Lincoln no longer needs to appoint an acting mayor when the city's chief executive is out of town, according to the new mayoral administration.Â
The Lincoln City Council will decide in two weeks whether to have voters change the city charter this spring to require the handover of mayoral duties to the council's chair or vice chair whenever the mayor is out of town.Â
The chair would serve as acting mayor only when the mayor is unable to serve or is unreachable, but not when the mayor is just absent from the city, according to the resolution.Â
Since being elected council chair in May 2019, Jane Raybould has served as acting mayor several times when Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird is out of town.
Administration officials said outdated language and the increased accessibility afforded by modern technology — not current relationships — drive the requested city charter change, which was inquired about last summer and officially recommended last month.
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No consequential actions have been taken by an acting mayor during Gaylor Baird's time leading the city, Chief of Staff Jennifer Brinkman said.Â
Raybould said she delivered remarks on the mayor's behalf at a public event recognizing the new president at Nebraska Wesleyan University, and for fun, she posed for photos next to a stack of papers staged to represent executive orders she pretended to sign as acting mayor.
"Needless to say, I did not sign any executive orders," she said.
But Raybould's actions in the mayor's absence have at times irked Gaylor Baird, according to several City Hall sources.
That includes one time last fall when Raybould had mayoral staff draw up a proclamation for her spinning instructor, Husker softball coach Rhonda Revelle, while the mayor was in Washington, D.C., meeting with Nebraska's federal lawmakers.Â
"That doesn't have anything to do with this charter change," Brinkman said Monday, declining to comment on the Revelle proclamation.
Shortly after taking office last May, the new mayor asked the City Attorney's Office for clarification on the protocol and learned "there isn't one," Brinkman said.Â
Technically, the provision could apply if the mayor goes to Bennet for lunch or to a meeting in Grand Island, City Attorney Jeff Kirkpatrick said.Â
"This was drafted a long time ago where you traveled mostly by train," Kirkpatrick said.
The city isn't entirely paperless, but it has a software program allowing Gaylor Baird to sign contracts electronically when she's out of town, Brinkman said.Â
Not all the council members are convinced a change is needed.
Councilman Bennie Shobe served as chair from 2018 to 2019.Â
He understands that modern email and cellphone technology have made the mayor more accessible than ever, he said.
But he doesn't see a need to change the tradition and said this measure "sounds like a solution looking for a problem."Â
Under former Mayor Chris Beutler, Shobe only rarely needed to step in as acting mayor and it was uneventful.
"I remember standing in a restaurant once thinking, 'I’m the acting mayor and no one here knows it,’" Shobe said.Â
Councilman Roy Christensen, who chaired the council from 2017 to 2018, never needed to take emergency action, the primary aim of having an acting mayor.
Christensen, a Republican, said mayoral staff typically told him in-person days before Beutler, a Democrat, was set to travel.
Beutler usually could be reached by phone if staff needed to speak with him, Christensen said.
Councilwoman Sändra Washington, who spent her career in the National Parks Service, is skeptical of the need to change protocol.Â
Whenever a park superintendent was away from the park for any lengthy period of time, a deputy staff member became the acting superintendent, she said.Â
Often, the superintendent had a cellphone or a radio, she said.Â
"That’s not the issue," Washington said. "It's who is at the ready and who is able to make the decision in real time?"
Raybould, who will serve as council chair until May, said she supports the change and its recognition that for elected officials, "even if we're out of town, we still have to do our duty."
As proposed, the charter amendment would also make the section on the role of acting mayor gender-neutral by replacing references to the council chairman with council chair.Â
The charter change dealing with the acting mayor is one of three revisions a citizens advisory commission has recommended the city ask voters to make during the May 7 primary election.
One simply cleans up a typo and a third would increase the threshold requiring bids for city purchases from $25,000 to $50,000 to account for inflation and align with the purchasing rules used by the state, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Lancaster County.
The council will have hearings and vote on the recommendations at its next meeting, Feb. 24.Â