'Neutering the mayor' criticized

Sen. Carlene Walker, R-Salt Lake, wants to make sure municipal leaders aren't cutting into mayors' job descriptions against the will of their constituents.

City councils in Bluffdale and Syracuse in recent months have shifted administrative powers from their respective mayors to appointed city managers. A similar form-of-government change has been discussed in Lehi.

Walker calls such action "neutering the mayor," and says it's "fundamentally wrong and bad public policy."

She plans to do something about it during the upcoming legislative session. Walker said she will sponsor a bill prohibiting municipal councils from stripping mayors of administrative powers or changing a city's or town's form of government without input from the voting public.

"I feel the way these city councils are going about this is wrong," she said. "I just think the voters need to be consulted on this."

Under state law, governing bodies of cities or towns can establish a city-manager form of government by ordinance and then appoint someone to fill that position.

The Bluffdale City Council unanimously voted in September to take administrative powers away from first-year mayor Claudia Anderson and give them to Brent Bluth, who had been serving as the city's administrative services director.

Anderson said the decision by the City Council was "more or less a coup."

"If the people want to change the form of government, then we need to let them change it," she said. "I have no problem with that. We just need to let the people vote. Five people shouldn't be able to make that decision."

A month after the Bluffdale council's action, the Syracuse City Council voted 4-1 to take chief-executive duties away from Mayor Fred Panucci.

Residents in both cities have circulated referendum petitions in an effort to reverse the decisions.

Bluffdale city recorder Teddie Bell said this week that petition signatures have been certified by the Salt Lake County clerk's office and meet the requirements for a vote in the next election.

In Davis County, election director Pat Beckstead is about halfway through certifying the 1,728 signatures Syracuse residents gathered over a two-week period. They only needed 944.

"We didn't work very hard," said DeLore Thurgood, one of the petition's sponsors, adding that he and fellow petitioners were shooting for 2,000.