Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Tidying our house on the Lakewood council
Last night, a subcommittee of the Lakewood City Council met to discuss what some folks might consider simply housekeeping. However, it was an important evening for a number of reasons. The subcommittee, appointed by the mayor to examine council rules, was chaired by Deputy Mayor John Arbeeny and included myself and Councilwoman Helen McGovern.
- This is the first time I am aware of that a committee of the Lakewood council that consisted of less than a majority has met in public session. We had an audience - OK, the crowd crested at three people - but it was a meeting open to the public. I take credit for this because I believe all council committees should be open to the public whether or not a quorum is present. I think the law is pretty clear on that, though you can argue otherwise.
When I presented the question to the council, the mayor took a poll: John and Ron Cronk said the meeting should not be public; Pad Finnigan said it should be up to the participants; and the other folks pretty much just nodded OK with a public meeting. OK, so it's not a crescendo of enthusiasm; but this still sets an important precedent. If I run for re-election next year, the formation of council committees will be very, very important(unless we come to our senses as a group and form committees before then). There's no question that public policy in Lakewood suffers because our council does not spend enough time in the right ways. We need committees to delve into public safety, to the city budget and taxes, and more.
But it never occurred to me that these committees should meet in secret. It would be monstrous if I ran for re-election on a platform calling for committees only to see them turn into secret tribunals. So I am grateful the council majority went along with this precedent-setting public meeting.
Now, as to content. The committee made some recommendations, sometimes unanimously, sometimes not. These recommendations will go before the full council and will be subject to further discussion:
- Public comment at council meetings would be limited to three minutes. There could be some limited circumstances where a legitimate group might have 10 minutes to discuss a specific item on the agenda; but stay tuned as we try to work out this detail. We have received a lot of feedback that the current system even goes so far as to repulse people from attending meetings (some of you might remember my online poll on this subject)
- We will consider ways to set up a system where another council member or a member of the public can report that he or she thinks a council member might have either a financial conflict of interest, or the appearance of a conflict of interest. The potential conflict of interest would then be investigated, and a procedure developed to determine what the council member and the council might do depending on the findings.
Unlike many other cities, we have no formal method of screening such questions. We need it. It's better to set up a protocol for this before we get into a full crisis. Some of you may recall that my online survey asked people about this question as well. Two-thirds of the 115 respondents said they would not know what to do if they thought someone had a conflict of interest. We need a standardized procedure to discuss these questions in a non-sensationalized way.
- We also had discussion about how to make sure that the council does not inadvertently 'meet' outside of the public eye through email. It is chillingly easy to cc council members on an email and have the sorts of discussions that should, by law and by right, only take place in a place where you can see and hear those discussions. I can assure you that after a couple of bad moves a year or two ago, such email discussions only take place rarely now and are usually caught within one or two emails. But any such email discussions are inappropriate, and very possibly illegal, and the committee suggested ways to avoid them.
I'll keep you posted as these and other issues move through the process; as always, I welcome your thoughts.
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- This is the first time I am aware of that a committee of the Lakewood council that consisted of less than a majority has met in public session. We had an audience - OK, the crowd crested at three people - but it was a meeting open to the public. I take credit for this because I believe all council committees should be open to the public whether or not a quorum is present. I think the law is pretty clear on that, though you can argue otherwise.
When I presented the question to the council, the mayor took a poll: John and Ron Cronk said the meeting should not be public; Pad Finnigan said it should be up to the participants; and the other folks pretty much just nodded OK with a public meeting. OK, so it's not a crescendo of enthusiasm; but this still sets an important precedent. If I run for re-election next year, the formation of council committees will be very, very important(unless we come to our senses as a group and form committees before then). There's no question that public policy in Lakewood suffers because our council does not spend enough time in the right ways. We need committees to delve into public safety, to the city budget and taxes, and more.
But it never occurred to me that these committees should meet in secret. It would be monstrous if I ran for re-election on a platform calling for committees only to see them turn into secret tribunals. So I am grateful the council majority went along with this precedent-setting public meeting.
Now, as to content. The committee made some recommendations, sometimes unanimously, sometimes not. These recommendations will go before the full council and will be subject to further discussion:
- Public comment at council meetings would be limited to three minutes. There could be some limited circumstances where a legitimate group might have 10 minutes to discuss a specific item on the agenda; but stay tuned as we try to work out this detail. We have received a lot of feedback that the current system even goes so far as to repulse people from attending meetings (some of you might remember my online poll on this subject)
- We will consider ways to set up a system where another council member or a member of the public can report that he or she thinks a council member might have either a financial conflict of interest, or the appearance of a conflict of interest. The potential conflict of interest would then be investigated, and a procedure developed to determine what the council member and the council might do depending on the findings.
Unlike many other cities, we have no formal method of screening such questions. We need it. It's better to set up a protocol for this before we get into a full crisis. Some of you may recall that my online survey asked people about this question as well. Two-thirds of the 115 respondents said they would not know what to do if they thought someone had a conflict of interest. We need a standardized procedure to discuss these questions in a non-sensationalized way.
- We also had discussion about how to make sure that the council does not inadvertently 'meet' outside of the public eye through email. It is chillingly easy to cc council members on an email and have the sorts of discussions that should, by law and by right, only take place in a place where you can see and hear those discussions. I can assure you that after a couple of bad moves a year or two ago, such email discussions only take place rarely now and are usually caught within one or two emails. But any such email discussions are inappropriate, and very possibly illegal, and the committee suggested ways to avoid them.
I'll keep you posted as these and other issues move through the process; as always, I welcome your thoughts.
