La Plata residents who want a say on the Town Council’s decision to strip Mayor Jeannine James of her role as presiding officer have until Saturday, Oct. 18, to file a petition.
That is the deadline for a referendum petition on Charter Amendment Resolution 26-50, which the council passed 4-1 on Sept. 8. The amendment removes the mayor as “President of the Council” and her power to call special meetings. In their place, the council would elect one of its members, possibly including James, as Council Chair. Without a petition, the change takes effect Oct. 28, and the council would elect its first chair Nov. 10, town staff said in September.
Under Maryland law, a municipal charter amendment goes to a town-wide vote if a petition signed by at least 20 percent of the town’s registered voters is filed within 40 days of its passage.
At the council’s Oct. 13 meeting, three residents used public comment to urge members to drop the change or send it to voters.
‘Let the voters decide’
Rebecca Turner said she has spent the past few weeks gathering signatures for a petition to put the decision “where it truly belongs, on the ballot.”
“A charter is not a set of house rules to be tweaked whenever politicians aren’t getting along,” Turner said. She said every resident she has approached, whatever their politics, tells her the change is unfair.
Turner also read from an email she said Councilman Patrick McCormick sent her, explaining why he did not vote to keep the public record open longer. She quoted it as saying, “frankly, a handful of people, including the husband of the mayor, speaking on the topic, did not sway my opinion.” McCormick, who represents Ward II, was absent from the Oct. 13 meeting.
Tom James told the council he was “fed up” with a body that “appears to have forgotten who it works for.” He said the council had changed the mayor’s role “without putting that change directly to a town-wide vote” and called on members to support a referendum. He said he would use his “financial and other resources” to help ensure council members do not win re-election.
Maggie Larry argued that a council’s powers are “loaned to you by the citizens” and urged members to step back from any proposal “that alter the fundamental balance of your office without a clear, undeniable mandate from the taxpayers.”
No speaker at the Oct. 13 meeting spoke in favor of the change, a point Tom James made from the lectern.
The mayor’s statement
Near the end of the meeting, James read a statement she asked to be entered into the minutes “to clarify the public record.”
She said the council held two properly noticed closed sessions in 2025 under the Maryland Open Meetings Act to consult with its lawyer about personnel and administrative matters, including authorizing an independent review. “The investigator concluded that none of the allegations were sustained,” James said. The council issued no reprimand and took no disciplinary action, she said.
James said public comments about those matters had recently been made from the dais by council members, “myself included,” and that “in hindsight, some of those remarks may have been better left unsaid, particularly given the confidential nature of closed session discussions.” She said, “I believe we all can do better.”
The council voted 4-1 in August to censure James over a state highway-safety appointment, a vote whose legal footing the Chronicle examined.
Sampson: ‘still considering’
Councilman Gregory Sampson, part of the 4-1 majority in September, said in an email the day after the Oct. 13 meeting that he is still weighing the change.
“I am still considering whether changing the Presiding Officer in the middle of a term is the right decision,” Sampson wrote. “Before making that determination, I believe we should carefully consider whether such a change would improve outcomes and what message it would send to residents.”
Sampson said he holds “no personal animosity toward the Mayor” and that the change would not directly affect town operations, since “each council member still has one vote.” He said some of the town’s recurring conflicts “stem from the structure of our government” and that he hopes a future council will explore creating “a stand-alone Mayor’s office.”
The other council members are Paul Guttenberg, Tyjon Johnson and McCormick. Town staff said in September that if a valid petition is filed, the question would come back to the council Oct. 27.
