AT THE NOVEMBER 18th City Council meeting, five Council members and Mayor John Hieftje voted to elect Ward 4 Council member Margie Teall Mayor Pro Tempore. Teall, who has served on City Council since 2002, has the worst meeting attendance record of any Ann Arbor City Council member.

During the August 2013 Democratic primary election, the re-election campaign of Teall’s former Ward 4 Council colleague, Marcia Higgins, was dogged by allegations that Higgins was unresponsive to constituents and failed to attend meetings. Online news blog comment sections were filled with comments concerning Higgins’s alleged poor attendance record. Then, on July 21st, just three weeks before the August primary election, AnnArbor.com published a piece titled, “Marcia Higgins facing criticism for missing Ann Arbor City Council meetings.” In that piece, that looked at Higgins’s meeting attendance record between 2011 and 2013 concluded that the then Ann Arbor Mayor Pro Tempore had the “lowest attendance score of any council member in office right now.” As it turned out, Marcia Higgins had missed one-third of the 61 meetings she was supposed to have attended.

That same article revealed that between 2011 and 2013 Ann Arbor’s new Mayor Pro Tempore, Margie Teall, had an attendance record that was virtually identical to Marcia Higgins’s poor attendance record. This means that Ann Arbor’s new, as well as Ann Arbor former Mayor Pro Tempore regularly skip meetings and leave early.

In fact, after Teall was elected Mayor Pro Tempore, she announced that she would be absent at the next meeting of City Council.

The Ann Arbor Independent reviewed Teall’s attendance records between 2009 and 2013, and found that Teall’s attendance, while not as spotty as Higgins’s, includes even more missed meetings she was paid to attend.

The Mayor Pro Tempore position was described by Mayor John Hieftje was a “symbolic” one.

“I don’t miss many meetings.” Hieftje said.

Ward 2 Council member Jane Lumm, an Independent, was also nominated for the position.

During deliberations, Hieftje argued it was more appropriate to elect Teall because, historically, the member with the most seniority was awarded the Mayor Pro Tempore position.

However, Ward 4 Council member Jack Eaton said in an email, “The Mayor Pro Tem election was another example of misrepresentation at a meeting leading to an outcome favored by those doing the misleading.” Eaton pointed out that when former Ward 5 Council member Christopher Easthope was re-elected to City Council in 2003, “he was made Mayor pro-tem even though CM (Jean) Carlberg had the most seniority.” Ward 3 Council member Jean Carlberg, a Democrat, served on City Council for 12 years, between 1994 and 2006.

Easthope served as Mayor Pro Tempore until 2007, when the position was rotated to Ward 4 Council member Marcia Higgins. Higgins held the position until she was ousted in the 2013 Democratic primary election by Jack Eaton.

The power of the Mayor Pro Tempore position comes in her/his power to assign Council members to the group’s various committees, as well as to citizen boards and commissions. This position has been used to exclude certain Council members from important Council committees, such as the former Budget and Labor Committee, as well as the Agenda Committee. In past years, only political allies of John Hieftje were appointed to those committees. This meant that while crafting the city’s budget, for instance, Council members from all Wards were not represented on the Budget and Labor Committee. Elected officials from Wards 1 and 5 were excluded from the Council’s Budget and Labor Committee, meaning that some 46,700 residents had no representative at meetings where the allocation of the city’s revenues were initially decided.

Jack Eaton believes that the Mayor Pro Tempore “position probably should go to the Council member who has demonstrated a strong work ethic and the ability to be civil working with others.”

Eaton voted backed Jane Lumm for Mayor Pro Tempore. He was joined by City Council members Sumi Kailasapathy, Stephen Kunselman and Mike Anglin.

Ward 2 Council member Sally Hart Petersen had, prior to the City Council meeting, told colleagues she planned to vote for Lumm for Mayor Pro Tempore. When asked by The Ann Arbor Independent why Petersen had changed her vote mid-meeting, she responded that she’d been under the impression “Lumm’s people” would get her name out for a vote first. Instead, Ward 3 Council member Christopher Talyor nominated Teall before Ward 3 Council member Kunselman could nominate Lumm. As a result, Council voted on the first motion (Taylor’s).

“I did not vote against Jane,” said Petersen, Lumm’s Ward 2 colleague on Council, “I voted for Margie. You’ve got to pick your battles.” Petersen’s was the deciding vote and stunned several of her City Council colleagues, including Lumm who was uncharacteristically silent during a long stretch of the Council meeting.