he doesn’t like from being heard.
The coalition, consisting of Republican council president Dan Schaetzle and the council’s four Democrats, Tuesday night will consider new rules for how the council conducts business.
Historically any of the council’s nine members have been able to introduce bills or resolutions to meeting agendas. But one of the coalition’s rule changes lets the council president remove agenda items he doesn’t like for whatever reason.
The council’s four Republicans, who now find themselves effectively in the minority, held a press conference criticizing the proposal Monday at the County-City Building. Leading that effort was Republican Council Member Amy Drake.
Drake declined WVPE’s interview request, but in a statement, said “They want to empower the president with a veto pen, so he can strike off anything he doesn’t like from the agenda -- before it even gets to a public hearing. This should be a red flag to our community.”
But Democratic member Bryan Tanner disputes that characterization. He says that in practice, the council president has always had the power to remove things from the agenda. This just puts that into writing. Tanner says over the past two years, and especially the past two months, meetings have been bogged down by people debating council rules that haven’t been updated in about 30 years.
"This seeks to clarify and take away those questions in the future so that it's not left up to debate on the council floor," said Democratic member Bryan Tanner, council vice-president. "It's just a known function that's always historically existed that actually has a name and a defined procedure associated to it."
If the president pulls an item from the agenda, the other two Rules Committee members, or a council majority, can override the him. But Drake says that’s meaningless since Schaetzle and the Democrats control the committees and have the effective council majority.
