PLYMOUTH — In their meeting on Monday, the Marshall County Council heard a query from the Marshall County Commissioners regarding their willingness to become the “legislative” body of the county.
Currently, the division of powers within the county governmental boards is the Commissioners holding the day-to-day executive power of the county along with the power to formulate and pass ordinances. Last week, Commissioner Jesse Bohannon began a discussion with the other Commissioners regarding an ordinance of the state of Indiana that allows a county to empower the County Council with the ability to enact all ordinances along with being its fiscal body that allocates all funds.
Currently, only St. Joe and Lake County operate under this division of powers.
Attorney for the Council, Marcel Lebbin told the board that the arrangement would more closely reflect the federal government with legislative and fiscal powers given to Congress with the President exercising executive authority.
As in the federal model, the Commissioners would retain “veto” power over an ordinance, with the Council having the ability to override the veto.
Lebbin said that it would be more of a “collaborative” arrangement between the two bodies than the current arrangement, with the Council having just the power to refuse to fund actions they disagreed with the Commissioners on. Lebbin said in the past, some Commissioners had enacted ordinances the Council didn’t agree with, which they didn’t fund that led to “chaos,” saying this would prevent some of that from happening.
Any such change would take a joint resolution of both bodies.
Commissioner Bohannon a week ago told his board it would be a “long” discussion and Lebbin told the Council essentially the same saying it would take a lot of discussion to be sure if the change is something that both bodies would be interested in and just when that transition would take place if decided on.
