Troy's Mayor has new limits on her authority after the city council unanimously voted to curtail her emergency powers on Thursday.
The new local law lays out a more detailed process for declaring emergencies, replacing the city's old, paragraph-long emergency declaration procedure and replacing it with three and a half pages of text. The new law also allows the city council to overturn a mayor's emergency declaration.
The law comes amid a dispute over the city's controversial Flock license plate reader cameras. Troy Mayor Carmella Mantello declared a state of emergency to pay Flock Safety 78,000 dollars and renew the city's contract.
Section 2 of the new law notes that it applies "to all emergency declarations currently in effect."
In a statement hours before the vote, Mantello said she would veto the law and stood by her decision to pay Flock Safety with a public emergency.
Under the Troy City Charter, Mantello has 10 days to issue a veto in writing. If she issues a veto, the city council can override the veto if five of the council's seven members vote to do so. The all-Democrat City Council originally approved the changes 7-0.
“This local law is yet another example of the City Council’s misdirected priorities and nothing more than a political power play," Mantello, a Republican, said. "I inherited the emergency powers that are currently in place, and there is a reason the City Charter gives the duly elected mayor the ability to act when a crisis occurs. Oversight is important, but this local law has nothing to do with policy and everything to do with politics."
Councilmember Shikole Struber, who sponsored the legislation, said the measure is based on preexisting state law on municipal emergency declarations. She said the only provision of her own invention is a requirement that the mayor report emergency orders on the city's website and email system.
"[I] have had the thought a lot in the past 18 months, 'why does this warrant spending public dollars without the appropriate process?'" Struber said. "Like, there's not oversight when you do this [an emergency order], and that's when I started looking into the state law, and what is required by the state for both declaring an emergency as well as issuing emergency orders."
A state court case between the Troy City Council and Mantello over the emergency order is ongoing.
