The East Baton Rouge metro council delayed exploring the idea of deconsolidating the parish after Councilman Darryl Hurst withdrew his plan to create a commission so he could adjust it based on comments from Wednesday’s meeting.
Hurst’s argument for a split surrounds fairness in representation. Baton Rouge is currently the only municipal entity in the parish without its own mayor or council, meaning that leaders wear two hats, using the mayor-president as an example.
Mayor-President Sid Edwards said that at the beginning of his term he had to grapple with which part of his job was more important: parish president or mayor. Ultimately, he landed on being the mayor.
“Baker, St. George, Central and Zachary have a mayor and a council, and I’m there for them, and we work together,” Edwards said. “I just feel in my role that a majority of my time is spent in Baton Rouge.”
Hurst argues that no one should have to make that decision.
Edwards said he’s not in favor of deconsolidation at this time, but he wants to look at the data before taking any stronger stance.
Hurst’s plan would gather that data. His pitch would create a commission to amend the Home Rule Charter — the base document the city parish is structured around and is somewhat comparable to a constitution.
The commission would consist of 10 members: the five mayors, 3 Metro Council members, a Baton Rouge resident and a resident from the unincorporated parts of the parish. They would meet the second and fourth Thursday of each month to research and discuss deconsolidation.
Ultimately, they would create a final report around the feasibility of deconsolidation within 6 months, though Hurst admits he expects it to take longer. The council can change the deadline, he said, but it’s there to motivate people to get the work done.
“I don’t want to rush the process,” Hurst said. “I want to make sure it’s done the right way.”
Ultimately, concerns about specific details of Hurt’s proposal led him to delay official deconsolidation talks.
Councilman Aaron Moak raised the issue of representation, proposing an amendment that would add two representatives from unincorporated Baton Rouge to the commission.
In its current iteration, Moak argues that the proposal wouldn’t give the unincorporated areas of the parish a fair voice in the conversation.
“Because that’s what we’re talking about with deconsolidation is leaving (the unincorporated areas) out there by themselves,” he said.
Hurst agreed and said Moak’s recommendation will be in his amended proposal.
Councilman Cleve Dunn disagreed with the need for a committee. He proposed an alternative plan — having the city-parish’s finance department draft a report on what a split budget would look like, arguing it would be better to handle it in-house.
Dunn introduced his own item, asking for that report to be presented at Wednesday’s meeting. That didn’t happen, as Angie Savoy, the city-parish’s finance director, said the issue was too complicated to complete a report in that time, especially with the jobs cut in the last budget cycle.
Hurst disagrees with a council-centric approach, believing a committee is better because it forces people to focus on the issue even as people are voted in and out of office.
Aside from those quibbles in structure, the Metro Council largely agreed that officials should consider deconsolidation, but some had concerns about actually doing it.
The largest concern was city and parish finances. To get a picture of what that would look like, Savoy said separating the two would not be as simple as looking at revenue and expenses to see if the city and the parish would be in the black. Lingering issues, like who’s responsible for debt, determining which services belong to which entity and how deconsolidation would affect the cities that have broken away, would complicate the matter.
And that’s before considering two pending lawsuits that could completely change the math.
After motions to tweak his plan began to stack up, Hurst asked to pull the item. He said he plans to introduce a new version that incorporates the feedback he received.
“We’re excited that there was really no backlash from colleagues other than technicalities, and we’re gonna fix those technicalities to make sure everybody feels comfortable,” he said.
If it’s introduced at the next council meeting, as Hurst said, the earliest the council could take it up again would be the second week in October.
