Tampa city council approves charter changes to voters
Tampa city council voted to take more control over the naming of top city officials.
TAMPA, Fla. – Tampa City Council members will make the next move today in their battle to wrest back power from the mayor’s office in a vote that could give the council more say in the appointment process of top city officials.
On Wednesday, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor issued vetoes to five proposed amendments to the city’s charter, which councilors unanimously approved last week.
Castor’s veto announcement came in an unusual form: in an op-ed published in the Tampa Bay Times. In it, Castor called city council’s move to amend the charter a “rushed and haphazard process.”
Council members hope to amend the city’s charter to gain more control over the selection and approval process of top appointed officials, like the Chief of Police. The power struggle between Tampa’s mayor and city council is nothing new, but the issue came to a head in 2022 over the controversy surrounding former police chief Mary O’Connor’s appointment and clipped tenure.
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Several council members expressed frustration in her selection process, with some asserting that it lacked transparency. Objections were also raised over O’Connor being allowed to assume the role of chief before the council had formally voted to approve her.
O’Connor was approved in a 4-2 vote last spring, about a month after she returned to the Tampa Police Department and assumed the role of interim chief. Several council members have since said they felt strong-armed into approving the appointment.
“I do not think just plopping someone into a job and then making us say, ‘Oh well, they have already moved here’ … I feel that is coercion, I don’t want to do that,” said council member Lynn Hurtak before last week’s vote.
Several city council members felt justified in their earlier reservations over her selection after O’Connor resigned in December following a scandal. The details surrounding a traffic stop became public, in which body camera video showed her flashing her badge and title, before telling the Pinellas County deputy “to let us go tonight.”
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A Pinellas County deputy pulled over Tampa Police Chief Mary O’Connor and her husband back on November 12. They were riding in a golf cart without a license plate outside a residential area in Oldsmar, the police department said. Body camera video from the incident was released by TPD.
Last week, council members approved five proposed changes to the city charter that would, ideally, prevent a similar situation in the future and keep the council from serving as a rubber stamp for the mayor’s office.
Those amendments would be put to voters in March as a change to city charter section 6.03. Among the proposals: changing the word “appoint” to “nominate” and only allowing current employees interim status for six months. Councilors say the confirmation process for 25 high-level officials would also require the approval of four of seven city councilors before they could take office.
“I don’t see this strong-arming or tying the hands of the mayor. If I were in that position, I would say, it’s a checks and balances system,” said councilor Guido Maniscalco during last week’s vote.
The mayor’s somewhat unprecedented veto of the council’s proposed amendments means voters won’t have their say unless council members move to override her.
Hurtak says she plans to call for a vote to do just that in today’s regularly scheduled meeting.
“The mayor has consistently sought to consolidate power that ought to be reserved for the people of Tampa, and today’s vetoes only serve to deny Tampa voters the right to choose for themselves whether changes need to be made to the city charter,” Hurtak wrote in a statement responding to Castor’s vetoes on Wednesday. “If the mayor embraced democratic principles instead of authoritarian overreach, she would permit these charter amendments to appear on the March ballot and rely on the marketplace of ideas to argue against their passage. Instead, she has elected to deny voters the right to make that decision for themselves.”
Council members will need five votes to override Castor’s vetoes. Should they get them, the proposed amendments to the city’s charter will appear on the March ballot.
