Editorial: Omaha mayor should remain in charge when traveling outside the city | Editorial

Omaha is considering whether it should change the rules for when someone steps in as the city’s acting mayor in the event the mayor is out of town.

It’s part of a once-a-decade review of the Omaha City Charter, the city’s constitution, which was first approved in 1956. The charter itself calls for creating a citizen-led group to recommend amendments, and the current 15-member panel last week came up with 24 proposals. The City Council will decide whether to place them on the November ballot.

One of the ideas, as reported by World-Herald staff writer Jessica Wade, is to change the requirement that the council president (or sometimes the vice president) fills in when the mayor is outside the city limits.

In practice, this rule is sensibly invoked only when the mayor leaves the state for an extended trip, not every time the mayor makes a minor detour across the city boundary into Omaha’s suburbs.

Having an acting mayor has been a sound idea. If the mayor isn’t around, someone needs to be in charge if a major issue arises. It’s been appropriate for that to be an elected city council member rather than an unelected mayoral aide.

Mostly, the acting mayor winds up as a caretaker, doing things like signing a document that needs an immediate signature during the mayor’s absence. But an acting mayor also could become needed to help lead and coordinate a response to an emergency situation such as a huge fire, a police shooting, a tornado or a blizzard.

Still, in today’s era of computers and smartphones, it’s quite possible for a mayor to be effectively plugged into city business no matter where he or she is located. Anyone who has worked remotely during the current pandemic has experienced that capability.

While there might be some advantages to being on the ground in Omaha for an emergency, it seems acceptable to allow the mayor to use electronic means to stay in touch and run the city while on an out-of-state trip.

Mayor Jean Stothert, who has been out of the city 39 days in the first six months of this year, proposed a charter revision that would sharply reduce the number of times an acting mayor stepped in. Under her initial proposal, an acting mayor would be needed only if the mayor was going to be out of town for more than 10 days or left the continental United States.

The charter committee modified that to five business days. And its amendment says that in cases of an emergency, an acting mayor could step in sooner — but only when the mayor is unavailable by phone for two hours or more.

That’s a reasonable compromise.

We do think it’s important for Omaha’s mayors to be transparent about their out-of-town travel, even if they expect to return before the proposed five business days have elapsed. That includes proper notice each time to the council president, who needs to be on alert to fill in if the emergency provision would kick in.

And it also means disclosure of the mayor’s travel to the public, so they can judge how well the mayor is handling city issues when working remotely.

Council President Pete Festersen has expressed reservations about the proposal, saying it’s important to have “continuity and clear decision-making authority in case of an emergency, or in case someone is unreachable in a time of crisis.”

Of course it is. But the proposed charter amendment is compatible with the goal of having strong leadership in an emergency.

We’re confident that top city officials — the police chief, for example, or the public works director — would remain focused on doing their jobs during a crisis. And they would either be in contact with the out-of-town mayor, or they would soon turn to the acting mayor.

The City Charter can’t anticipate every possible future issue or emergency. Nor can it prejudge whether a particular mayor will be effective at managing the city remotely as needed.

But there’s no reason to assume that the process won’t work.

After all, U.S. presidents don’t turn over authority to their vice presidents whenever they travel. They remain in contact with the White House and make decisions when needed from Air Force One.

When Omaha voters elect a mayor, they give him or her the important job of running the city for the next four years. That responsibility doesn’t go away just because the mayor is temporarily out of town, and the charter’s rules should reflect that.