Ad Hoc Rules Committee #2 Post Game

 

Video and Transcript

I captured a cell phone recording and uploaded to Youtube to create a machine generated transcript. Click the ‘CC’ button to vieew the transcript. Or you can read it in full here.

Highlights?

All items with an asterisk (*) are not legally enforceable. Eg. the Council can show their displeasure, but they cannot make CMs recuse themselves from a vote. In my mind, any ‘rule’ that cannot be enforced should not be a ‘rule’.

The Ad Hoc Rules Committee had its second meeting today at the Police Station. Here is a recap of the first meeting. It was almost three hours long and once again, not recorded. One resident showed up–and they deserve a medal for doing so. I just happened to be sitting next to the above poster. God really does have a sense of humour, right? 😀

1. 1. The Committee seems to favour removing Rule 26a, which is the one which requires two readings to pass an ordinance. This change will allow the Council to pass an ordinance the same night unless the majority agrees to a second reading.
   2. They proposed changes to Conflict of Interest:
      • A councilmember could still be involved with any non-profit that works with the City, perhaps even be a board member. They just can’t be an ‘officer’.
      • *A majority vote of the Council could be invoke to pressure a councilmember to recuse themself from a vote, if they perceive a potential conflict.
      • There was no discussion of preventing electeds from leaving office and immediately going to work for the City as a consultant…
      • Or, oh I dunno, going to work at the Port of Seattle eight months after leaving office.
   3. *There was agreement that all councilmembers must submit a performance evaluation of the City Manager. The rationale: because if councilmembers opt out, it might lower his performance score and thus prevent his receiving a scheduled raise.
   4. There was a big discussion about ‘public shaming of staff’. The statement was this: Criticising the action of any employee in public is grounds for sanction.
   5. There was a lengthy discussion over handling Council appointments.
      • *The committee came down on leaving it to each Council to establish its own rules case by case.
      • *However, they agreed to add a rule that all applicants must submit a financial statement.

All this simply codifies what we’re doing now and is terrible.

• There was a lengthy discussion over the role of the Councilmember. It was decided to make it clear that there can be no direct contact with staff. All communication with staff must go through the City Manager. This simply codifies what we’re doing now and is terrible.
• There was agreement that all standing committees should be recorded. but not others. This simply codifies what we’re doing now and is terrible. (Note that there is no rule as to how long recordings should be retained.)
• There was a discussion of somehow improving the City Manager’s report. And providing a general calendar. (I would remind my colleagues that there is already this thing called the Future Agendas Report on-line.) CM Steinmetz proposed adding a ‘dashboard’ to the City web site to show indicators of ‘how the city is doing’. Mayor Mahoney and CM Steinmetz agreed to work that out in private. The current Quarterly Financial Reports were considered fine, although what the City presents are only snippets and not true financial statements, but whatehvs, right?
• There was talk about “you get one phone call”, which means the current rule limiting CMs to one remote meeting a year. That will be increased. TBD?
• Deputy Mayor Buxton asked for Committee Reports be split out from CM comments and put at the beginning of our meetings–which we did until about 2017-ish? The idea is that a CM would report on their activities at the start of the meeting so that the Council could take action. I support this.
  • Although I do not support the fact that no one bothers to actually report the minutes of the events they attend either to the Council or to the meeting Minutes as we’re supposed to. What the Deputy Mayor does is say, “I attended 33 meetings this month. Call me, if you have any questions!” That’s not how public meetings are supposed to work. If you’re the City’s representative for an organisation? Put the work product in the packet so the public (including people in the future) can read it.
  • Each advisory group is supposed to keep minutes and for councilmembers to provide updates to the Counc and to the public. I have never seen such a report from any of the groups we liaise with–unless I attended their meetings.
• CM Steinmetz proposed establishing a dress code (business casual) and disallowing any head gear. This was greeting with great enthusiasm.

My take

To my mind, the overall focus of the re-write is image. Improving the public perception of the Council. I have heard this argument stated exactly like this for years, “When the City promotes a positive image, it attracts investment.” Therefore, a primary duty of the City Council is to make the City look good; and conversely, to avoid any public embarrassment.

I can sum up most of my feelings about this with the following ironies.

• • The committee spent about twenty minutes discussing the importance of not “shaming staff in public.” The example was “What if a councilmember storms into the city offices to yell at an employee?” And I wanted to remind my colleagues that since my election the entire office has CARD KEY ACCESS. In theory, no councilmember should be able to get in without being buzzed in.
  • The group also spent a great deal of time emphasising the importance of no direct contact with staff. But at several points, each member of the committee used these words. “OK, I’ll call Tim tomorrow to get an answer on (x).” Tim, being our City Attorney and a member of staff–one of the people one is not supposed to contact directly.

I can hear both my children’s voices from twenty years ago. “How come it’s OK when you do it? DAD!” 😀

Rule 26a

There was the lengthy discussion of Rule 26a. Currently, Rule 26 says that all ordinances require two readings for passage. But there is a little (a) which specifies that the Council can override that and vote to pass the ordinance in one reading. Staff loves that, because they like to get things done. So much so that they have taken to including a ‘Rule 26a’ motion in every Agenda Item–to encourage the Council to pass things in one night. I almost always vote ‘NO’ for one simple reason:

The public usually only finds out about these items after the first reading. It angers them greatly. to learn that items have been passed in one night that they were unaware of. Allowing a second reading does not slow down meetings. It simply moves the item to the next meeting for a vote. If the public shows up at the second meeting? Great. Let’s hear them. If not, we added at most three minutes to the flow.

Steinmetz, Buxton and Mahoney all said clearly they want to eliminate the need for a second reading because when we vote to override the second reading it makes us look like “we’re hiding something.” Which is totally true.

They want to get rid of a second reading entirely so that the public won’t know there are issues of potential concern. Rather than improve transparency, the idea is to avoid telling people things that may cause controversy. Again: it’s all about image.

Their response: “A Councilmember could ask for a second reading.” Sure. And get voted down six to one. 😀 The idea is to shift the ‘image problem’ to those ²‘nattering nabobs of negativity’.

We’re totally hiding things.

The Scarlet Letter

And one other thing: Again, all those items with asterisks (*) are unenforceable.

Under State law, the Council majority cannot remove a colleague; that is (wisely) left to the voters. All it can do is refuse to cooperate. Which is the case now.

Any rule that is unenforceable has no place in any ‘rules of procedure’ for the simple reason that an unenforceable rule is no rule. It’s simply a tool of public shaming and an excuse to defy the will of the voters.

Above all things, a Council should accept one another, not try to change one another. Cooperation should be the watchword, not conformity.

I believe in democracy. Seriously. And I have to assume that voters knew what they were getting. If someone is elected who looks, thinks and speaks differently from the majority? That is who the voters chose. The voters expect us to work together, not regardless of our differences, but because of them!

If fellow electeds attempt to get their colleagues to conform to their ideas of ‘public image’, you’ve crossed a Rubicon from which there is no chance of recovery. So why even go there?

Perhaps ‘shunning’ was an effective tool of behaviour mod in the 17th Century, but I recall my kids having to read The Scarlet Letter back in high school and I don’t think it worked out super great even then.

Regardless, it doesn’t work today. Far from shaming the elected into being a good boy or girl, it simply fuels a permanent state of contempt.

Forgiveness, compromise, acceptance, and empathy, on the other hand, require no staff time to prepare, no public money, and ¹nine out of ten dentists recommend them for prompt relief in contentious work environments. 🙂

Background

An Ad Hoc Committee is a temporary committee which meets to accomplish a single purpose. This one was appointed arbitrarily by Mayor Mahoney. It consists of Mayor Mahoney, Deputy Mayor Buxton and Councilmember Steinmetz. Together they are re-writing the City Council’s Rules of Procedure.

In the past, our rules have simply been tweaked by having CMs submit ideas, then discuss them at an open meeting, make changes and then approve an update to the existing RoP. That’s what we’ve done since 1959.

This is the first time I can find where a committee was appointed to do this. And this Ad Hoc Committee is re-writing the entire thing using the current RoP of the City of Bothell as their model.

Here is my recap of that first meeting: Ad Hoc Rules of Procedure Committee Meeting #1

The first meeting was the first time either I or my colleagues were aware of this. This is not what the Council approved when it voted to begin this process on 7 July, 2022. But this is what is happening.

The first meeting introduced the concept and went through about ‘2/3 of the process’ to paraphrase both the Mayor and Deputy Mayor.

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¹Or that may have been Trident® Sugarless Chewing Gum.

²A quote from former Vice President Spiro Agnew. A totally corrupt, ultra-conservative guy with one of the greatest speechwriters in American history.