District-based city council could affect Detroit mayoral power balance

(Creative Commons photo by Maia C via Flickr)

DETROIT — When the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled last week that a proposal to have Detroit City Council members elected from specific districts instead of at-large citywide must be put before voters on the Nov. 3 ballot, the role of the city’s authorized, but not yet assembled Charter Revision Commission in the process of creating district-based representation shifted significantly. And it could eventually change the balance of power between the mayor and the city council.

With the district-based city council representation ballot initiative, titled Proposal D, currently expected to pass, it raises a new question for those who are seeking to rewrite the city’s governing document: In order to best enable district-based council representation, would other provisions in the Detroit City Charter have to change?

Ken Coleman, a journalist who is one of the 17 candidates for the Charter Revision Commission, would answer yes. “If we’re going to change the mechanism for electing city council members I think we are going to have to look at some ways in which we could better balance the power between the mayor and city council,” he told voters at a voter forum last week.

When asked, most of the candidates who support district-based representation said they support updating other parts of the charter to accommodate the change. The most popular idea among charter revision candidates to make districts most effective is to shift the balance of power between the city’s chief executive and the city council.

Detroit currently has a strong mayoral form of government, which leaves council members with little say over many city operations. But assuming Proposal D passes and shifts the council away from at-large only representation, the current city charter may limit the power of council members from being able to effectively represent specific districts, some Charter Revision Commission candidates argue.

Currently, city council members have no power over city departments and no say in the approval or firing of department heads, who only have a mandate to be accountable to the mayor and not the city council.

City council members have the power to create municipal legislation and vote on issues affecting the city, but ultimately the mayor has veto power.

Attorney and Charter Revision Commission candidate Janice Mitchell Ford thinks one of the considerations to make districts more effective would be to examine whether the council should have some control over how city departments are run and managed. “I also believe that council-by-districts will only be truly effective if accompanied by other Charter … changes/revisions,” Ford recently wrote during a live chat with voters on the Detroit Free Press’ website.

During the chat she cited a section of the charter that prohibits city council members from making a direct request to most city employees and department heads without first getting permission from the mayor. “A [district-based] City Council member would be prohibited from directing the Director of Public Lighting to repair the darkened street lights in his/her district,” Ford wrote. “In my opinion, if districts is going to be most effective, we should consider revising §4-113 and other sections.”

Other supporters of the council-by-districts proposal agreed with Ford.

Tonya Meyers-Philips, a Charter Revision Commission candidate who works as an attorney at her own private law firm, thinks the council shouldn’t have to go through the mayor to get an issue resolved. “Right now if I have compliant as a citizen, naturally I’m gonna go to my city council person. But the way the city charter is written right now, city council then has to go to the executive branch,” Philips told voters at a candidate forum last week.

Meyers-Philips suggested that the charter be revised to allow council members to have the authority to remove department directors as well as the mayor. “There is extreme temptation to have your values compromised if you work solely for the mayor,” she said at the forum. She said having council members share the jurisdiction of hiring and firing of city officials would create “political insulation” for those officials, as they would no longer be solely at the mercy of the mayor.

Like Ford, she would give council members the power to direct city officials as well. “Currently, certain department heads don’t have an obligation to get back to council,” she said.

Coleman, like many of his fellow candidates, thinks that with district representation, the way city council members interact with appointed city officials will have to change. “Currently in Detroit the only mayoral department head that the council has any say on is the corporation counsel, the chief lawyer,” he explained to voters. “I would like to look at expanding that to major department directors to at least a couple departments. Chief of police would certainly be one.”

There are some candidates who aren’t ready to say what other parts of the charter would change with the council-by-districts proposal. John R. Eddings, a teacher and former city official, is still mulling the question of whether there should be a shift of power between mayor and city council. “I can’t give you and answer today but it’s something I have to work out with eight other individuals. If we get into that room and start squabbling we could screw this whole thing up,” Eddings said when asked if he supports a change in the balance of power in city government should Proposal D pass.

Candidate Jeffrey Robinson, a Detroit public school administrator, has not said whether he supports a change in the balance of power under a districts format but said such changes should reflect “the will of the people” and not his personal opinion.

One charter revision candidate, former radio personality Reggie “Reg” Davis, said he is tired of talking about the council-by-districts plan and its implications. “Council-by-districts is such a hot topic. Everywhere I go when I speak, I want to talk about ethics, pension, I wanna talk about different things but the only thing anybody wants to talk about is council-by-districts.”

While Davis said has he favored districts in past interviews, he said this week at a forum that he is “leaning” away from districts because he feels it may further divide the city, a concept he says is “really frightening to me.”

The only candidate who is publicly against council by districts is Rose Mary Robinson, an attorney and former Wayne County commissioner. Robinson worries that district-based representation will create more problems for Detroiters instead of solving them. She voiced her concerns about the cost of organizing districts and how votes would be divided in sparely populated areas of the city.

“What does that leave the districts with an insurmountable amount of empty land? What happens to the person who is elected in that district? What kind of pressures do you think they’ll be put under with people wanting the [vacant] land in that district?” She asked at a community forum where voters cheered her response.

The last time the Detroit City Charter was revised in 1998, Charter Revision Commission members supported a council-by-districts plan, but due to the controversial nature of that the issue, a revamped city council structure never made it into the charter. This time around, a community coalition, Detroiters for Council by Districts, fought to get the measure passed as a ballot initiative, despite almost unanimous support for the measure among Charter Revision Commission candidates.

Now, the commission’s role in implementing districts will be re-defined if Proposal D passes is to determine how to make council members work in their districts to better serve city residents. “You have to give leadership the authority to make changes,” businessman and Charter Revision Commission candidate Ken Harris told voters at a community forum in June. “We need to empower a council-by-districts format. Council members should have more power so there are checks and balances.”