A frustrated set of Monroe City Council Democrats are advocating the gutting of the intent and purpose of the city charter because the system works.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Last week, the Council addressed a pair of vetoes issued by no party Mayor Friday Ellis. He struck a measure that would have established a constitutionally problematic procedure for addressing allegedly discriminatory statements and actions among city employees, prompted when his chief operating officer Morgan McCallister hit back at baseless accusations of such alleged statements. Another denied ordinance would have had the city annex a neighborhood, against the decision of the city’s zoning board, with questionable liabilities involving a principal whose other project is stalled by the city, the discussion of which before another government body prompted the accusation against McCallister.

Council Democrats complained that Ellis had the power to create an extra hurdle for things he didn’t support; in other words, they were carping about a venerable and basic check and balance in American government. Democrat Juanita Woods said she was bringing a reworded version of the investigatory ordinance, a version of which was introduced later, and she insinuated racism lay behind the annexation veto, while Democrat Rodney McFarland said the stated basis of the veto was “lies” and made the similar claim that the largely-black southside area of Monroe was getting shortchanged; all Council Democrats are black while Ellis is white.

As a result, the majority also brought an ordinance asking voters to amend the charter to make the mayor’s veto power suspensory; that is, rather than a two-thirds vote required to override a veto, the same simple majority that passes matters would do. In essence, when all members are present, three rather than four votes could override. Practically speaking, it would allow the three Democrats both to pass legislation and to make an Ellis veto merely delay enactment of something by a couple of weeks.

Clearly, it is unwise to pursue this. While several states give their governors only a suspensory veto, the dynamics are different where those legislatures have sufficient resources to provide substantial input to decision-making. By contrast, Monroe’s Council has next to none, and certainly little compared to the city’s executive branch, headed by the mayor, that it depends upon for almost all its information and analysis. The proposed arrangement could lead the Council into uninformed actions to which the mayor otherwise could provide some balance, while the current one still gives the Council an opportunity to be assertive, just with a greater majority that promotes moderation and coalition-building.

In fact, putting this into the charter ends up as a half-baked and inefficient way of creating a council-manager or weak mayor-council system of government, as opposed to the strong mayor-council system Monroe already has. A council-manager system has the council hire (and fire) a professional city manager to run executive functions (no Louisiana municipality has this), while a weak mayor-council system gives the mayor only ceremonial and very minor administrative powers, if it even makes the mayor separately elected and not a member of the council.

Thus, if the majority wishes to arrogate more power to itself, it should go whole hog and scrap the strong mayor-council system. Yet also worth noting is that law made on the basis of exceptions is bad law. Council Democrats, knowing the two Republicans on the Council can be counted upon usually to back Ellis and thus let vetoes stand, may see this amendment as a method to impose their agenda. But Ellis won’t be in office forever. What if one of them becomes mayor at some point and finds himself hampered with just a suspensory veto?

Structure of government and personality conflicts aside, changing mayoral veto power this way, as proposed by the Democrats and if considered by the public, is a bad idea simply for this reason: the qualified veto provides for greater separation of powers and checks and balances that improve governing. If people put into office occupants of branches that have the power to check each other and do, then through the ballot box the people wanted sufficient harmony within and between branches before making policy, and not a concentration of power. Democrats should respect that and drop the proposed ordinance.