This week's re-scheduling of Cornwall Council's emergency budget meeting raised questions (on this blog, if nowhere else) of the political propriety of vesting so much power in the hands of the chairman. I am not for a minute suggesting that there was any impropriety - political group leaders were consulted and did not object to the re-scheduling - but the question remains, what if there had been objections? What if 31 councillors had turned up on Tuesday and as a quorate group demanded to hold a meeting and fix the budget?
Richard Williams, who is also the council's monitoring officer, accepts that the constitution does not explicity give authority to the chairman to re-schedule a meeting once it has been called. He told me it was a "common sense" solution to concerns over public safety. But he also accepts that the constitution as currently framed might be open to abuse in future, with meetings re-scheduled at short notice simply for political convenience. So he is to review the document, possibly with a view to adding words such as "after consultation with political group leaders" to bring the chairman's powers more in line with those of the Speaker of the House of Commons.
Congratulations to correspondent John Macloud for advancing the democratic process through this blog.
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