The Home Rule Charter (HRC)

In 2022, Sheila began work on a petition to require the City Council to hold an election for a HRC Committee to be formed. The state constitution allows the council to appoint the committee or call for an election for committee members to rewrite the HRC.

Since the HRC is the city's constitution which sets the council's salary and sets all the rules the council must follow, it did not make sense to citizens that the council would appoint people to write rules that the council likes. 

In order to  circumvent the  work that Sheila was doing to put forth a petition which would REQUIRE the election, the City Council rushed to  appoint.

Through records requests, Sheila obtained emails from the mayor sending to the council and the HRC committee the changes to be made to the Charter. Sheila knew the appointed committee would be highly influenced by the mayor. That is why Sheila turned down the appointment to the committee. She felt it was better to be on the outside to watch, record, and get information to the citizens. The committee unanimously approved every change the mayor wrote. There would have been virtually no conversation before voting on items had it not been for Sheila and other citizens asking questions. 

There were 25 sections changed in the HRC which Sheila put onto a spreadsheet (attached) for easy digestion by the citizens. She highlighted the nine sections that were problematic to her. She gave reference to all of the changes and posted (on the FB group Concerned Citizens for Sulphur) the entire new HRC for citizens to read for themselves.

Link to the revised/failed charter:

https://www.sulphur.org/egov/documents/1685465110_31829.pdf