The City of Washington held a called meeting of the mayor and city council Friday afternoon to consider proposed changes to the City Charter, and by the end of the meeting had reduced the number of charter changes they would propose to the state legislature from four to one.

At the last regular meeting February 8, the council had voted, in a 3-3 tie broken by Mayor Willie Burns, to instruct Washington City Attor- ney Barry Fleming to write up the changes to the city charter that they desired and bring them back to the council to consider. Those changes would still have to go through the legislative approval process. The four proposed charter changes would have given the mayor veto power, given him the sole power to nominate certain city officials, given him sole appeal power over dismissals, and given final approval power over hiring.

That February 8 vote saw District 1 councilmen Nathaniel Cullars, Marion Tutt Jr., and Kimberly Rainey in favor of shifting those powers from the council to the mayor, and District 2 councilmen Pamela Eaton, Edward Pope Jr., and Ames M. Barnett against. The mayor voted in favor of the motion, breaking the tie in his own favor.

After extensive research and preparation, Fleming presented the council with the four proposed charter revisions at Friday’s meeting. The preparation was complicated, he said, by the fact that over the years, the city charter, city ordinances, and the personnel manual had developed conflicts in the roles and responsibilities of the mayor and the council.

As predicted by the three councilmen who originally voted against the “strong-mayor” changes, District 1 council members realized that the changes they had proposed would largely strip council members of much of their ability to lead the city, handing power over to whatever mayor was in office. “Everywhere you’ve scratched out ‘and the council,’ we want it back in there,” Councilman Marion Tutt Jr. said Friday. “We say ‘strong mayor’ but it’s got all out of proportion ... this is a straight dictatorship, this proposal. We never even thought about it, but nobody could hear us. We should vote this down, this proposal.”

District 2 councilmen Eaton, Pope, and Barnett struggled to understand the near-complete reversal of the District 1 councilmen’s position. “So now you say to vote it down?” Eaton said.

“Just give the mayor veto power,” Tutt said, “with override by the council. That’s the only change we want now – just make him chief executive of the city. What’s wrong with that? It states that in the charter.”

“We want the mayor to have veto power,” Rainey said. “Everything else we’re cool with.”

The language of the proposed charter change concerning veto power, as prepared by the city attorney, says: “The mayor shall have a vote only in the case of a tie vote by the Council. The mayor shall have the authority to veto the following: budget and line items for budgets; City ordinances; and resolutions. To exercise the veto power, the Mayor shall have five (5) days after the meetings of the Council in which to file with the Clerk in writing his dissent. But the Council may at the same meeting or at any subsequent meeting within thirty (30) days, overturn the veto and pass any such budget and line items for budgets, ordinance, order or resolution, notwithstanding the veto, by a vote of five (5) Council members, to be taken by ayes and nays, and entered upon the minutes.”

The only other change proposed by District 1 councilmen was a minor change to the personnel manual to state that, when hiring a city employee, the city administrator should bring the top three candidates for each job before the appropriate committee, rather than one candidate.

The combined proposals were passed, again with District 1 councilmen Cullars, Tutt, and Rainey in favor, and District 2 councilmen Eaton, Pope, and Barnett against. The mayor again voted in favor of the motion, breaking the tie.

The proposed charter change will still have to be approved by the Georgia legislature. Observers say the legislature has traditionally refused to approve any city’s charter changes when those changes are strongly opposed by significant numbers of citizens and city leaders.