If the first Monroe City Council meeting of the new term for it and independent Mayor Friday Ellis conveys any indication of the next four years, that would flash plenty of conflict ahead as well as a more authoritarian tack taken by the new Council majority.
In his first term, Ellis didn’t encounter an inordinate amount of resistance to his agenda, despite being only the second white non-Democrat ever elected in the city’s history by an electorate that these days is majority black and Democrat. The two white Republicans on the Council, Doug Harvey and Gretchen Ezernack, almost always supported his initiatives and budgets, and usually on important items he could count on a vote from black Democrats Carday Marshall and/or Kema Dawson. Only black Democrat Juanita Woods consistently opposed him on these.
But in this spring’s elections Marshall and Dawson fell to black Democrats Rodney McFarland and Verbon Muhammad, both of whom essentially ran against the direction Ellis was taking. Their first meeting extended that theme.
Joining with Woods, they stalled certain infrastructure projects Ellis hoped to advance until, they said, they had further consultation with him. Ellis said he had tried scheduling something of that nature some time prior to the Council meeting last week, but had been unable to pull it off.
McFarland hinted at a topic of conversation for the future, complaining that the big-ticket item of runway extension at Monroe Regional Airport – fully funded by the federal government, but the city must sign off on the deal – didn’t have adequate disadvantaged business enterprise stipulations attached to it. He indicated he wanted to see something like that before approving it.
DBE requirements can range from a government expending extra effort to recruit contractors that are owned by racial minority members, females, or other groups of people termed as less institutionally capable of winning contracts as opposed to those businesses owned by white males, all the way to instituting contracting rules that encourage quota-like systems. The federal government in giving out grants for transportation infrastructure, including aviation, has a DBE requirement that mandates “an estimate, based on relative availability, of what participation would be expected in the absence of discrimination.” A ten percent goal is considered aspirational.
But it also has the authority to accept DBE set-asides – dollars designated only to be spent on DBE contracts – only “unless they are absolutely necessary to address a specific problem when no other means would suffice.” This spring, the rules were tweaked further in an effort to increase the number of firms that would qualify and tamp down on insincere efforts, which will increase compliance costs, but does not address recent judicial rulings to prevent reverse discrimination that could alter substantially the program.
More disturbingly, after the Council selected Woods as chairwoman, she joined with McFarland and Muhammad to change the rules to allow the chairwoman sole approval over items appearing on the agenda. Typically, municipalities with Monroe’s form of governance permit any councilor and the mayor’s administration to place items on an agenda, which even if placed in order to merit discussion must have a motion and seconding and then to come to a vote must have an additional motion and seconding.
In other words, the chairwoman can block topics for discussion, much less have these brought to a vote. This badly disserves democratic ideals and transparency for the public, where even minority factions should have the right to have their priorities debated even if ultimately defeated. The Council’s black Democrat majority would be wise to rescind this.
Unfortunately, this seems a prelude to a Council majority eschewing comity and signaling it will brook no dissension to its preferences, whether they conflict with the mayor’s.
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