After a bit of saber-rattling and defensiveness over City Council criticism of consultant contracts, Mayor Tom Henry proposed a common-sense, fair method of addressing the issue.

Henry created a panel that includes Council President Marty Bender and two other council members. In a move that was both practical and politically savvy, Henry asked Bender to appoint critics of the contracts from each party, Republican Liz Brown and Democrat Glynn Hines. The panel will also give Henry a voice by including new Deputy Mayor Beth Malloy and have a somewhat neutral member, City Clerk Sandy Kennedy, whose office serves as the council’s secretary and record-keeper.

At issue is a series of high-profile city contracts that fell just beneath the $100,000 threshold that requires council approval. Upset that the contracts appeared to be deliberate efforts to escape the council’s scrutiny, Brown, Hines and other council members are looking at giving the council power to approve more of the contracts.

Both the mayor’s office and council critics should recognize the need to strike a balance. On one extreme, giving council power over all contracts, regardless of the amount, would hinder the administration’s ability to move quickly and put the council in an inappropriate micromanaging role. On the other end, eliminating any council oversight of the contracts would irresponsibly take away an important check and balance that serves taxpayers.

The council established the $100,000 mark nearly 20 years ago – that time, it was Democratic council members questioning a Republican mayor’s spending on consultants. No matter what the amount is, there will likely always be some contracts that fall just below it. But the series of important, controversial contracts that fell just below the mark in recent years gave some council members good reason to suspect that the amount was deliberately set to avoid their scrutiny.

The most questionable was a three-year contract Henry’s predecessor signed days before leaving office, giving a consultant $95,000 a year for three years. Perhaps the panel should begin by requiring council approval of any contract that extends multiple years, particularly if it goes past a city election, potentially binding a new mayor and council members.

At his news conference Monday, Henry noted that only 6 percent of the city consultant contracts signed during his administration fell between $70,000 and $100,000. Figures his office released showed only 50 contracts, or 2 percent, were between $90,000 and $100,000. The mayor used those statistics in an effort to minimize the extent of the issue. But council members could use the same statistics to justify more scrutiny – if only 6 percent were between $70,000 and $100,000, why not have the council review those as well?

The contract that brought the issue to a head was a $95,000 agreement with a consultant to help the city keep Navistar’s engineering center. Henry understandably defended it Monday, at the same time indirectly criticizing comments from Brown. “I was stunned late last week to read that a member of Fort Wayne’s City Council believes that we as a community should simply throw in the towel on the nearly 1,100 quality, well-paying jobs currently at Navistar in Fort Wayne,” Henry said. “In the words of this council member, ‘If the girl doesn’t want to date you, move on.’ With all due respect, I could not disagree more.”

Still, while this contract seems justified, the mayor should have been more sensitive to the $95,000 amount raising the council’s ire.

The solution? Don’t be surprised to see the council moderately lower the threshold requiring its approval, possibly to the neighborhood of $75,000.