CINCINNATI — The City of Cincinnati is proposing a charter amendment that would limit the mayor’s power to control the legislation that makes it to City Council for a vote.
What You Need To Know
- Cincinnati’s mayor, members of City Council plan legislation to end the so-called pocket veto
- A pocket veto is when a piece of legislation gets killed by the mayor, never referring it for a vote
- If approved by Council, residents would vote on the issue in November
- Council plans to vote on it Thursday
On Tuesday, Mayor Aftab Pureval joined three council members at Sawyer Point in downtown to outline the legislation that aims to eliminate what’s come to be known as the mayor’s pocket veto.
Under the charter, the mayor gets to set the agenda for City Council.
A pocket veto is when the mayor effectively kills legislation by never referring it to council for a vote. That means, even if it’s received support from all members of City Council, the mayor never has to put it up for a vote.
The goal is to ensure the legislative process is “clear, transparent and fair” Pureval said.
“There should be no confusion about how a good idea gets from point A to point B and what each branch of our government’s role is in that process,” he said. “And with this amendment, we are creating an explicit timeline that myself and all our city leaders from now into the future would be held accountable.”
The pocket veto isn’t an expressed mayoral power written into the charter, but there are no current rules dictating a timeline for the mayor’s referral process.
In 2015, a Charter Review Committee recommended a series of changes, including requiring the mayor to assign all legislative matters to a Council committee within 14 days. The City Council took some actions on the recommendations, but not regarding the pocket veto.
Bill Frost is president of the Charter Committee of Greater Cincinnati, an independent political organization dedicated to good government.
Overall, he feels the pocket veto is a bad thing for Cincinnati government. It could be misused, Frost said, for things like a “bargaining chip in backroom dealings” with members of City Council or a way to “silence a Council majority,” especially one that could withstand a mayor’s “no vote” by having six votes.
“There are historical situations where things have gone through committee with public hearings and everything else. The public has come in to speak on these issues. They’ve been voted on, sometimes unanimously by committee, and they’ve just stopped,” he added. “I’d say that’s anti-democratic.”
Under the planned amendment — which is expected to pass — the mayor would need to refer legislation to the council committee for discussion within four regularly scheduled council meetings. If the mayor did not refer the legislation, the clerk of council would do it.
If approved by City Council, a decision on the pocket veto would come down to voters. A charter amendment would go on the ballot for the general election on Tuesday, Nov. 8.
Administratively, the deadline to transmit a charter amendment to the Hamilton County Board of Elections for the November ballot is Thursday.
That means it will have to pass out of the Public Safety and Governance Committee on Wednesday, and then a full council vote the next day.
“So for those who have been advocating for this issue for a long time, the work is not over,” Pureval said.
How does this compare to other efforts to update the charter?
This wouldn’t be the first time an attempt to kill the pocket veto ended up on the ballot, but it’s the first time voters could vote on the issue directly.
Last year, former State Rep. Tom Brinkman (R) got on the ballot Issue 3, a sweeping piece of legislation that would have led to several charter changes.
Issue 3 — which also included a process for removing Cincinnati’s mayor from office — failed 56.39% to 43.61%. Some critics of that legislation noted that Issue 3 required a voter to pick “yes” or “no” on all the items, not just one specific element.
One of the key changes for this one over previous proposals is this one is four meetings as opposed to short, ranging from two weeks to 30 days.
Pureval’s proposal is four regularly scheduled meetings. And once a committee passes legislation, the mayor again has four regularly scheduled meetings to put it on the full council agenda.
Typically, City Council meetings take place weekly, but not always, especially during the summer recess period and winter months. Some committees meet every other week when City Council is in session.
The decision about the timeline was made “collaboratively” by himself and at the legislation’s two co-sponsors, council members Mark Jeffreys and Jeff Cramerding, Pureval said. All three are Democrats. Council Member Meeka Owens (D) attended the press conference as well to show her support.
“I think it’s in the mayor’s appropriate prerogative to give it some time to get people on the same page to let the process be as thorough and deliberate as possible,” Cramerding said. “This timeline is exactly right.”
Getting rid of the pocket veto is one of several recommendations from the Charter Review committee. Others included giving the City Council more say in hiring and firing of a city manager.
Right now, the mayor handles the recruitment of a city manager and is the only one who can start the firing of them.
The City of Cincinnati just went through that process. The city spent about $40,000 on a national search, Pureval said, after which he decided to promote longtime Assistant City Manager Sheryl Long to the position. Frost supports the city manager “100%,” he did take issue with the hiring process.
Trust in the local city government is low, coming off a series of years at City Hall marked by scandal and the arrest of three council members on corruption charges, Frost added.
On Tuesday, Pureval said there are no plans to evaluate that specific recommendation or any others. He pointed to the creation of a code of conduct for City Councils and limiting campaign funds from developers involved in business deals with the city.
Frost feels the city has “more work to do” to prepare public trust, Frost said, but he believes the recent actions by the city show Cincinnati is moving in the right direction.
“There are things that need to come along afterwards. I hope that Councilors still have the memory of two, three years ago and it’s in their minds and the changes keep coming,” he said. But if this is the only thing they do, this is still a significant step.”
