BATON ROUGE - A decision on whether to explore whether a consolidated government is still beneficial for the city of Baton Rouge is on hold for now.

The Metro Council was set to vote on creating a Home Rule Charter Commission to determine if the city of Baton Rouge benefits from the current consolidated government.

But with some questions raised by members of the council, the item was deleted.

Councilman Darryl Hurst brought forth the item to open the discussion around de-consolidation and whether the city-parish remaining as one entity is the right move for the city of Baton Rouge.

The proposed Home Rule Charter Commission initially would consist of the mayors of Zachary, Baker, Central, and St. George or their designee, Mayor-President Sid Edwards or his designee, three members of the Metro Council, one resident who lives in the city of Baton Rouge, and one who lives in the unincorporated areas of the parish.

Metro Councilman Rowdy Gaudet questioned whether the Home Rule Charter Commission would conflict with state law.

"The proposed charter shall not be altered or changed in any way by the governing authority of the municipality. So this body has no say in what this commission would propose. This body removes any authority if we pass this today," Gaudet said.

Questions surrounding how the city and parish could financially be impacted by deconsolidation still remain on the table.

"I believe as a body, our first step is to look to finance and ask them to deconsolidate our budget. Once we ask them to deconsolidate our budget as a body, we need to see what that looks like and have conversations with the members of the public," East Baton Rouge Metro Councilwoman Jennifer Racca said.

Hurst ultimately decided to remove creating the Home Rule Charter Commission from the agenda.

"You want to make sure proper discussion is had, and so a lot of times you can put stuff on the agenda that people talk about behind closed doors to make a public discussion happen; that's what happened tonight," Hurst said.

The discussion is not over; Hurst says he plans to reintroduce the item with different wording and some of the amendments suggested.

He says that reintroduction will likely be on the agenda in about two weeks.