Metro Councilwoman Donna Collins-Lewis, in an appearance Monday before the Baton Rouge Press Club, distanced herself from a proposal to dissolve the East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council and replace it with separate councils at the city and parish levels.
Instead, she said, she and others are considering several other proposed changes to the city’s plan of government that could strengthen the government operations while addressing concerns about representation of the black community.
Among those proposals are creating a city manager position, which she said could lighten the day-to-day duties of the city’s chief administrative officer, and possibly devising at-large seats on the Metro Council as a way to provide increased representation for the city’s black residents.
Discussing the proposal to dissolve the Metro Council, Collins-Lewis said, “To say yes to something like that, I’d have to look at what it would do financially to the city-parish, which I couldn’t say at this point.”
Her comments make her the third black representative on Metro Council’s 12-member body to publicly express hesitation at a push by the local NAACP branch to dissolve the city-parish’s consolidated governmental structure and replace it with separate legislative bodies at the city and parish level.
The NAACP was among groups that advocated for a black Democrat to be appointed to the seat of Republican Councilman Buddy Amoroso after he was killed in late June. That effort failed.
NAACP leaders have argued the black community in Baton Rouge isn't getting the representation it deserves on the 12-member Metro Council — which is made up of seven white Republicans and five black Democrats.
According to U.S. Census 2017 population estimates, 48.1 percent of the parish's population is white and 46.5 percent black. In Baton Rouge, however, the black population is 55.2 percent while the white population is 38.6 percent.
NAACP state conference President Mike McClanahan said previously the group is prepared to collect signatures to force the issue onto the ballot but would rather the Metro Council put the proposal before the voters.
Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome and the Baton Rouge Area Chamber came out early and expressed opposition to the proposal, as did several council members.
Councilwomen Tara Wicker and Erika Green have previously echoed the NAACP's sentiments about more equal representation on the Metro Council but were also uninterested in dismantling the current governmental structure.
Collins-Lewis on Monday pointed out that when the city-parish’s government structures were consolidated more than 30 years ago it was done to fine-tune services and improve the financial standing between both entities. Before she could endorse the NAACP plan, she said, "I would have to have something in writing to see how it would impact the budget.”
A proposal to create at-large seats on the Metro Council is being seen as one way to address the representation issue.
Collins-Lewis said the plan of government committee, which consists of two other council members, various city officials and the heads of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and local NAACP, likes the idea of adding two at-large seats.
One at-large seat representative would live in Baton Rouge and the second would reside in the unincorporated areas of the parish — with the top vote getter serving as the mayor pro tem instead of the having the Metro Council appoint someone, she said.
The mayor pro tempore presides over council meetings and serves on the mayor-president's behalf, when the mayor is unavailable.
Both at-large seats would be voted on parishwide, Collins-Lewis said.
“There was some discussion about enlarging the council to 14 members — that was a sticky point,” Collins-Lewis said. “There’s also been a discussion about reducing the size. And we all know how controversial that can be. People want to know whose council district goes away and who gets to approve the changes.”
When asked about the possibility of how a St. George breakaway could affect these plans, Collins-Lewis declined to answer.
Another major topic among the committee is creating a city manager position, Collins-Lewis said.
That person would oversee the day-to-day operations of the city’s departments alleviating some of the duties from the mayor’s chief administrative officer.
Collins-Lewis said the proposed position could strengthen the mayor’s office, in terms of giving the chief administrative officer more time to deal with issues connected to the office instead of being stretched too thin trying to manage the daily operations within every department of city-parish government.
“This person would still have some responsibility to the mayor,” Collins-Lewis said. “The person (chosen) as city manager would be approved by the mayor but also have to come before the Metro Council for approval.”
The committee is also tightening up language within the plan of government and clearing up areas where city-parish procedures and policies conflict with state laws.
Collins-Lewis said the committee is about halfway through the document and should wrap up their work by November. At that point, the proposed changes will be presented to the Metro Council and possibly placed on the ballot for voters by March 2019.
“We hope to hold one or two community meetings to gain citizen input on the proposed changes before we present it to the council,” she said.
