TRASH TALK: Local judges won’t weigh in on Jackson’s veto controversy

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - Jackson city leaders embroiled in a fight that will ultimately determine who will pick their constituents’ garbage again find themselves without a judge.

Thursday, all four Hinds County chancery judges recused themselves in the city council’s case against Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba.

“The court finds about due deliberation that it is proper and necessary herein for the chancellors of the Fifth Chancery Court District to disqualify themselves in the above-captioned matter,” they wrote.

The judges cited Canon 3 of the Code of Judicial Conduct, which states that a judge “should perform the duties of judicial office impartially and diligently,” and lists several criteria to determine whether they should disqualify themselves.

The four recused themselves from an earlier case in March when the mayor was suing the city council.

This time, it’s the council that has filed suit. In May, attorneys for the council filed a complaint in Hinds County Chancery Court seeking answers to whether the mayor can veto a negative vote of a legislative body and whether a negative vote of the legislative body counts as an official action.

The suit comes after Hinds County Circuit Judge Faye Peterson said the matter should be answered by the chancery court, and after Justice Jess Dickinson, a special judge appointed to preside over Jackson’s previous trash case in chancery court, refused to provide an answer.

The veto question has been at the heart of the city’s trash controversy since March 31, when Dickinson included a footnote in his ruling on a previous case, saying the mayor hypothetically could veto a no vote of the council.

At a meeting on April 1, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba pointed to that footnote in his decision to veto the council’s vote to deny an emergency trash-hauling contract to Richard’s Disposal.

Richard’s has been picking up residential waste in the city since.

However, it’s unclear how long that service will continue, with the council refusing to pay the company at a meeting earlier this week.

Council members voted to remove Richard’s $808,000 claim from the claims docket, with several members saying they could not legally pay a bill for a contract that it had not approved.

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