Newly elected Aldermanic President Megan Green presided over her first board meeting Friday, pledging to treat all members fairly but encountering a nascent challenge to take away key elements of her authority.
“I will never forget the colleagues who supported my campaign and I promise to never hold it against anyone who did not,” she said at the start of the videoconference session.
She added that in her eight years as 15th Ward alderman, “there were times I did not feel welcome here. Others have told me that they felt the same way. That changes now.”
That was a reference to past complaints that Green and other members of the board’s progressive bloc fared poorly in committee assignments made by former president Lewis Reed, who was part of a more moderate faction.
Reed resigned in June following his indictment on federal corruption charges; Green was elected last week to fill the final five months in his four-year term. Reed later entered a guilty plea, as did two other ex-aldermen charged in the case.
The challenge to Green’s authority as president was launched in a rules change proposed by Alderman Sharon Tyus, 1st Ward, that spurred lengthy debate.
No action was taken Friday on the proposal, under which the president would no longer have sole authority to assign bills to committees and to decide committee membership.
Instead, Green would have to share those decisions with the board’s two longest-serving members — potentially Tyus herself and Alderman Joe Vollmer, 10th Ward. Those positions are the board vice president and floor leader. Any two could outvote the third.
“That is a fair way to do things,” Tyus said. “One person doesn’t get to do their agenda and especially doesn’t get to punish people.”
Tyus emphasized that her proposal would only affect the final few months of the current board session. But if adopted, it could influence what rules are adopted by the new, smaller 14-member board that will be elected next April.
Green didn’t speak out on Tyus’ proposal during the meeting. But some of her allies opposed it.
Alderman Anne Schweitzer, 13th Ward, said the measure was aimed “simply to hurt the president’s ability to do things.”
Also opposed was Alderman Annie Rice, 8th Ward, who urged the board to give Green a chance to work with the board. “We can maybe assume best intentions from each other in a way we haven’t done” previously, Rice said.
She also said it doesn’t seem “worthy of our time to mess with all of our rules” in the remaining months of the current session.
Meanwhile, another progressive, Shane Cohn of the 25th, proposed a separate rules change that would allow the full board to pick the board’s vice president and floor leader instead of having those posts go automatically to the most senior members. No action was taken on that idea either.
A moderate, Alderman Joe Vaccaro, 23rd Ward, noted that some progressives on the board in 2021 had tried unsuccessfully to get the board to take away some of Reed’s powers.
One such measure would have allowed board members to let aldermen pick their own committee assignments based on seniority. The board already uses seniority to determine who chairs each committee and has done so for years.
Rice said the current upheaval on the board was due to “the malfeasance in office of our previous president” and that he also had been responsible for actions that divided the board.
That angered Tyus. Tyus said while she had her own serious disputes with Reed over the years, it wasn’t necessary to bring up in the rules debate what happened to Reed.
Tyus, who is Black, also reiterated complaints she’s made in the past about white progressives. “You’re not the only person that has an agenda and has a priority,” she said. “You do not know how to compromise.”
Green in an interview after the meeting said she was undecided on the proposed rules change and wanted to talk with Tyus before taking a position on it.
In the meeting, Green called on aldermen to review and implement structural changes before the new smaller board takes office.
She said that should include increased transparency and ethical guidelines and better and more professional staffing.
She said there are tentative plans to hold the board’s next meeting Dec. 2 in person at a city office building at 1520 Market Street, where there is better air filtration than at the board’s chambers in City Hall. The board has held only a handful of meetings there since the start of the pandemic in 2020.
Pandemic aid OK’d
Meanwhile, the board gave final approval to a plan to allocate $93 million in federal pandemic aid.
The measure, proposed by Mayor Tishaura O. Jones, includes a wide range of spending, including a $4 million fund to cover homebuyers’ down payments and closing costs. Priority would go to city employees.
Among other items are a $9 million neighborhood beautification program, $1 million for housing aid for lower-income college students and $20 million to build or preserve affordable housing for lower- and moderate-income residents.
Source : STLToday
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