By james art Baton Rouge voters have a proposal on their ballot this election to change the parish’s governing plan.
And while nearly 40,000 have already voted, a single yes-or-no decision on an initiative that would make dozens of changes still raises questions among residents.
The majority of these changes are updated references in the Parish Management Plan. Terms such as “rural” and “urban” areas will be changed to “incorporated” and “unincorporated”. References to Mayor-President using “he” will be changed to multiple uses of the job title.
Additionally, the new plan would also require Metro Council candidates to live in their district for at least a year before qualifying to run. For mayor-president, candidates will have to live in the parish for at least two years before running.
City-Parish Manager
Of all the changes involved, the creation of a city-parish manager position is the one that seems to cause the most confusion among voters.
While most other American cities the size of Baton Rouge have a city manager, the city-parish currently does not. Instead, the mayor-president appoints someone to the position of chief administrative officer, who oversees many of the duties that a city-parish manager would want to be the acting head of the city-parish’s many departments.
But the position also drives much of the mayor’s policy decisions, making the role somewhat undefined in its current state.
If approved, the proposal would create a city-parish manager who would be appointed by the mayor-president, as the CAO is now. However, the appointment of a city-parish manager would need to be approved by a majority vote of the Metro Council before they start work – something that is missing from the current procedure when a CAO is hired. The position of CAO will be abolished.
The proposal includes specific qualification requirements for each candidate for city-parish manager, such as five years of administrative experience in municipal or state government or executive leadership, as well as a degree requirement.
The position of chief of staff to the mayor-president — which currently exists but is not listed in the government’s plan — will be added to deal with policy development and communication with Metro Council members, something the CAO does now.
Other changes
Metro Council’s POG compensation is currently capped at $1,000 per month. One of the proposal’s amendments removes that particular reference and instead adds a procedure for the Metro Council to adopt and approve their compensation at least one year before the start of each term. This is the same way compensation is currently determined for the Mayor-President, Constable and other constitutional officers.
Other non-linguistic changes include moving the deadline by one month to submit the Metro Council’s annual budget for review from November to October.
The amendment also creates an executive board position to provide legal expertise to the office of the mayor and the president.
Why the changes?
Many have asked why these changes are being proposed and why everything is being done with a single “yes” or “no” vote.
The changes are what the people wanted, said District 4 Metro Council member Aaron Moak.
“This process actually started eight years ago,” Moak explained to an audience at the East Baton Rouge Chamber of Commerce luncheon on Tuesday.
A committee was then formed to review the POG and meet with the public to see what changes needed to be made. Many of the changes are directly informed by what the public told this commission and current Metro Council members.
“From all the recommendations, we came down to this,” Moak said.
The reason this proposal is on the ballot now is also based on public input.
“One of the things that came up at the public meetings … was, ‘we want you to put it on the ballot you’re going to run for election,'” Moak said.
All 12 Metro Council seats are up for election this November.
Moak said options for adding those ballot amendments have been floated as including them as one item or splitting the dozens of amendments into separate items that could add pages of content to voters’ ballots. Grouping a handful of changes together into several proposals was not raised, he said.
“When we talk to (the public) and show them this stuff, it was the general consensus that it would be best to cut it to one (point),” Moak said.
Early voting continues until October 29. Election day is November 5.