South Bend Mayor James Mueller’s announcement Tuesday that he’s setting standards to welcome new hyperscale data centers isn’t sitting well with at least one common council member.
Council Member Oliver Davis Jr. has at times been a vocal critic of the mayor so he wasn’t surprised he wasn’t invited to Mueller’s data center framework press conference. But Davis says Mueller would violate the city government’s separation of powers by writing the standards himself.
Here was Mueller responding when a reporter asked who will create the standards.
“This is very much a policy framework that has been spearheaded by me and my office," Mueller said. "That will continue to be the case … but this is still a framework. There are still pieces that have to be moved through different bodies and different groups.”
For example, he said he’ll bring a noise ordinance to the council.
But Davis says that’s not how city government is supposed to work. He says the council writes the laws and the mayor executes them.
“In the council we have public meetings, we have public hearings, we do crafting. In the mayor’s role, by the time the issues are done, it’s done," Davis says. "There’s no requirement for anything coming out of his office in a public fashion. The mayor can create his whole committee in a backroom setting and then present it to us and move forward. We can’t do that.”
Council member Sherry Bolden-Simpson, like Davis, was peeved to learn of Mueller's data center framework plan when the public did. In a statement, she said, "We are all members of the legislative branch of the government and we have the authority to bring forth bills."
Mueller Tuesday said he’ll accept public comments at the city’s website until the end of the month. He did not respond to WVPE’s interview request Wednesday.
