EVANSVILLE — The outlines of an election schedule emerged Wednesday from leading members of the committee charged with crafting a proposal for Evansville-Vanderburgh County consolidated government.
No formal recommendation was made, but five of the Evansville-Vanderburgh County Reorganization Committee's 12 members agreed that a new consolidated government's mayor and 11-member governing body would be elected at the same time to nonstaggered four-year terms.
The elections would be held in even-numbered nonpresidential election years, so voters could focus on local issues.
If a consolidation referendum question were on this year's general election ballot and if it were to pass, partisan special elections to three-year terms would be held in 2011. The first regular election cycle would begin in 2014.
If the consolidation referendum question were on the 2011 ballot and it passed, a significantly slower transition would result. Special elections to five-year terms would be held in 2013, with the first regular election cycle beginning in 2018.
"Anyone running for any office in 2012 would do it with their eyes wide open that it's a one-year term," said Chuck Whobrey, a member of the reorganization committee's subcommittee on governance.
Two of the governance subcommittee's four members — Whobrey and Susan Helfrich — were joined Wednesday at Central Library by committee members Ed Hafer Jr., Rebecca Kasha and Barbara Harris.
Subcommittee members James Harris and John Bittner were not present.
City or county?
The group — five of the full committee's 12 members, including chairwoman Kasha — also kicked around the question of whether a newly consolidated government would survive as a city or a county. Committee attorneys will investigate which designation would have better implications for allocation of state and federal funds.
The mixed group clarified questions about preferences for a new government's budget process.
The budget would be submitted to the governing body after being balanced by the mayor and his chief financial officer, working from spending proposals submitted by department heads and elected heads of agencies such as the sheriff and assessor.
The trimming of spending proposals would be based on revenue projections and input from the auditor.
Budget line items
Having previously discussed the idea, the committee members favored allowing the governing body to raise spending in budget line items — and subtract a corresponding amount elsewhere — if two-thirds of its 11 members agreed. Agency heads publicly could ask the governing body to restore funding in line items that had been trimmed.
They came out against giving the mayor line-item veto power in the budget approved by a governing body, a power that would enable the chief executive to strike items from budgets.
If the mayor felt strongly that an item should not be in the budget, he would have to veto the entire fiscal plan.
Hafer said allowing the governing body to create new line items not requested by department heads or suggested by the mayor and his financial officer would be going too far.
"I just think we're opening the door for the council to begin to manage the departments," he said.
But Whobrey said there should be a check on the mayor's power over the budget process.
"This is the relief valve, that if there's abuse of that power, council can restore it," he said.