Statute Says Straub Stays
I hate to be the bearer of bad legal news for some of you, but the only way Public Safety Director Frank Straub is going to leave is if the Mayor fires him or he decides he has had enough of Indianapolis and chooses to go somewhere else, and note the latter is a lot more likely than the former.
I saw a recent blog post by Paul Ogden on the statute regarding the appointment process and how it “seems pretty clear that any appointment or reappointment by the Mayor of the Public Safety Director requires the approval of council.” If I were Paul I would spend more time running for judge or at least try to figure out why I keep losing every time I try to sue the State of Indiana over getting fired from my old job at the Department of Insurance.
The statute reads as follows…
Deputies and directors; acting deputies and directors; controller and deputy controllers; corporation counsel
(a) The executive shall, subject to the approval of the city-county legislative body, appoint each of the executive’s deputies and the director of each department of the consolidated city. A deputy or director is appointed for a term of one (1) year and until a successor is appointed and qualified, but serves at the pleasure of the executive.
(b) When making an appointment under subsection (a), the executive shall submit the name of an appointee to an office to the legislative body for its approval as follows:
(1) When the office has an incumbent, not more than forty-five (45) days before the expiration of the incumbent’s one (1) year term.
(2) When the office has been vacated, not more than forty-five (45) days after the vacancy occurs.
(c) The executive may appoint an acting deputy or acting director whenever the incumbent is incapacitated or the office has been vacated. An acting deputy or acting director has all the powers of the office.
Ogden focuses on the subject to the approval of the city-county legislative body, to make his point that the Council approval is necessary to keep Straub. However there is the other part of that sentence, ” A deputy or director is appointed for a term of one (1) year and until a successor is appointed and qualified, but serves at the pleasure of the executive. So in other words, if an individual currently holds a position or any other appointment, they stay there until they decide to leave or the Mayor says otherwise. Plain, simple language folks.
It would be one thing if the position was vacant to start, but it isn’t. It’s occupied and will likely be that way for a while.
Now Ogden can go back to running for judge or whatever it was he was doing because apparently reading the statute (which I thought was some judge’s were supposed to do) wasn’t on his agenda.
