After almost two years, District 2 Supervisor Trey Baxter is no longer board president.
During a recent Madison County Board of Supervisors meeting, county officials approved the motion to elect District 4 Supervisor David Bishop as board president, effective the first meeting of September (September 5) until the first meeting in January 2018, when the board will vote again for the board president.
In January of this year, board officials argued whether the board presidency should be rotated each year.
District 5 Supervisor Paul Griffin made the motion for Baxter to step down as president and let the board elect another supervisor for the position for the next year. District 3 Supervisor Gerald Steen seconded.
County attorney Katie Snell explained there was no definitive term language, and it is her and the attorney general’s opinion that each board presidency should be held for four years. She referred to statutes 19-3-1, 19-3-7, 19-3-21.
Griffin fired back saying the board has an “unwritten law that we rotate the presidency at the beginning of every year.”
Baxter explained he understood the statute language as saying the president must vacate the office to resign as president.
Steen pulled his second for Griffin’s motion “until further down the road,” and the motion died for lack of a second.
At the time, some supervisors looked to the January 2016 board meeting minutes to find where all had agreed to elect Baxter for one year. However, during the most recent board meeting on August 21, District 1 Supervisor Sheila Jones cleared up the issue.
“I made that motion (to elect Baxter) and there was no rotation language. Mr. Lott (Ronny Lott, county chancery clerk) agreed that was accidentally entered into the minutes, so no rotation motion made,” Jones said.
During the same August board meeting last week, Bishop revisited the motion for the first time in seven months.
“I’d like to go back to how our board operated here to make a motion to rotate the presidency of the board (annually), effective as of tonight, so it’ll be in the minutes and start the first meeting in September…” he said.
He added in his motion that the board can re-elect a board president come the new year.
“This is an old, old controversy in counties about the presidency and what the law means,” Snell said. “The attorney general has opined that (the board presidency) is a four-year term, and I reached out to other board attorneys… Fifty percent of the attorneys I polled were consistent with the attorney general…”
Snell said the other half of the board attorneys she polled believed the position should not be held for a four-year term and should be rotated. “The attorney general opinion is all the authority we have, and they opine it’s four years… It’s a back-and-forth discussion, and ultimately to my knowledge, no court has actually addressed it and brought clarity to the issue, so all we have is the attorney general’s opinion at this time.”
Jones chimed in, saying her position is in accordance with the statute and attorney general’s opinion, while Griffin and Steen noted the presidency had been rotated in previous years when they were on the board.
The board voted on Bishop’s original motion to rotate the presidency, and the motion passed 3-2, with Baxter and Jones opposing.
Steen then made a follow-up motion to elect Bishop as president, effective September 5.
Griffin seconded, and the motion passed 3-2, with Baxter and Jones again opposing.
“I still stick by what the attorney general said,” Baxter said after the meeting. “It’s a four-year term. I’m going to continue to do my best to represent taxpayers, whether or not I’m president. President’s mainly ceremonial.”
