Council Discusses “Reform” Tonight, Public Not Welcome

April 12, 2016 7:41 am

It’s a public meeting, but there will be no public comment. I’m not sure why they don’t want to hear from the public, but I think it stinks. It’s our public body that represents us, changing how they represent us, but apparently we shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads about it.

This is the agenda:

NOTE: There is no public comment period at this discussion.
1. Introduction – Ald. Denise DeMarb, Common Council President
2. 42407 Discussion: Review of ordinance proposals; changes since initial announcement – Ald. Mark Clear, District 19
3. Legal Questions and Answers – City Attorney Michael May
4. 42437 Comparable Governance Models – Heather Allen, Council Legislative Analyst
5. Council Facilitated Discussion on Proposal Details – Jeff Russell, Facilitator
6. Parking Lot: Ideas for Future Council Reforms – Jeff Russell, Facilitator
Link to press release http://ow.ly/10pWLd (March 16, 2016)
Link to FAQ’s http://ow.ly/10pWTH (March 16, 2016)

Both Legistar links are decoys and have nothing in them as of this morning. They do, however, have additional information that they are going to be discussing that apparently the public doesn’t need to know about.

>From: “Clear, Mark”
Date: April 9, 2016 at 10:51:27 AM CDT
To: All Alders
Subject: Draft of and notes about reform proposals

Dear Colleagues,

Attached is a “version 1.5” draft of the proposals for our discussion on Tuesday. I’m calling it 1.5 because it contains edits made by me to the first draft from the City Attorney. Vacations in the City Attorney’s office this week kept them from making changes and corrections needed from their first draft. I thought it better to get this out to you all in this unorthodox format for your review over the weekend rather than wait until an official second draft from OCA which might take several more days.

Some of the edits from the first draft are simply corrections, others came from new ideas that Ald. Ahrens and I came up with after our announcement on March 16 or that were suggested by council members, former council members or the public. The details are below

There are four draft ordinance amendments in the attachment.
1. Changing council leadership terms from one year to two and renaming the President Pro Tem to Vice President. The latter change was not in the OCA draft; we thought of it later. The reason for the title change is simplicity and clarity to the public.

2. Changing the committee appointment authority for council members. There are several changes compared to our 3/16 announcement:
a. Appointments would be made by a nominations committee of the president, vice president, and immediate past-president
b. Some appointments are made by the mayor by statute (e.g., Plan Commission). We are not proposing to change those.
c. Note that I did not change every instance in the document, just the drafter’s analysis

3. Renaming BOE to Finance Committee. There are several changes to note:
a. The finance committee has seven members; a drafting error mistakenly listed six
b. The finance committee elects its own chair; a drafting error mistakenly designated the Council President as chair
c. Our 3/16 announcement indicated that there would be a preference for past council presidents on the finance committee; we have dropped that provision.

4. Renaming CCOC to Common Council Executive Committee. This draft is unchanged from the OCA version.

Please let me know if you have questions about all this. I look forward to seeing you all on Tuesday.

The attachment is 25 pages. It appears to contain the following:
1. Ordinance amendment renaming “Pro Tem” to “Vice President” (one page). This ordinance can’t take effect until new alders are elected April 2017.
2. Ordinance amendment that transfers appoints of alders to committees from the mayor to a nominating committee of President, Vice President and immediate past President (if the immediate past president is not on the council the President names a third person), however they can’t appoint people to the Board of Public Health, Library Board, Plan Commission, Board of Public Works, Madison Cultural Arts District or the Room Tax Commission. (12 pages) This would go into effect September 1.
3. Ordinance amendment that renames Board of Estimates to “Finance Committee”, removes the Mayor and has them elect their own chair. It has to be considered with #2 to have the nominating committee appoint members of the body. (7 pages) This would go into effect September 1.
4. Ordinance amendment that renames the Common Council Organizational Committee to the “Common Council Executive Committee” (4 pages) This would go into effect September 1.

All of these would be effective September 1, 2016

It’s sure nice of them to share this information with the public . . . if only there was a convenient way to do that . . .

Council “reform” needs to go ALOT further than this – the council might think some how this helps, but they’re ignoring a very, very large factor here. The public. In the end, what title a person or committee has won’t make a bit of difference. A council president and their “yes men” can make equally bad appointments to a committee. Real, and meaningful, reform would look more like this. And even that requires more public discussion.

Progressive Dane Seeks Additional Reform to City Council Process

The news of council reform at first seemed promising and Progressive Dane applauds efforts to “strengthen the Council’s ability to shape the . . . future investment in our neighborhoods.” “If the council is going to seriously consider reforms that will help the public participate in local government and strengthen input into investment in our neighborhoods that is exciting” said Party Co-Chair Sue Pastor.

However, we don’t find the reforms proposed by Alders Mark Clear and David Ahrens are sufficient to reach this goal. Renaming committees, changing the length of term of the council president and switching which individual (mayor or council president) appoints alders to committees don’t seem to go far enough to reach this goal. Progressive Dane would like to see the council also consider passing ordinances requiring the following:

– Meetings must be held after traditional work and school hours. Hold meetings after 5:00 in the evening and make sure they are in places that are readily accessible and apparent to the public.

– Agendas are published at least 3 business days in advance of meetings and that the “weekly schedule” is complete when it comes out. Currently 3 – 7 meetings are added throughout the week after the weekly meeting schedule has been published.

– Audio record all committee meetings and make those recordings available in Legistar.

– A public comment for items not on the agenda at council meetings.

– A pilot project using participatory budgeting for some portion capital budget items.

– During the budget process, make sure that the amendments to the budget are available to the public several working days in advance of the meeting where they are considered. Don’t put out amendments on Friday at noon for a meeting on Monday at 4:30.

– Strengthen the commitment to get documents into legistar when the agendas are available. Stop the practice of staff giving handouts at the meetings. If there are handouts, make sure there are enough for the public.

– Change the amount of time the council and the public has to work on the budget. Either have the mayor get the budget out sooner or extend the time that the council has to work on the budget into December.

– Refer portions of the budget to the committees that are impacted by the budget and let them make recommendations for changes. Currently, only the Board of Estimates can recommend amendments to the budget before it reaches the council. Consider having committee recommendations to the Mayor before the Mayor recommends the budget.

– Make it clear in ordinances what goals should be accomplished in making committee appointments such as geographic diversity, mimimum or maximum numbers of committees alders can sit on, etc., regardless of if the mayor or the council president (elected by the council) makes alder appointments.

– Create a process where if the council rejects an appointment, they can make an alternative recommendation with a super-majority vote.

– Strengthen and enforce the lobbying laws.

– Strengthen to city’s ethics code to go beyond financial conflicts of interest for recusals and disclosures. Make statement of interest forms available to the public electronically and create a meaninfuly enforcement mechanism.

– Institutionalize the efforts of recent mayors to include the public earlier in the budget process. The council should examine those processes to determine what worked and what could be improved upon. Once the process is set up, make sure that the input is meaningfully considered by the council.

– If the council wants to have a greater impact on strong neighborhoods, they should play a more active role in the Community Development budget. The current practice of not playing a role in community services funding means the council completely ignores this important area of funding. The council should take an active role in determining community services priorities and increase funding as they would with any other department (police, streets, etc.)

The “strong council, weak mayor” system of government gives the council the power to elect their president to additional terms or reject the mayor’s committee appointments. The public is growing tired of the constant infighting in local government and Progressive Dane calls on the Council and the Mayor set aside personality driven conflicts and work collaboratively in the best interest in the City – and limit their disagreements to the tough policy decisions they were elected to make. “The city faces extremely pressing issues with racial equity, concerns about policing, homelessness, the shortage of affordable housing, and preparing for climate change. Greater transparency and increasing residents’ ability to participate in addressing our common concerns should be the measure of effective reform.” adds Sue Pastor.