Last week’s meeting of the Monroe City Council provided yet another chance for its majority to butt heads with independent Mayor Friday Ellis, over both old and new issues, with the power of the mayor’s office triumphing again.

Some closure finally came to the city’s disciplining of former interim police chief Reggie Brown, who had been appointed temporary top cop by Democrat former Mayor Jamie Mayo a few months before the delayed 2020 elections. Brown immediately courted controversy when he denied multiple public records requests that had previously been granted, a move backed by the Mayo Administration, which appeared intent on making his appointment permanent.

Then, a few days prior to elections, a police brutality incident occurred that eventually sent the officer involved to prison. Brown initially refused to refer the case to the Louisiana State Police, even though the city attorney recommended it. He only did so the Monday after the election, in which Ellis defeated Mayo. Ellis and others believed the delay reflected not just poor administration but also political favoritism toward Mayo. Later, Brown failed a polygraph test–disputed by one legal expert–on whether he had allowed politics to shape his decision, since disclosing the incident could have hurt Mayo right before the vote. Although Brown denied any interference in official forums, Ellis’ new chief, Vic Zordan, fired him for the breach.

A subsequent civil service board found punishment legal and appropriate but disagreed with the penalty’s severity and ordered reinstatement after a 90-day suspension and loss of pay. Years and a few hundred thousand taxpayer dollars later, recently the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled the suspension rather than firing appropriate.

With the majority Council Democrats all allies of Mayo – Rodney McFarland and Juanita Woods had scored Mayo endorsements for runs at offices and Verbon Muhammad had worked with Mayo on his controversial 2017 honoring of Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan – they applauded the reinstatement but expressed outrage that the Ellis Administration had spent considerable taxpayer dollars on the case and that Ellis reinstated Brown, as he legally could do, at his former rank of sergeant and had him put into a low-level job.

As a result, the majority passed a resolution, opposed by Republicans Doug Harvey and Gretchen Ezernack, asking Ellis to drop legal maneuvering about Brown. But it would take an ordinance to force the mayor to act in accordance with the Council Democrats’ wishes, while a resolution he can ignore.

And that, Ellis made clear on another matter, won’t happen as long as the minority Republicans are on his side on an issue. They had voted against an ordinance the Democrats had passed the previous meeting that put a timeline on mayoral appointments. This was in response to the protracted, still ongoing, fire chief search where, after his initial selection, was shot down by the Democrats. Ellis took several months to produce another nominee, who the Democrats proceeded to reject as well.

Ellis vetoed this ordinance, saying it conflicted with the city charter in circumscribing mayoral powers. That’s not necessarily the case – the Council can pass whatever executive guardrails it wants that don’t conflict with the charter – but as a practical matter a mayor should not have that kind of constraint on him in picking important administrators. And as the charter mandates four of five councilors to override a veto, it was clear that the matter was dead.

Really the only leverage the Council majority has over the mayor in a practical sense is on money matters, and it has tried to flex its muscles on that account– such as by contract approvals with higher disadvantaged business enterprise requirements. The way the sparring between the Council Democrats and Ellis is going, that ought to make next spring’s budgeting process very interesting.