Mansura Town Council fails to override mayor's veto on salary reduction

Most of the Mansura Town Council meeting was taken up with Mayor Kenneth Pickett “teaching” aldermen about municipal policies and procedures and in thinly veiled jabs at aldermen who have tried unsuccessfully to reduce the mayor’s salary effective on Jan. 1.

The “main event” on the July 9 agenda was a vote to override Pickett’s veto of that ordinance, which required at least a 4-1 vote.

That agenda item took very little time and failed with three votes in favor and two against. Longtime Alderman Gaon Escudé and first-termers Judy James and Allison Ferguson voted in favor of overriding the veto and adopting the ordinance. Veteran Alderwomen Judy Bazert and Lucille Hayes, both of whom voted to raise the mayor’s salary to $3,000 a month back in January 2011, maintained their vote in opposition to the salary reduction.

“It’s dead,” Pickett said. “I don’t want to hear anything more about it.”

The mayor then said he has “no animosity with y’all. We have a job to do. We have to be civil.”
Several jabs

Prior to that vote, Pickett took several jabs at three council members who favored the salary reduction.

He said a request was improperly made for an attorney general’s opinion on his veto and he wanted to “teach” aldermen the proper procedures. He said a request for an attorney general’s opinion must be approved by the council and signed by the mayor. This received neither. Pickett asked who wrote it, who typed it and who knew about it.

“I wrote it,” Escudé said.

“I typed it,” James said.

“I knew about it,” Ferguson said, adding she had no input in the letter itself.

Pickett, Bazert and Hayes all said they were unaware the request was being made and had not seen a copy of it or the attorney general’s response.

The attorney general’s response was to request the council adopt a resolution requesting an opinion on the mayor’s veto of the salary reduction ordinance.

Pickett said he would have supported the request if it had gone through the proper procedure. He called for a resolution to request the opinion, which was unanimously approved.

Town Attorney Alissa Piazza-Tassin said case law seems to support a position that an elected official’s “term” begins when the candidates qualify for that office.

If that is the case, it is unlikely the attorney general’s opinion would be back before qualifying was to begin Wednesday (July 18), even if it were favorable to the pro-cut councilmen.

“Once I vetoed it, it was kaput,” Pickett said, adding that the attorney general has never overruled a mayor’s veto.

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On a related matter, Pickett said he was “giving a direct order that no town letterhead goes out without my name or Police Chief John Johnson’s name on it.”

That was a direct dig at Escudé, who signed the letter in his capacity as mayor pro-tem.

Pickett pointed out that the mayor pro-tem is to assume the duties of the mayor when the mayor is incapacitated, “which I am not.” He said the council has been “wasting time and energy” on attempting to override a veto that will not happen.

“The horse is dead,” Pickett said. “The veto cremated the horse. Move on.”

Pickett then took aim at James with an agenda item to discuss “tying up employee computer.”

He said the employees in Town Hall are very busy on town business and nobody should use the computer except for official town business.

James said Escudé asked her to type the letter to the attorney general and it took her a few minutes while she was in Town Hall.

Pickett did raise the question of whether any penalties could be imposed for violating the municipal procedures.

“All of that is water under the bridge,” Pickett said. “Town letterhead will not be going out anymore without the mayor’s signature.”