At the state and federal level, there are constitutions. While state laws and federal laws fill volume after volume and are being changed all the time, constitutions are much shorter and are rarely changed. They are the basic laws. They provide the framework for everything else.

Cities are not sovereign, so they don’t have constitutions.

Cities are really corporations. So they have charters granted by the state to operate municipal services. Vicksburg’s initial charter was granted in 1825.

The city’s code of ordinances fills hundreds of pages, but the charter — the basic rules of operation — fills only a few.

Section 20 has to be dusted off every four years.

It says the corporate officers are two aldermen, one mayor, one city clerk, one assessor and collector of taxes, one chief of the police department, one city attorney and one chief of the fire department.

That’s a total of eight people.

The charter divides them into two groups. The aldermen and the mayor are to be elected by the city’s registered voters, as occurred on June 2.

The other five, the charter says, “shall be elected by ballot by the mayor and aldermen, and shall hold their offices for four years unless removed.” Then a new sentence starts. “At their meeting on the first Tuesday in July succeeding the general election, or as soon thereafter as practical, the mayor and aldermen shall choose by ballot encumbents for the offices hereby made elected by them.”

Nothing like old legalese, is there?

Translated, it means that on July 7, Mayor Paul Winfield, North Ward Alderman Michael Mayfield and South Ward Alderman Sid Beauman need to vote to select each of the five other charter officers, with two votes enough to win any of them.

As a practical matter, the jobs of assessor and collector are now contracted out to the people holding those jobs in Warren County government, Richard Holland and Antonia Flaggs-Jones, who probably don’t realize they are tacitly corporate officers of the City of Vicksburg.

As for the other four — police and fire chiefs, city attorney and city clerk — Winfield, Mayfield and Beauman should record votes on each position, but this can largely be a formality due to the “until removed” provision.

Beginning with the first term of Laurence Leyens that was the case. His administration broke with precedent by retaining all appointees of the previous administration of Robert Walker, including Nancy Thomas, who remains city attorney today, and Walter Osborne, who remains city clerk.

Police Chief Mitchell Dent was also retained, but only until October when Tommy Moffett was hired. Also later, Keith Rogers was named fire chief.

Before Leyens’ first term, whenever voters elected new city boards, the new city boards “cleaned house” down the line whether the house really needed cleaning or not.

In the days when city jobs were about the biggest deal going, there was often high drama associated with the changes. The top jobs were political plums, awarded to people who backed the right candidates.

In more recent times, there has been more emphasis on continuity and expertise. Thomas, for example, was appointed when a member of the private firm of former City Attorney David Ellis, her mentor in municipal law. The position is now full-time, with assistants. Osborne was a county clerk when tapped for the city position and has held it as mayors and aldermen have come and gone.

It seems clear enough that Moffett, whose performance became a campaign issue, will be replaced. It’s not clear what will become of the others.

Truth is, the only jobs in city government not subject to change at any time are those of the mayor and aldermen and the rank and file employees of the fire and police departments, who have civil service rights.

So the intrigue is rising and will until the charter-decreed meeting on July 7, or whenever the new mayor and the two veteran aldermen decide to ‘elect’ the other corporate officers the charter directs them to elect.