The La Plata Town Council voted 4-1 Tuesday night to amend the town charter and strip Mayor Jeannine James of her automatic role as presiding officer of council meetings, replacing it with a new position — Council Chair — to be elected by the council itself. James cast the lone dissenting vote.
Charter Amendment Resolution 26-50 repeals two specific charter provisions: Article III, § C3-4, which authorized the mayor to call special council meetings, and Article IV, § C4-3(F), which designated the mayor as “President of the Council.” In their place, the council will elect one of its own members — potentially including the mayor herself — to serve as Council Chair, responsible for calling meetings to order, adjourning them, and ruling on points of procedure.
Town Attorney Mr. Pounds confirmed on the record, after direct questioning from a council member, that the amendment does not touch the mayor’s separate charter right to participate in council discussion and vote on every matter before the body. That provision, § C4-3(F)’s first sentence, remains untouched; only the presiding-officer function moves to the new position.
Three companion measures passed alongside the charter amendment, each on similarly close votes: Ordinance 26-19, which replaces references to “the mayor” with “council chair” throughout Chapter 13 of the town code (adopted with Councilman Tyjon Johnson absent); Resolution 26-53, revising the council’s rules of procedure to formally establish the Council Chair role; and Resolution 26-54, setting up a one-time special election process to choose the first Council Chair.
All four actions carry a synchronized effective date of October 28. Under state law governing charter amendments, the town must post the resolution publicly for 40 days and publish a summary in a local newspaper four times before that date. If a qualified voter referendum petition is filed by October 18, the changes would be held pending a public vote; town staff said that scenario would come back to the council October 27. Absent a successful petition, the council would elect its first Council Chair on November 10, with that person assuming the role November 24.
Supporters framed the change as an accountability measure. One council member argued during the meeting that the presiding officer — unlike other council members, who answer to voters — should also be directly answerable to the council itself, and pointed to recent procedural disputes as evidence the current structure wasn’t serving the town well. The mayor remains eligible to be elected Council Chair by her colleagues, a point staff and council members raised repeatedly to counter concerns that the office was being targeted personally.
James pushed back sharply before the final vote, both during council questioning of staff and in a lengthy closing statement. She pressed town staff and the town attorney to identify any documented governmental failure, measurable standard, or resident harm that justified the change, and argued repeatedly that none was offered. In her closing remarks, she said changing an elected office’s powers “during an incumbent’s term” was the wrong way to resolve disagreements among five current officeholders, and that the town’s mayor-council structure — in place since the 1960s — deserved a higher bar than a council majority’s dissatisfaction with its current occupant. She also noted the process carries real costs in staff time, legal review and required advertising, despite a staff fiscal-impact statement she said could mislead residents into thinking otherwise; staff acknowledged the process is not without cost but said no new budget appropriation is required.
Public comment was divided. Some residents, including longtime attendee Renata Rhodes, criticized what they described as a breakdown in council decorum and warned that structural change made in the heat of personal conflict reflects poorly on the town. Others argued the mayor-council structure is a matter that should ultimately be decided by voters, not the sitting council, with at least one resident stating she would consider pursuing a petition on the council’s own continued service if major structural changes kept advancing this term.
Tuesday’s vote is the latest development in a broader institutional conflict the Chronicle has tracked since the council formally censured James on Aug. 18 over her handling of a state highway-safety coalition appointment — a censure whose legal authority and procedural legitimacy the Chronicle has separately examined. Town staff said discussion of the charter changes formally began at a June 9 council meeting, predating the censure vote. The council has also been the subject of two Maryland Open Meetings Act violation findings since 2025, including one tied to a closed-session mayoral stipend dispute.
