It was seven years ago when the Indiana Commission on Local Government Reform issued a 46-page report titled “Streamlining Local Government: We’ve got to stop governing like this.”
The commission was launched under former Gov. Mitch Daniels and was chaired by two former leaders in state government — Randall T. Shepard, former chief justice of the Indiana Supreme Court, and Joseph E. Kernan, former Indiana governor and South Bend mayor.
A total of 27 recommendations came out of the report, affecting offices and personnel from the lowest levels of township government to schools and city governments. We supported much of the report, but it was one recommendation that we recalled following the recent South Bend city election that made a lot of sense then and still makes sense today.
It is Recommendation 15: “Allow the city council to appoint the city clerk in second-class cities,” such as South Bend. The time is right for this reform.
The report states: “City clerks in second-class cities are elected. Because we believe that positions that are purely administrative should be appointed positions, we recommend that the clerk, as secretary to the city council, become an appointed position under the management of the city council.”
South Bend’s recent primary election took an interesting turn this year when the clerk’s race became the most watched on the Democratic ballot. Incumbent Mayor Pete Buttigieg poured a lot of his own campaign’s money into the clerk’s race in support of Kareemah Fowler over Derek Dieter, a fellow Democrat and Common Council at-large member.