More antisocial and anti-public posturing from the addled little Harrisville cherry-picker/gondolist twit
We've just received word that Boss Godfrey has exercised his mayoral line item budget veto power, and has thus rejected the council's generous offer to fully fund the Marshal White Center for the current 2010 fiscal year, with an earmarked allocation for continuing operations of the pool as part of the deal.
See ya's in Court, Boss Godfrey!
Don't be surprised if your upcoming court experience is joined by a flurry of Ogden Lumpencitizens, filing their own Amicus Curiae briefs.
Godfrey: The man of the People! (The developer people, of course.)
This also looks like an ideal opportunity to see where exactly where our so far unopposed Ward 3 council fence-sitter, Doug Stephens, stands, by the way.
His vote on the veto override will tell the whole story.
Too funny.
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10 comments:
Too early to comment, really, not having seen the Mayor's message to the Council justifying --- or trying to --- his veto. But I am puzzled, a little, Rudi, by this: "See ya in Court, Boss Godfrey."
Not quite sure on what grounds his exercise of a line item veto can be challenged. It can be over-ridden by the Council, of course. But I don't quite see the grounds for challenging his exercise of his veto power. Care to expand a little?
Curm:
As you say, it's too early to comment. But I'll speculate anyway...
It seems to me that the mayor's contract with OWCAP to run the MWC is problematic whether the veto gets overridden or not. If the council overrides the veto, then by ordinance the pool has to stay open--yet the contract apparently allows it to be shut down. If the council doesn't override the veto, then the MWC has zero budget and the mayor can't fulfill the financial obligations of the contract. Or so I gather from what I've heard.
So I guess Rudi's predicting that no matter what happens, we may be in for a legal showdown between the mayor and the council (and/or between the city and OWCAP).
As Rudi so often says, grab your popcorn.
Dan:
You raise a question I've wondered about for some time. If the Council must approve the budget, did the Mayor in fact have the authority to sign a binding contract committing the city to pay $30K monthly subsidies under the contract before the Council had approved the budget with that money in it? It seems to me, he did not. That to have been legitimately let, the contract should have had a clause making it contingent on the Council's subsequent approval of the funds. If it did not have that kind of contingency clause in it, I can't see how he was authorized to sign it. If the Mayor can commit substantial funds out of the new fiscal year's budget before the Council has approved that budget, and those commitments are binding on the Council and City, then the Council's budgetary authority is nearly non-existent in fact. Or so it seems to me.
Fine legal analysis, Curm. And as always you're entirely correct. Godfrey has no executive authority to commit substantial funds to a project like this, without council budgetary authority.
The OWCAP contract is illegal and unenforcible.
It's as simple as that.
Curm, Rudi, Dan,
If the Mayor is breaking the law? Who is going to enforce that law?
Rudi sez:
The OWCAP contract is illegal and unenforcible.
It's as simple as that.
Not so simple, actually, Rudi. You must have slept through Contracts, because you forgot to mention that if one of the parties unilaterally amends the contract within 48 hours, that the previous problems with the contract are "cured". Any lawyer worth his salt knows this.
My guess is Hizzonah is fairly certain he has the necessary three votes lined up to sustain his veto. I doubt he'd chance the veto otherwise. If I were Mayor, I certainly wouldn't if I wasn't sure I had the votes to prevail.
But we shall see....
Mono - haven't the 48 hours lapsed, or are we speaking of mayor-size-compensatory hours (i.e. MUCH longer hours than anyone else has available)?
TLJ
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