The record · Transcript

Council session — 2026-02-09

Transcript from the session's official auto-captions (20,078 words), shown in readable case and split into speaker turns. Speakers are AI-suggested and editor-reviewed (low confidence — auto-captions garble names); each color marks a speaker.

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Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. I am calling the meeting of the governance committee to order. It is Monday, February 9th at 2:31 p.m. Diego, will you please call the roll?

Good afternoon. Dunphy.

Here. Pirtle-guiney here.

Ryan. Here. Clark, here.

Koyama Lane here. Ashley, will you please read the statement of conduct?

Welcome to the meeting of the governance committee to testify before this committee in person or virtually. You must sign up in advance at the committee agenda at. Council agenda slash governance committee, or by calling 311. Information on engaging with this committee can be found at this link. Registration. Registration for virtual testimony closes one hour prior meeting. In-person testifiers must sign up before agenda item is heard in public. Testimony will be taken on an item. Individuals must testify for three minutes unless the chair states otherwise. Your microphone will be muted when your time is over. The chair preserves. This preserves order destructive conduct such as shouting, refusing to conclude your testimony when your time is up, interrupting others testimony or committee. Deliberation will not be allowed. If your cause disruption, a warning will be given. Further disruption will result in ejection from the meeting. Everyone who fails to leave once ejected is subject for trespass. Additionally, the committee might take a short recess and reconvene virtually. Your testimony should address the matter being considered when testifying and state your name. For the record, if you're a lobbyist, identify the organization you represent, and testifiers should unmute themselves when the clerk calls their name. Thank you.

Thanks, ashley. In today's meeting, our governance committee will hear general public testimony if we have any hear from the city auditor's office on a proposed ordinance to amend city code chapter 2.10 to permit the auditor to enforce the city's campaign finance finance regulations, and also hear from councilor Pirtle-guiney on a proposed ordinance to amend city code chapter 3.02 on council organization and procedure. Before we get into the meeting, vice chair Ryan, do you have any opening remarks? Nope. All right. Can we. Clerk, will you please read the first item?

Item 1st December eighth through 15th, 2025 governance committee minutes.

This first agenda item is the approval of the committee minutes for the governance committee committees held in December. These minutes are available online as part of the meeting agenda. If there is no objection, the minutes will be approved by unanimous consent. Seeing hearing. No objection, the minutes are approved. Diego, will you please read the next item?

Item two public testimony on governance issues.

Diego, do we have any members of the public signed up to provide testimony?

We do. We have. Terry harris.

Thanks for being here today. Mr. Harris.

Actually, I thought I was signed up for the the last item and not this one, so I'm not sure if that's correct, but given the opportunity, I will always take it. I hope I'm signed up for later because I do have something to say there. I'll just say what I hope is coming along with on the 3.02 is your effort for a committee of the whole, and I hope that's on your radar. And if it's on your radar, that's all I'll ask at this point. All right. Thanks.

That concludes testimony.

Great. Diego, can you please read the next item.

Item three amend campaign finance code to maintain enforcement of voter approved regulations following court order. Amend code chapter 2.10.

Great. Thank you for being here with us today. In October of last year, the city auditor's office alerted us that because of a recent court ruling, the city needed to make changes to our campaign finance code. The city auditor's office gathered feedback from legal experts, community organizations and other stakeholders in order to come up with these recommendations. And today, we're reviewing the ordinance brought forward by the city auditor's office based on these recommendations. So we have deborah scroggin. Did I say your name? Scroggin elections division manager and reid brodersen. I get that right.

Brodersen.

Brodersen just failing here. Chief deputy city auditor with us today. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you, chair Koyama Lane appreciate your time. Councilors. My name is reid brodersen, chief deputy auditor with auditor's office here today on behalf of auditor simone rede to introduce this item, I think you gave a great summary chair Koyama Lane. So I won't repeat it and I will just pass it over to elections manager deborah scroggin to get us in the weeds.

Hello. Good afternoon, governance committee members. My name is deborah scroggin, city elections division manager within the auditor's office. And I'm here to overview our campaign finance proposed code amendments. Please feel free to interrupt as we go along for any technical points of clarification you may have. And then we'll take any larger questions toward the end. Next slide. Before we dive in, a brief background about these specific city charter based campaign finance regulations. These regulations were proposed and approved by voters in 2018, and due to legal and court proceedings, they were not in effect until mid 2020. After some portions were ruled unconstitutional. And as a side note, in addition to today's proposal, we included a housekeeping effort in our amendment. You'll see additional strikeouts of areas of the code previously deemed unconstitutional and not in effect. We worked with the city attorney's office on this, and the goal is for public clarity. The main components that are into effect that are in effect right now are limits on campaign contributions and their sources and disclosures required on most candidate campaign communications, also known commonly as paid for buys, an important and often confused component is oversight of these regulations. So, just to be clear, the charter requires oversight by the city auditor, a separate office that oversees the optional publicly financed campaign program, small donor elections, is overseen by the city administrator. Today's proposal has nothing to do with small donor elections oversight or how that program functions. Our offices do work closely together, and the regulations are linked in some ways. Probably the biggest example is, according to charter candidates that opt in to small donor elections, financing can receive any amount that program allows it to receive. So those are the regulations that we're talking about here today. Next slide. Why are we here? In July of last year, Multnomah county circuit court held that the enforcement procedures in these regulations are unconstitutional. The court's order stems from litigation from the 2024 election cycle, when the auditor's office received an appeal on two of our decisions. The litigation exposed long standing vulnerabilities in our regulations as violations of the due process clause of the us constitution. You may recall we engaged councilors this past fall following that court order, and we're here today to ask this committee to act on these issues. The court identified they are a lack of hearing on the city's decision and the fact that the overall short investigatory time frames really limit parties, candidates, campaigns, donors ability to engage in the enforcement process. We're here with a proposal to address the court's decision and to ensure enforceability for 2026 and for future election cycles. So, to be clear, this isn't about anything in the limits, the sources or campaign communications. It's about how we enforce them. Next slide. Importantly, our code change offers continuity. It keeps most things the same. Contribution limits and disclosure requirements will not be touched. The program maintains transparency to the public while still requiring some of the most aggressive timelines in the nation for investigatory resolution. Lastly, public access to information remains the same after each preliminary decision we release. Next slide. This proposal addresses the court concerns with two clear changes, adding an appeal hearing process and slightly extended timelines for reviewing complaints. These amendments both insert the due process provisions in the spirit of the court's ruling, and allow for continued lawful enforcement of what voters adopted. It does this by first adding an administrative appeal process to a neutral hearings officer. Second, adding a slightly extended time frame to provide thorough complaint response, review of evidence, engaging parties and planning for that investigation stage. The proposal does include discretion for the auditor and certain limited circumstances to extend the time frame, which we'll get into next slide, please. The first major change is the ability to appeal before an administrative hearings officer, which doesn't currently exist. Before we discuss this addition, a brief overview of our complaint process, as you'll see here, required and charter as is. We receive a complaint. We must immediately send a notice to involved parties. We then investigate. A decision is released which goes to an appropriate state court without a hearing. The added step here is, as you can see, an appeal request, opportunity hearing and final order process with an evidentiary aspect. The hearings officer would rule and the appeal process would continue to an appropriate state court should the appellant wish to do so. This is in alignment with other city decisions you may be familiar with that are heard on appeal by hearings. Officer next slide please. So this is a straightforward appeal, right, that offers timely, neutral arbiters to our enforcement provisions. Under the standard time frame, an appellant has 90 days. And within that time frame requests an appeal, has a hearing and receives a final order. Elections is currently in discussion with the Oregon office of administrative hearings to conduct the service, there is discretion to request an expedited time frame, such as if we're close to an election, or if, for example, a case involves multiple candidates. These procedures will also be in rule for the public. As for fiscal impact, we estimate currently about 15,000 per election cycle to pay for this service. Again, this is the kind of appeal process that already exists in the city. And the preliminary decision that we issue will still be available to the public consistently to provide that transparency to voters. Next slide please. The second aspect of the proposed amendment is a slight adjustment to investigatory timelines. This was alluded to by the court because they are aggressive, not flexible, and often complicate engagement in the investigation and then jeopardize due process. Here's what our current time frame looks like. In general, we have two business days to receive, review and send out notifications to subject subjects of the complaint and the complainant. We then have 20 business days to review and collect information, conduct interviews and draft a decision. That's the timeline here on the screen and represents what the process currently looks like. The finding is then appealable to circuit court inside of an election to find currently as within 30 calendar days, this all changes and time frames are halved as shown in the bottom part of the screen. That means within one business day, we send notices. After ten business days, we must complete the entire investigation and draft a decision. This is a very aggressive time frame, and importantly, it's a time frame that extremely limits the ability of parties to engage in our process. Next slide please. Our proposal eliminates these expedited timelines for the following reasons. With one timeline, we would have consistency across the election cycle. The expedited timeframes were a significant outlier when we looked at peer jurisdictions and their enforcement of campaign finance. And removing the expedited timeline protects everyone involved and their ability to respond and participate in the investigation. Next slide. In addition to removing that expedited time frame, we're proposing to add time for sufficiency review to intake complaints and plan for investigations as needed. Otherwise, the timeframe stays the same. What exactly is a sufficiency review? It allows the office to intake a complaint and review it, and available public information for relevancy, completeness and viability to move toward an investigation. So it gives us time to see. Is this a real complaint? If everything alleged is true, why are we adding it to address tight timelines referenced by the court and allow meaningful review investigation planning so that we can let everyone participate meaningfully during this time? We can refer it to another agency. We can dismiss the complaint, all reducing the likelihood of weaponization of the process. Currently, our notices go out immediately, and we have no mechanism to avoid complaints that are known to be frivolous. This review process allows us to stop a frivolous complaint before it can be weaponized. Lastly, adding a sufficiency review helps us avoid costly, withdrawn and re-issued determinations. We've unfortunately had to do this in the past due to lack of time to engage parties and receive and review complete information. This additional time is strongly recommended to avoid these situations, which can also damage public trust in our process. Next slide. So here's what the proposed timeline looks like, adding in that sufficiency review. And as a note, we're switching to all calendar days in the proposal to make things clear for the public, you'll see that the total additional time is 12 days for a sufficiency review compared to the current standard, this results in 22 business days currently versus 44 calendar days proposed. All parties are still noticed and our preliminary finding is available to the public following the investigation. Next slide. And here's an overview of the two proposed amendments that we're suggesting in blue, an appeal process and an adjusted timeline. Stepping back and looking at what that means for the life of a complaint. The complaint is received, we conduct a sufficiency review and then we notify the parties involved, and then we investigate. When a preliminary decision is released, we publish it and the appeal process can begin. These components address the court's concerns and allow all parties to engage meaningfully. And for our office to be responsive to candidates in the public. It allows for folks to appeal and also contest the evidence. Taken together, these additions maintain an aggressive timeline for resolution of a complaint while adding in due process procedures throughout. They also bring the elections division closer in line with leading national practices in campaign finance enforcement. Next slide please. However, some cases do require discretion for review of unique or complex allegations and available information. In these cases, and in line with national norms, there is auditor discretion in the proposal to extend deadlines for good cause in the public interest. We will also propose these in a public rulemaking process. Some examples of these limited but important situations requiring our discretion are. Case complexity cases have previously involved thousands of pages of documents and dozens of spreadsheets to collect, analyze, and review for potential violations. Our dependency on partner elections agencies to consider interpretations, advice and receive factual information we may request. This can take some time during an election. Sending folks notice by mail when we have no other means of communication for them, means that the whole process may be slowed down a bit. This is common in campaign finance investigations involving donors specifically, and we've had the situation where we've had to mail dozens of notices and questions in a case by certified mail, and this takes time. We need to ensure that everyone is aware of the complaint and how they're able to have a voice in it. With an increased number of candidates as well positions on the ballot and finite staff resources, we may need discretion to extend timelines so that all the parties can engage in the process. And again, we would be bound by the criteria and administrative rule when employing this discretion, and would be required to let all parties know about any changes to the timeline. Last slide please. So to finish up here, we're requesting that you move this proposal forward to ensure enforceability of these voter approved regulations with added due process. Taken together, these address the court's concerns and maintain voter intent. We're upholding the transparency built into this regulation while improving fairness for alleged violators. Should the committee move this proposal forward, we would then present to the full council and look forward to engaging election stakeholders in a public rulemaking process, should it pass. Next slide. If you have any questions, we're happy to take them. Thank you.

Great. Thank you so much. I don't think we have public testimony, do we, diego.

No one signed up.

Okay. Great. So colleagues, let's move into q&a and deliberation. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you very much. Chair. Two questions. The investigation timeline, not the compressed timeline when we're close to an election, but the regular timeline, it looks like currently you have 20 days and this expands that to 30 days with the sufficiency review. Are we adding more things to the investigation step, or is that just a true expansion of the time that your staff have to complete the investigation?

The current time frame is 20 business days, and we're adding our investigation timeline is proposed for 30 calendar days.

Correct. Okay. So we're talking about a roughly the same amount of time. Just naming it differently. I just didn't catch that.

Exactly. Just a translation from calendar to business.

Yeah. Okay. And we're adding you're asking us to add a new discretion to allow you to expand it. Have you had cases in the past where you would have benefited from more time, or is that a could be a problem at some point?

Concern. We have absolutely had that problem.

Is it a significant number of cases? I just want to understand if we're adding discretion that doesn't have a cap on it, is this something that you would need to use a lot, where we're actually better off expanding the investigation period, so that there's still that cap and the public knows what to expect? Or is this something that's very rare help place that in context for me.

Thank you. Councilor. I think that with the added sufficiency review process, we would have less need potentially to use that discretion. But it has been, I would say potentially a third of our cases. We would have benefited from additional time and working with the parties to figure out what that means.

And if I may, counselor, thank you for the question. I think it doesn't matter as frequently as it matters in depth. So when when we need it, it really does matter. And I think the case, the cases that went to court were ones where it would have mattered, and cases where we've had to issue a determination and reissue one or reopen an investigation are other examples where we really just needed more time, in many cases, to engage with the parties themselves so they could get the proper documentation in order, get the interviews done, and allow us to review that evidence. So I think from the court's perspective, I won't speak for them entirely. But what gets lost when we can't extend is often those due process considerations. We're really trying to protect.

So from from our perspective, I'm thinking about worst case scenario is we approve this and I'm it's not a deep concern but we approve this. And then suddenly everything is running over and the public doesn't know what to expect. What I'm trying to get at is, do you expect this to happen often enough that we should actually extend your timeline and maybe limit the cases in which you can use that discretion? Will the discretion not be used very often? Do we need an outer limit on it, or do you think that we will be in a situation where we will have no regrets, because there won't be issues of that being used regularly and creating a lack of certainty for portlanders, that things will be investigated quickly.

We certainly try to take a narrow approach to this proposal to make as few changes as possible. So we would also be able to try this for an election cycle. And if council was unhappy with how it was working, we could come back and review it as well.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you chair.

Go ahead vice chair.

Yes thank you. Chair. Councilor pirtle-guiney asked a lot of the questions that I was coming up with, so I'm trying to not ask them again. Or if I do ask them, it's because I couldn't figure out if you answered it in a way that I could understand, or if we just need to take a little bit more time with it. But first, I want to thank you both. This is really important work that you're doing. And big picture, I also think how important this is because the relationship between the small donor office and the auditor's office elections has continues to need just more clarity on what the roles are not. That's not a statement against anything that's happening. We've been building something quickly in the small donor office. And then how does that communicate with your office, and where are those checks and balances? And from someone that participated in it, sometimes that was confusing as well. So I think all of us now have that experience. I've had it three times. And so I think we need to continue to stay focused on this. And when the small donor office sometimes felt like it was in the role of being the decision maker, it it seemed like it was not offering the proper checks and balances. So I want to thank the auditor's office for leaning in here. Were you satisfied with when councilor Pirtle-guiney. When? When there's when it's off election cycle? This is easy peasy, right? When this is during the elections and everyone is working at a fast pace and they expect everyone else around them to be operating that same way, the life of a candidate and no one is. So you're kind of in your own little orbit. But I think that I can't tell right now if this will provide the urgency that still needed. When there's something that's preventing, say, a candidate from suddenly being in jail for raising money because they're under investigation, or I can't tell if this will allow satisfaction to be experienced from those running for office in terms of doing both more thorough work than I think we could do if we just kept it in one office. But if that checks and balances still provides that urgency. And so I know you were getting at that, but I still can't. I want to hear more. And we're going to know more once this happens again. You always learn by doing so. There's always but we've had enough examples now where this could be written in a way today that it couldn't have been written years, a few years ago. What do you want to tell me about this journey of trying to provide both the checks and balances and the urgency?

I would thank you, councilor. I would just note that we always use our professional discretion in looking at which cases need all of our attention to jump in and act on. However, some of these timelines don't allow for the folks that are subject to the regulations to participate meaningfully. So we're trying to continually balance that, and this proposal allows us to do that with a little bit more discretion to look at those cases that are really complex and look at those cases that are a little simpler, that we can move faster.

I think to add to that council, thank you for the question. I think you're, you know, you're definitely putting your finger on the pulse of what's a challenge here. Right? There are.

I'm trying to define the problem and I want to see that this is definitely a solution towards it.

Yeah. No, I mean, I do think ultimately the drafters of this law, the voters we all had to consider, right, how we balance timeliness and fairness, among other things. And I think what we're hearing here is the court is saying you balanced it wrong and you need more fairness. And I think what we're trying to do is, you know, say, okay, sure, let's build in due process. And then to deborah's point when we can, we can move faster and make sure candidates have that clarity and the public has that clarity. I will also say we are an important part of the enforcement ecosystem, but we're not alone. So oftentimes what we're using is also public data in or star, for example. And so candidates, the media, others in that sphere can also use that information to talk about, you know, their alleged violation. So but again, I think right now we're really trying to meet a narrow need of the court to to rebalance a little bit how this law was, was drafted.

And I'll just add councilor That we did look at how other jurisdictions balance that across the country and in this state and in other jurisdictions that have similar regulations. And this is by far one of the most aggressive timelines that we've seen.

Okay. What are some of the examples of where you look? I believe you I just want to hear.

Absolutely. So the state of arizona has a very similar regulation with complex double disclosure on voter communications and campaign contributions and limit regulations. And there's is a 180 days for total resolution of a complaint. The state of Oregon recently passed campaign finance. It's not in effect yet, but there's a 60 days. And if you look at local jurisdictions, we have ethics commissions usually oversee those in cities. So oakland, san francisco, new york, chicago, these jurisdictions don't have timelines because this area of regulation is incredibly complex.

That help. Deborah, thank you for always doing that type of thorough work. So what are some of the reasons or guidelines an auditor would use to make that determination of when to extend the the timelines?

I provided some of those. Do you want some clarity on some of them, or do you want me to repeat them? So we would do those in rule, just to be clear, so that the public would have a say in what those are and would understand why we're proposing them and in what situations. We would also be notifying all the parties involved that we were extending a timeline when we do so. That's in the proposed code. But some of the examples that we gave are, for example, we had to do this in a case where we had to notify folks by mail because austar only has addresses. Right. And candidates don't always know who their donors are emails. So that's a situation in which things are slowed down by potentially a week. And we want to make sure that these folks know they're subject to a complaint and how they can be involved. Another example is when we get thousands of pages of documentation, or have to review many videos and organize interviews, these are really situations where we want to be careful and get it right.

And I realize we're doing a first reading today. This is the first reading of an ordinance, right? So we'll discuss it today and then vote on it next time.

We can vote on it.

Oh, that's right, I didn't win that one. I still, I wish that codes would have more process than that in committee. But anyway, say this gets to the full council. When when will this then be formalized and publicly available? Because we're in an election season, because it's 2026.

We will move.

Again, balancing public interest in our process with how quickly we need to move with the election. But that's why we're we're here today to try to get that process going. We hope to be at council in early March, if possible, and then immediately starting a rulemaking process as soon as it's passed.

So I think the goal would be to have rules in place in April so we can make sure. April. Yeah. At least posted. Want to make sure that, you know, our staff are and are trained in our materials are up to date so that candidates have the right information as they start to engage.

That was helpful. And I thank you for providing some sort of a guideline of where this is going and expectation. I just want to say, I'm really pleased to see that the code is getting the fixes needed to have due process, and specifically grateful that there will be an appeal process for those who are accused of violations. So I think this is definitely a step in the right direction. Thanks.

Thank you, vice chair. Looking to see if anyone else has questions.

Do you need a motion to move this?

Yes, I would entertain a motion to move this ordinance to full council with a due pass recommendation.

I so move.

May I have a second?

Second?

The motion has been moved by councilor, clerk and seconded by councilor Dunphy. Any further discussion? Will the clerk please call the roll?

Dunphy. Aye, Morillo pirtle-guiney. I Ryan. I Clark I Koyama Lane. Ii with five eyes. The motion carries and the ordinance document number 2026 055 will move to the full council with a due pass recommendation.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here. Diego, will you please read the next item?

Item four amend council organization and procedure code. Amend code chapter 3.02.

Wonderful. I'm going to hand things over to councilor Pirtle-guiney as the sponsor of this item, who has prepared a presentation for us.

Thank you and thank you, chair, for the permission to bring a presentation forward today. I think that oh perfect, we have it up. Wonderful. And colleagues, I will start by just noting that you received a memo with some of this information late last week. That memo is posted online so that it's available to members of the public. It goes through at a high level. Some of the information that I will jump into today, I want to begin before we get into the depths of the presentation by thanking all of you, because last. Fall, I brought forward a draft of these proposals as a discussion document so that we could start to dig into some of these pieces and was able to get a lot of feedback that was helpful in thinking about how I brought forward something for us to consider in a more formal way, and then to move on to full council. So what we have before us are some amendments to chapter 3.02 of Portland city code. Based on feedback I received when I was council president, from some of our colleagues, and some of the things that I saw in terms of how our procedures were working well and how they weren't, based on feedback from our clerk and other supporting staff offices about places where there were inconsistencies in the code, based on conversations with my then council vice president about things we were seeing that maybe weren't totally clear in the code around how we would operate and how things moved through procedures and compiled those all to bring together. So I'll just back us up a little bit in January of 2025. Over a year ago, council unanimously adopted emergency ordinance 19 2021, which updated our governance provisions. And one part of the ordinance was that the council president bring forward a proposal to replace or extend chapter 3.02 by the end of October because of a number of things that flew our way, including responding to the federal government, I didn't quite have that done by the end of October, but we passed an emergency ordinance at full council, allowing for a little bit of extra time for me to bring this forward. We then reviewed that draft document in governance in November of that year, and in December, I submitted this draft ordinance to the governance committee. I apologize, council president Dunphy, if it's a little bit awkward that I'm bringing these over, bringing these forward now that you're in that chair. But there's some history here. We're catching up on. So the first set of changes before us today are around committee timelines and actions, how our committees work. And the goal is to twofold strengthen the committee's role in shaping policy by ensuring that committees see items in a timely manner. Right now, there are no code requirements on when committees take up items that have been referred to them, set clear actions, or set a clear list of actions that committees can take. Right now, there is not a list of clear actions that committees can take when something is brought before them, and ensure that those actions give clear signals to the full council on what the committee's intentions were in moving that policy. One of the things that I took from a number of discussions with our colleagues over the last year was that there was not a lot of clarity around the work that committees do. There was a sense that things could languish in committee. But there was, though I don't think, unanimous commitment, strong commitment to doing the bulk of that dig in and iterate work that we do in committees. Committees were a test for us. We didn't know at the start of last year what we were going to think. I think there's still some divisions, as we've heard, about how committees should be used, but we've continued to use committees as a place to iterate on our work and trying to establish that in a way that allows committees to do that work and then send clear signals to full council about what their recommendations are. We want everyone to be able to interpret committees signals in a way that makes sense, and have them be reliable items without a recommendation, without committee consideration or amendment consideration, come to council and cause us to have to spend more time on those things in full council that perhaps should have been worked out in committee. There will always be changes we need to make when we're all 12 in the room, but the basics should be worked through. This section is predominantly small changes. The amendment clearly defines. Like I said, the actions a committee can take on an item. It says that committees may move forward an item to full council with a due pass recommendation may refer an item to another committee for additional work. If it's something that perhaps was sent to a committee but needs the input of councilors who are looking at a different topic, that can happen with or without recommendation. The movement to another committee or that committee's may vote not to advance an item and to hold it in committee, either for later consideration or for any other reason. Obviously, committees can consider an item and choose not to vote at all as well. The second section of what I've brought forward today is around inactive items, and this is a place where the former council vice president, our chair and I have had a lot of discussion because the way our system is currently set up, no items actually ever die, which means that for a year or two we're okay, but we don't have sessions like some other legislative bodies where things automatically die at the end of a session. Ten years from now, you can imagine the clerk's docket of items sitting there that we chose not to vote on, not to move, not to do anything with, that are still just sitting on the docket and nobody knows why. So we set up in this second section what inactive items actually are. Everyone who has access to council can see now these handful of items that sit in the queue. The public sees them listed on committee pages as within that committee. But there's no signaling to the public that we don't actually ever intend to pick that item back up again. There's in fact, a few of those in this committee, one I brought forward very early on, and after significant discussion here, it became clear that that wasn't the right direction for us to move. I had no way to formally pull that out of committee or to say, this is this is dead. It's not moving forward. So we establish an activity standard for legislative items that adds transparency to the process and create a provision that if an item has not been advanced within 180 days from the full council, it is deemed inactive and removed from the legislative process unless it's formally resubmitted and starts anew. We also will parallel that in the committee process. The third section is a response to public testimony, and I want to specifically thank terry harris for his written testimony and for the time that he has put into analyzing this element of the proposal. I really appreciate the feedback. The testimony that we received reflected a deep understanding of municipal legislative procedure. As we on this committee all appreciate at this point in our service here, and provided helpful comparative examples from other jurisdictions. Mr. Harris raised concerns about the 180 day inactivity standard, including the administrative burden. I chose 180 days to provide flexibility of an extended runway. We know that there are times where we need to set something aside to do background work. And as we saw, for example, with the work around. Ai and its use in rental housing, that took a few months. So I wanted to give time for us to do extra work that was needed before something inadvertently became inactive or died too soon. But the intent is to provide transparency, and that's why we can't rely on a self-executing rule like that given to us by robert's rules. We need a formal rule that gives councilors a clear bookend, and the public a clear sense of what is or isn't viable. The amendment establishes a baseline standard so that items don't remain indefinitely pending without action. I agree that this is an area where we need to do future refinement, as we see how 180 days sits, as we see if that becomes a burden, either because it's too soon or not soon enough, and I hope that council will revisit that in the future. The next item is the council handbook. And the third amendment that I bring forward formally establishes the council handbook as a tool of city council. Thanks to the work of our chair and former vice president councilor Koyama Lane and her team, we have our first iteration of a handbook, and I hope that as we move forward, we build on that and continue to enshrine our norms and best practices in the handbook. This amendment adds handbook to our code and makes it a permanent fixture of our council, and allows us to use it in ways that align with the normal cadence of our work. It gives us a standard for how often we should adopt it, at a minimum encouraging us to do that work of continual refinement, and also provides for an opportunity to refine it. More often than that, if that's needed, this should be an iterative piece of an iterative background piece to help all of us, to help the public, to help our new colleagues who might join some of us at this dais in the future. And it also should follow our normal timeline of when new people are here, when new committees are adopted, when new leadership is elected to ensure that it fits with the direction that council is headed. The next piece is code amendments, deadlines. And this is, I will admit, one of the more controversial pieces of what I'm bringing forward. It is also a piece that was in direct response to a few of our colleagues frustration about committee, about amendments coming forward without time for councilors to properly vet them. Often, when amendments are brought forward at the dais, we don't have time to understand their full impact because we don't have time to talk to people who might have perspectives we don't see, and there will always be emergencies. There will always be times where we need to do something immediate and at the dais. I also wanted to respect the work of committees in iterating by not giving us amendment deadlines for committees. This is the space where we're supposed to be able to talk to each other and say, you just brought up something I hadn't thought of. Why don't we think about an amendment to this? If we amend something in committee, there is time between when it passes out of committee and when it gets to full council to do the work of catching anything that went wrong, whether it is sending something through code review that was adopted from the dais. And so it hadn't been through code review, whether it is getting feedback from stakeholders who didn't happen to be in the committee meeting, but have concerns with an amendment that was added, the time between committee and council gives us space for that. But when we introduce amendments at the dais in full council, we miss out on those types of tools. And sometimes we add things that should have been through a full review and weren't able to be because of the timeline. I want to flag that. Like with everything else, the restriction in code that I am proposing that amendments would have to be filed 24 hours in advance of a committee hearing, could be overruled by a supermajority vote of the council. If we are sitting in a council meeting and realize that there is something that needs to be done that wasn't filed in advance, nine councilors could could suspend the rules, as they can with anything else to allow an amendment to be received from the dais. This doesn't tie our hands on critical emergent issues. It also doesn't preclude the presiding officer from holding an item over if potential amendments are discussed. That council wants to consider that there are not nine votes to suspend the rules for, but which are an important part of the discussion. A presiding officer could hold an item over to the next meeting in order to allow those amendments to be filed. Council president, I don't take that lightly. I know firsthand how hard it is when things have to get held over, and it messes up future agendas because you have things planned. A few meetings out. But I do think having escape escape clauses, whether written or just known because it is part of the rules as they stand, are important. And that is one on this provision. Final passage on an item in all of these cases. And actually, I should note in this case it wouldn't have to be moved to the next week. It could just be moved from a Wednesday morning to a Thursday afternoon agenda, because that's 24 hours later from the morning to the afternoon the next day. All of these pieces allow us to have more transparency, a more thorough vetting of the work that we do, but still allow us to iterate in committee to pass something. If there's an emergent issue with broad support and to do our work, there is a technical revision in here as well. We use this package to clean up 3.2 by making a handful of changes some grammatical, some technical, some to update, pieces that are no longer relevant because they were only relevant when we were first seated, and those are included here as well. They are spelled out in more detail in the memo that was sent out late last week. So I'll just close by saying, we've been at this for a little over a year now. We've seen a lot that works well in the rules that we adopted at the beginning of last year. We have seen some of our colleagues change their perspective on where we need to be heading. And what I've tried to do is compile the things that are the most problematic for getting our work done effectively, or that I've heard many of our colleagues raise as major concerns while still keeping our original intent. There are many other changes that we could all bring forward to change the intent, but I tried for the most part, to maintain what I thought was our original intent in trying out this iterative committee process, having some clear standards that allow us the flexibility to do our work and take our time at it, but still send clear signals to the public. Improve transparency in the work that we do, and allow us to be clear with the public about what to expect from our body. I am happy to go into any of these pieces in more detail. I am going to pull up the memo that my team sent out as well, to make sure that I have in front of me exactly what was sent to all of you, and I look forward to the discussion before we move into discussion, I do just want to give a thanks to my staff, devin mullins, who put this memo together and did a lot of work on the back end on these revisions. He spent a lot of time working with our attorneys, our clerk's office and others to make sure that we were getting the language right and that we weren't going to have unintended consequences in the way that we word things, so that we can be confident that the work that we're doing here is is clear and passes muster. So thank you to devin for all of the behind the scenes work on this. Thank you chair. That was a lot. I know.

That was great. That was really, really helpful. Thank you. A+ on the presentation. I mean I feel like I understand this a lot better. Awesome. Okay. Before we move into q&a and deliberation, can we hear public testimony please?

Yes. We have one individual signed up, terry harris. And apologies to terry. You were correct earlier. You were not signed up for the first item. You were signed up for this one. So just to clarify, no one signed up to testify for document number 2026, 054 and 055.

We just get extra terry time.

Yeah, it's just a special treat for you. Okay. So terry harris for the record and real quickly what you have before you is great. It is, you know, worth the effort. But I'm going to talk about the inactivity thing a little bit and a way of rethinking it. And I gave you some written testimony. And along with the written testimony is a bunch of code language from other jurisdictions. And I think in the absence of something else, you do have sessions and things do expire at the end of two years because you're going to reelect some of your members. Robert's rules says that any unfinished business expires when new folks come in. And if you think about it that way and realize that that happens every two years to sort of wash the docket clean, I think that might solve a lot of the problem that I think you're trying to solve. And so when I think about it that way and then looked through it, the other jurisdictions, they do it that way. Most of them, the only one that didn't was there were a couple that didn't. San francisco has an expiration, but they also have like a notice thing and some process that says before this expires, one last chance, do you want to bring this out of committee or do you want to act on this, or are you sure you want this to expire? That sort of language might be helpful. And the other thing about it is, is. The way it's set up is it's deemed inactive, but it doesn't say who is deeming it and and what authority that that happens. And, and I think either the council president has to deem it or the clerk has to deem it, and and somebody has to keep track of those 180 days, which I think, you know, is an administrative administrability issue. So in rethinking inactivity, I think maybe you can let robert's rules do the work better would be to adopt a way to handle the expiration at the end of the two years, where you specifically can reintroduce things automatically with a new session, or weed them out at the last day of the last session. There are a number of ways different jurisdictions do it, and I gave them to you. I'm happy to think that through with you all if you want.

Thank you terry, we always appreciate your thoughts and for you to be here. Thank you. All right. Were there any technical specific questions for councilor Pirtle-guiney before we move into hearing about the pre-filed amendments from councilor Dunphy? Councilor clerk.

Can I get her reaction to terry's idea that they just kind of fade away after two years?

So a couple of thoughts and reasons that we didn't move in that direction. The first is, for whatever reason. We weren't given sessions, right. Our our calendar doesn't work in that every two years after a new election, it's a new session way we could move in that direction. But I was trying to not introduce extensive new overhauls like that. I do worry that if we expect this work to be ongoing and not have kind of the rush of a new session, right? You always have the beginning of a new a body being seated, a new that like flurry of new things being introduced. And where are we at if we want things to be a little more stable across the cycle, I worry about things automatically coming to a close. I'm going to use the word dying. We used inactive here, but I'm just going to say dying at the end of a two year term. What happens if something's introduced in November? Right. We know that our process here is not always a speedy one. If you bring something to committee in November, it's heard in December it's sent to full council. It's not going to get on the calendar until January. Boom. It's dead. So I think we could include provisions to prevent against that. But this is now opening up a whole new body of work. How do we want our sessions, if you will, to run what gets carried over, what doesn't. And I was not comfortable bringing that forward. I also think that if what we're trying to do is create more transparency for the public about what we're doing, two years is a long time. There are already after one year, I think, 3 or 4 things sitting in committees that I know are not going anywhere. Members of the public don't. And so I was trying to come up with a timeline that, based on the last year, felt like it would have captured the things that we spent the most time digging into, and not the things that. That we don't want to be there. I'll note that it's 180 days from when something is initially placed on an agenda, not when it's introduced. So if something is placed on an agenda, we have a conversation. The clock starts then. So we're not in a rush to get it on an agenda and get moving. I do think it gives us enough time as it relates to the who deems it inactive, and what does that look like? It says here items deemed inactive will be placed on file by the clerk, and perhaps that wasn't clear enough. Our assumption in writing that was that the clerk, who right now keeps track of all of our deadlines and the technical behind the scenes back end pieces, would, at 180 days, move something to the inactive file. And on the technical end, right. That looks like a button that you click and it's no longer listed in a committee or available for agendas. When you're doing your work of building your agenda with your clerk, things like that. Presumably we would need to follow that up with having a space online where those things were filed, as well as having that filing paper copy for the records, but it would be the responsibility of the clerk's office as the the body that keeps track of all of our deadlines and technical pieces. Now, to do that.

Madam chair, can I ask one more question? Then let me just make sure I understand this and that the public understands what you're saying session versus not is that in our second year, something is introduced in November. You're advocating that it carry over into the next year, that it doesn't just drop off like a session that that I think that's what you're saying, right? So it stays alive until the next year.

That the way that our work currently moves, that happens. And I am suggesting that unless we have an extensive conversation about making a change there, we should keep that the way that our body is set up. We are not a we are not a house of representatives where everybody is up for election at the same time. And you could potentially have a full overhaul. We will always have at least half of our body returning after an election year, so we will always have at least half of our body who has work that they are still continuing. Perfect. Thank you.

Great questions. Thank you, vice chair Ryan.

Yes thank you chair I just want to thank councilor Pirtle-guiney for bringing this forward. I recall those conversations. I love that you were meticulous and wanted to make sure that that just didn't drop, no matter how many days we're looking at right now. So I appreciate that. I think these changes are bringing forward make a really good sense and I am going to support them. They move us. They move us closer to efficiency and time, transparency with the public and consistency in practice. Personally, I really like the requirement of filing legislative amendments. 24 hours notice for the full council, allowing for better informed discussion and voting. I find that when we do, those on the dais and they are significant, they're not just. Housekeeping, which is a different category. It takes us away from bringing the public along on what we're voting about, and it means that they'd have to people that thought that we were voting on one thing. Now we're voting on something perhaps much different than that, and they didn't have an opportunity to show up and testify. And so so I just really like that. From a good governance standpoint, 24 hours is still very quick. And and to get that notice out is important, but it's a much better than doing it. The walk ons, and I always go back to when I was heavily involved with the permit reforms, and we looked at where some of the worst codes were written that caused people trying to work in Portland, the biggest headaches. And there were so many pathways that would be to a walk on amendment by the council, and that's not surprising. I also just want to say, overall, the other things are pretty easy the adoption of the handbook as a council tool. I kind of thought that already happened, but I like that you're formalizing that, and I just want to give thanks to you for this isn't glamorous work when you're doing this type of policy. And I really appreciate that you hung in there and that you kept working on it to improve it. I did hear the testimony and I, I, I could I understand that for congress. I understand that for the Salem house. I don't get it yet for municipality in local government. And we're supposed to be nonpartisan. We're supposed to keep improving the oversight of the services that we have. And I just I don't know if I want to formalize that with having things die, because there could be a change in the composite. So today I wouldn't be supportive of adding that. Thanks.

I'll put myself in the queue. I'm wondering, so I, I do feel overwhelmed when there are a lot of amendments flying around on the fly. I do feel some. I feel a little worried about limiting that, because I'm not exactly sure how that limits our body, but one one thing I'm wondering if we do pass an amendment to an ordinance that's substantive. Doesn't that mean that we can't we have to wait another week? Isn't that already one of our like in the code that you have to. Yeah. And how yeah. Can you respond.

To council.

Next time we meet.

So ordinances can't be amended the day that they're passed. There is a period of time after an after an ordinance is amended before it can be passed. And that is presumably to allow for that review period. That's why we have two, right. We have a first reading and a second reading of an ordinance. But we often get amendments to other things that are substantive. Right? We've while we talk about resolutions as less substantive because they don't go into our code, they're still very directive also and could include language that is not actually workable, but we don't find that out until after, or that conflicts with parts of code or conflicts with other resolutions that have been passed. Budget adjustments don't have that same wait period. I don't believe so. There are other things where I think that can be really important that are not code adjusting. There is that one protective piece right now around code that still doesn't help us with making sure that we understand all of the implications before we vote on the amendment. It does make sure we don't pass the final without having those those conversations.

That's helpful. So this part about the 24 hour deadline is more about correct me if I'm wrong, non ordinances not code being adjusted.

I think it's important for both so that we're able to receive feedback on the amendments themselves when possible. But I do think that it becomes even more important for those things that we can pass in the moment. Absolutely.

Councilor Clark.

Olivia Clark: Are we looking for comments on this now?

Yes. Also, knowing that councilor Councilor Dunphy has four different amendments he's bringing to.

Well, I just I would also like to express my appreciation. This is incredibly boring. Yeah. And but.

The nitty gritty.

It's the nitty gritty of how we operate. I everything's great. I think the code amendment piece that our chair just highlighted is really the crux of this. And to me, when I imagine trying to enforce this, it's really going to exact discipline on the part of the council because it can be really chaotic and really confusing for me and I. This requires that we take things a little more seriously, you know, a little more thought into it. And what's interesting is that there are outs that you can suspend the rules to get around this. The presiding officer can hold something over. So there's room for emerging issues. It's not, you know, black or white really. But I think it would be very interesting if we tried this to see if we can exact that kind of discipline on a very diverse and very engaged council. But I would like to support it. But I want to wait and hear what president Dunphy has to say, too. Thank you.

President Dunphy.

Thank you. First and foremost, councilor Pirtle-guiney, thank you for doing this. Truly, a lot of this work is so clearly the result of the frustrations that you've had over the last year and the feedback you've gotten from our colleagues, and you are setting me up for a lot of success with this, to try and find a whole new slate of nonsense to fix later. So, absolutely. Like for the most part, I am I'm very, very supportive. I have a couple of amendments that are additive, but are not really intended to tweak what you have done. And I have one amendment that is specific to the 24 hour rule, which I'm not totally sold on right now, but wanted to debate with all of you. I want to start with that one. Since we've been talking about that, I totally agree, councilor Ryan, that the worst policy that comes out of city hall is the the amendments that are made on the fly, and that so much of our work has been cleaning up a lot of the really good intentions that were done without proper due diligence. The only concern I have really specifically, is trying to be responsive to testimony that we are hearing on emergency ordinances or other things that were it is timely and there is a backstop, obviously, of suspending the rules, which I think gets us most of the way there for most of the amendments that will ever come up. But I do, I wonder, I guess I worry if the suspension of the rules, which requires nine on what may end up being a vaguely controversial amendment, but would still be necessary to move something forward, might be too high of a bar. So for the purposes of conversation, Dunphy amendment three adds a subsection to the amendment section. Specifically, it adds a little bit of language to 3.02.030. I dot one, specifically include this one is not to that item this. This is specifically adding out items that were removed by from the consent agenda. Just calling that out. The second section calls out specifically amendments to ordinances and quasi judicial decisions proposed for consideration being applicable for the 24 hour rule with a dash or a dot, a a sub a, which would say that the 24 hour filing requirement for amendments may be waived for non budget ordinances via majority vote to suspend the rules. I don't know if this would need us to change. Would require additional work on that or not, but the idea being that specific to non-budget ordinances, a simple majority vote would allow us to suspend that rule to consider an amendment in less than 24 hours. Again, that's just on the table for consideration. Madam chair, would you like me to go through my other amendments very quickly?

Do you have a preference? I was wondering, I think it is helpful if we can discuss each amendment individually. Sure.

Let's go one by one.

If we can go one by one, I think that would be great. And I'd entertain a motion if you want to. Officially.

Yeah, I would like to move Dunphy amendment three.

Okay.

I'll second, but I'd also like to hear what councilor Pirtle-guiney has to say about lowering the bar here to seven from nine chair.

Do you mind if I weigh in? Okay. I was just checking council president on the first piece. I there's. I think I see these as three distinct changes. And on the first 1 in 1. Yeah. I am wondering if we need to add the language around removed from the consent agenda, because what a through f do is detail types of ordinances, nonemergency ordinance, emergency ordinance, franchise ordinance, resolution report, and quasi judicial land use decision. And I don't all of those can be placed on the consent agenda, but once pulled off they are still listed as that type of ordinance. So I actually think that may be redundant. Okay. I would look to I don't think we have an attorney in the room, but if we if we can get an opinion that supersedes mine on this, that would be great. But from my from my reading, that's redundant. And I just wanted to flag that. It looks to me like what you're doing is limiting the 24 hour rule to just ordinances and quasi judicial decisions.

That was.

The direction I was moving. Yes.

And I do think that having that protection for resolutions also is important. We have used resolutions in this body on some pretty important things and in our direction. To the mayor, I would like time to really thoroughly vet those. I actually think that on on resolutions and emergency ordinances where we don't have the opportunity of a week before we vote, this can be even more important. I hear you on the need to be able to respond to public comment. Waiving this requirement by just a majority vote is, in essence, to me, the same as not having this requirement at all, since a majority vote is what allows something to pass. So if we can waive this with the same votes that we would need to pass something, then it's kind of like we don't have this on the books in in effect.

That's a good point.

So I am open to the idea of how we address public testimony when we have an emergency ordinance before us that we need to move quickly. I do have some concerns about doing it this way, though, and about limiting it.

That was really comprehensive. Yeah, I think I want to withdraw this amendment.

Can you councilor Pirtle-guiney explain? I don't I didn't I saw all my other colleagues going, yeah, but I didn't quite understand why. Okay. Which the, the part of the six kind of making it a moot point because don't you need you need seven.

So you're right, it says a majority and I may have said six, I think I meant more than six. So let's use the word seven. Let me say this differently.

Okay.

Right now an amendment can be adopted with seven votes. If we said that there was this 24 hour period. And of course, like with anything else in code that can be suspended with nine votes, then we would essentially be saying, you need to file things 24 hours in advance, unless a supermajority of council thinks that it is that important. This would go back to saying you need to file things in advance, unless seven people think it's that important. Well, right now I could say on any item, I don't think we should adopt this amendment because it hasn't been filed in advance. And seven people could say, too bad we want to pass it right now. That's a majority. So in effect, right. This puts the language on the books, which is a good step. But in effect, it doesn't actually change what we can do right now. Does that make sense.

And I think where I got confused is when my team read this and we were talking about it, they were they had said six. And so six actually to me would make more sense because you're right, if it's seven, then you have what you need. But I am curious. That lowers that even more. The number from nine down to six.

We need.

To raise our hands.

Yeah. I just just talk.

Oh, I see the president has.

His hand.

No, I didn't mean.

To, I just haven't.

I was saying aloud, I think I want to now because I think that councilor Pirtle-guiney makes a really good point.

Yeah.

A little light bulb kind of went off over my head after hearing this. That I really I appreciate what you're trying to get at, but I think that nine makes sense that we have an out. So I think I'd prefer councilor Pirtle-guiney language. It makes it makes sense to me now, having this discussion. But I appreciate the effort.

Yeah.

I do think that, you know, sometimes we do get really great testimony. We're thinking, oh, but we can do a nine, you know, nine persons.

What I will do is I will keep this one in particular in the front of my mind. And if we run into a problem in which in the future, we cannot meaningfully respond to testimony in the moment, and there's a reason for that, then I'll be bringing something back to council for consideration. I'm I would like to move to withdraw my amendment. Amendment w three. Thank you. With permission.

From all of three or just the.

Second one?

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: The whole three. All of three, the three separate thing. I am convinced that that pirtle-guiney that councilor Pirtle-guiney said that the the first item there items removed from the consent agenda is redundant. I'm convinced that there are circumstances in which items outside of ordinances and quasi judicial decisions may be applicable. And I hear the fact that functionally, a bare majority vote to suspend the rules is functionally no rule at all. And so I would like to withdraw everything on the page that says Dunphy amendment three and go back to the drawing board.

Can I just offer another comment? I think it will be really interesting to see if we can exact that kind of discipline on the part of the council to slow everything down, be more self conscious about what we're trying to accomplish.

It does because of that. Councilor and when you said this earlier, I thought of this. It seems like a big jump for us. So I am worried about making this big of a jump and having it apply to ordinances, resolutions. So if you all are supporting it, and I think this will be an interesting conversation when it goes to full council, I. I wonder what that conversation will be like, but I think probably the way it's written, I will not be able to support. The whole thing because of that part. But I also think that that's okay. We can have more conversations, and that's kind of how it's supposed to work. We're supposed to kind of workshop it. All right. Councilor Dunphy, did you want to put something else?

Yeah. Can I please move? Dunphy amendment one before I move it formally, I'd like to just read what it is. This is a change to 3.02.020 sub section b. 1a1. Specifically, this changes the language to basically everywhere that we physically could to include the phrase including a committee of the whole. This is at the recommendation of the city attorney, so make sure that we are language about quorum and attendance are are met with the intention of what I intend to be bringing to propose for our new committees. So specifically, it is just changing the the title rather from general to designation to a committee and then including a comma, including committee of the whole three different times. And I would move Dunphy amendment one and would love a second second.

We were all ready to second that.

Thank you.

All right. Thanks, colleagues. Let's discuss. Dunphy one councilor Pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you, chair. And thank you, council president, for moving this forward. I know committee of the whole is a direction that you're hoping to go. I want to divide my comments some and start with saying I. I really like the second piece of what you've brought, page three, where you're clarifying that we can have a committee of the whole and clarifying the membership requirements to make sure that that stands. I think that was an oversight when we created these membership requirements. And a really important piece to include here, if we want to be able to have a committee of the whole. And I appreciate that you caught that, because it's not something that I had caught when I did my review. I think that the the piece around emergency ordinances and ordinances relating to council rules, going to the committee of the whole is fine, though I do think that it has the potential to limit us in the future. If we decide that we don't want a committee of the whole. A future council president might not create that committee. And I worry that that boxes us in a little bit. I also would suggest that for you and for our future leadership, we've had a lot of conversations as a group about the power of the council president and whether we should have a more or less powerful council president, and I think we, frankly, landed somewhere in between. Functionally, one of the places where the council president has the least power on this council is in determining where pieces of legislation move. And some people might advocate that the council president should have that power in order to put things where they want it and control their destiny. But the other piece that is important in regulating where things move is making sure that committees and council have the time to do their work. Because right now, if everybody brings forward legislation requesting the same committee, neither our council president nor that committee chair have any power to say, I'm getting bogged down, and I worry, council president, that in allowing all of us to choose to send our things directly to committee of the whole, you may bog yourself down in your ability to get things through the committee of the whole. And I would advocate if folks here are interested in it, and if the council president is open to it, to removing these first two designations of committee of the whole under 3.0 2020b, one a, one a and b, these are on page one. In order to not bog down our work, but retaining the designations later, I'm willing to accept page two, even though I think it could box in a future council president to having to have a committee of the whole. Maybe we could change that to say a committee of the whole, or a work session of the full council. That would give some more flexibility. And I'm definitely supportive of page three, and I would be interested in council president or anybody else's feedback on that.

Can I respond? Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Great feedback. Absolutely. The the concern I have about specifically the first two, my understanding was specifically just to call out that a committee of the whole does exist. But I do recognize that maybe it won't in the future, but also to. My understanding was that my team worked with some of the advice from the city attorney's office to make sure that we are being explicit about that because of other parts of the code where we talk about quorum rules and public meetings. And so by specifying that the committee of the whole is included as the list of opportunities in this, that that would protect us in some way. But. I think it really was more I mean, I do see also that you are I mean, yes, there's potentials for, for bogging down everywhere and. With regard to these first ones under one a, one a and one a, one b, it is it does feel largely just sort of redundant for the purposes of having it in there, but it does make me more comfortable having it in there, even if it is a little bit. Much a little bit. Yeah. Sorry. I'm mostly just thinking out loud now. Would you want to are you looking to divide the question on this?

I'd hope to hear.

I'm sorry chair, may I respond?

I'd hope to hear feedback.

From others first, but if it's helpful for discussion, I am happy to divide the question. Council president, what do you think of the idea of saying on page two under b1, a f a committee of the whole, or a work session of the full council in order to give future leaders a little more flexibility there? Would that be friendly or not friendly?

I would certainly accept that. However, as I understand it, we have some conversation with our council clerk about what how friendly amendments work and that we have to actually just vote that as a separate amendment into amendment.

I thought that was just in full council, I apologize, okay, I'm just. Trying to divide this into 2 or 3 different pieces. Is it helpful if we divide it into three just to take each of those sections separately?

I'm fine with that.

Okay. So chair, I would move to divide the question by pages actually page one, page two and page three here.

Great.

And we don't need to do anything to divide the question.

On the amendment one. Which is posted online.

Then amendment one is posted in two sections. The first section is two pages and the second section is page three.

Okay okay.

So clerk do we we are discussing page one of Dunphy.

One oh you're good.

This is how we.

Do this. It's great.

And it was to divide the question okay.

Number two.

And so in terms of dividing the question I'd like to move the items on page three. First. These are the changes to 3.02.050. A one and c one and c two. This is the addition. Sorry.

Oh.

The addition of the phrase, including a committee of the whole in under the section titled formation and under the committee title or the section titled membership would read committees comma, other than the committee of the whole, must be composed of less than a quorum of council and then erases. The committee generally consists of 4 to 6 councilors, and then adds the word committees to the sentence. A committee's quorum is the majority of the committee members. I'd like to move to debate on that and then move that.

First counselor. Clark, are you in the queue to debate Dunphy? Amendment one, page one.

Page three, page three, page three.

Page three. So we're starting with three.

I'd like to start with page.

In the back.

On the.

Last one. The last part of Dunphy one. I'll come up.

Okay?

Okay.

Making sure I'm.

I was I'm more interested in page 1b1ba1. I'm fine with page three.

And I apologize. Chair Koyama Lane. Do we have a motion in a second?

Oh.

I moved Dunphy one and I think Clark moved. Second.

Divide the question.

I moved to divide the question. Okay. Do I need a second for that?

That's correct.

Okay. Second.

Thank you.

Clark, thanks.

But we don't need to vote on it, right?

We do. We need to vote on each of these separate. Now.

We don't need to vote on dividing the question. The question is divided. And now we're looking at Dunphy one, page three. Okay, colleagues, it looks like we don't need to. Are we ready to vote?

Sure.

Diego, will you please call the roll on amendment Dunphy one, page three.

All right. Dunphy. Aye, Morillo pirtle-guiney.

Aye, Morillo.

Ryan. I Clark, I Koyama Lane. I with five eyes. The amendment is approved.

And, counselor Dunphy, are we discussing page one? Okay, so now we are in discussion. Colleagues on Dunphy one, page one.

Specifically the item submission. Any councilor Committee of the council, mayor or auditor may submit an item, a procedure, and then that is the next three things. So it is changing the title to designation to committee and including the phrase including a committee of the whole twice. I'd like to.

Yeah, yeah. Go.

Thank you, madam chair. So I was I'm so long ago now. I'm a little confused, but I think I was worried. I'm worried about this, that any counselor may present a proposal or may designate a committee for review, including the committee of the whole. I'm just concerned that we're going to bypass the substantive committees. And that's what worries me about this particular one. I'm all about. I'm all for the committee, the whole being included. But this seems like I'm going to bypass the committee. I don't like it, and I'm going to it seems like the committee of the whole is really a place to discuss, educate. No, not to move your your thing, I don't know. Does that make sense to you?

You know, I envisioned it as being any I mean, a number of items, even if it were, for example, very specifically around transportation, if there is an item of high enough interest among counselors that all 12 of us need to have that debate before we get to a full council, I think that it should be able to be moving towards it. I don't like the idea of it being. A yeah, a bypass of the main council. And and admittedly, again, I will be unveiling a proposal around what the committee the whole will be. We haven't even gotten to that point yet. But the expectation also is that if something is voted on at the committee, the whole it almost like it may almost certainly go to the consent agenda for the full council, unless there is a good, compelling reason to have it. Public testimony again. So. I hear the concern for sure about potentially bogging it down or letting folks get a second bite of the apple sort of idea. I also don't love broadly not having the president have any real control of that. But yeah, that's where we are.

Anything else?

Council councilor Pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: I'm just looking at the the actual language here. Any councilor May designate a committee for review. And under our current practices, if a councilor Chooses to designate a committee for review, the council president does not have the ability to force them to choose a different committee. The council president can use the power of persuasion to try to convince them to choose something different. But that decision is final. A councilor Does, though, have the option to not designate a committee for review, and when that happens, the council president can choose. So by including committee of the whole, we are allowing a councilor to choose that. If we took it out and a councilor Brought forward a proposal that fit within the policy areas that you, council president, want to have, go to committee of the whole. In effect, what would happen is that councilor would not designate a committee for review and then have a conversation with you, presumably about you using that opening to send it to committee of the whole. So I do think things would still go to committee of the whole from councilors, not just from the administration. This way it would just be in coordination with you and a decision to not designate a different committee for review.

Great. Yeah.

Okay. I'm not sure I understood that.

That that was really helpful. So I think councilor Pirtle-guiney is saying right now how it's worked according to code and how it's been for the last over a year, when a councilor says, I'd like it to go to this committee, it needs to go there, and the council president can try to persuade it to go to another committee. But that is that's what code says. So this having committee of the whole here is saying, if a councilor says, I wanted to go to committee of the whole, it has to go there, which is, I think what you were saying, if we take this out.

Essentially if we leave the language as it currently stands.

Then if some if a councilor says, I would like it to go to community and public safety and council president, or you talk to this councilor and say, hey, actually, can we do committee of the whole and they agree, then that works. Or if they put no preferred committee, there's also an opening there. So that does make me lean to thinking that maybe we don't need this specific language here.

Yeah. Well, I will note that my, my, you know, a significant portion of what I envisioned the committee, the whole to be is also a combination of governance and finance issues. And so I do think there needs to be a way for consistent referral of those items that would otherwise be going to governance or finance, to be able to be referred to a committee, rather than each of those being an individual conversation with me. But I also kind of I can see the argument that by saying may designate a committee for review, and the committee of the whole is an option under the committee structure in council, or it would be in the future. It may just be redundant.

Good. Councilor. Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: That's an interesting point, that actually it may be redundant. And if we take it out, it may still do the same thing that councilor Clarke was raising concerns about because it would be listed as a committee. And I think that I think the question that I have, I guess council president is if we have a committee of the whole, I presume I might be incorrect that the description of that committee will be broader than just governance and finance, even if that's your intent for what the bulk of the work is right now, the only thing kind of keeping us on track in terms of what goes where is those committee descriptions? So if you we have a bit of a bind, if you would like our colleagues to be able to choose committee of the whole and the description is broader, we could each choose it for everything. I could bring this. I guess this is governance. So it would go straight there. But right. We could all bring all of our things there. And that's the bogging down that I think councilor Clarke and I at least are concerned about. Perhaps others.

Yeah.

And I wonder how we make sure either through our code language or through the committee descriptions, that we don't do that. Do we need to say something actually completely different that neither of us thought about in my proposal or your amendments, saying that a councilor May present a proposal and may designate a committee for review, presuming that that committee's description aligns with the policy that they are bringing. Do we need to have something actually narrowing here, or do we just want to leave it be? And you can this year, use your power of persuasion to have it look the way you're hoping. And we can hope that we start over time to set a precedent of what goes and what doesn't.

Yeah.

Can I ask a question? Would it help at all if we moved, if it said or indicate no preferred committee to request committee of the whole some sort of language to specify that, no, there needs to be a request.

I don't want to. Well, I don't want to wing it right now. And we will have to bring this to the full council. And I think you're right that there needs to be more consideration of this. I think that I'm at this point now convinced that largely this, just this, this, this, this. Well, I still like titling it designation to committee, but the inclusion of this does feel potentially just redundant at this point and doesn't have other built in protections that empower the councilor or the council president to make those decisions. So. For now, I think I'd like to just move to a vote on this. If it passes, great. If it doesn't, great. And then we have further consideration on it with some more time to think about how we land on this. Unless we want to keep workshopping this for multiple governance hearings. But yeah.

Councilor Ryan, yeah.

Thank you very much for bringing this president. Dunphy. I, I've been a big advocate for committee of the whole. So I think because I saw the exclamation points with that, I wanted to support it. And now I'm at a place where I don't think it's necessary. And I also think this might be a different conversation in a couple of months, because there are a couple of committees that will be seen in that regard. So I would support workshopping this a little bit, pulling it at this moment, because I think we're all trying to get to the same place, but I'm concerned that right now, hypothetical, I would just probably want to bring everything to the committee as a whole based on this and not really use committees. Yeah, and I know that's not what you intended from writing this. So I support I will not be supporting this even though I like the idea behind it. Thanks.

Great.

Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Thank you chair. I would.

Propose that we amend Dunphy one page one to retain the change from general to designation to committee in the subsection title, but remove the additions of the words, including a committee of the whole comma in both sub a and sub b.

With the. Would that be the.

Fastest way, or would amending it, or would it just be dividing the question again and just have we just vote on retitling that? And if everybody wants to vote down the other parts of it, that's okay.

I'm fine with either approach. I'm just trying to get us to the change that you want there, and more time to work on the other pieces.

I'd love to divide the question to retitle this one section as designation to committee.

Second.

Second. And so.

You divided. Divide it from the other.

So now it is literally just we're going.

To.

Now we are we are discussing Dunphy one page one, just the retitling of b one, a one from general to designation to committee. Anyone in the queue to discuss that specifically?

Okay. It's going to read what.

Designation to committee instead of general. Right.

That's what you're proposing right.

Yeah okay I'll do that. Okay.

We'll move on from the next. We'll get rid of the references to independently vote. And sounds like we'll vote down the other part of this amendment. But I do like that part.

I understand.

So, diego, will you call the roll on Dunphy? One page one only the title being changed from designation to committee.

Councilor. Yes. Sorry.

I just jumped in the queue.

Sorry about that. Okay. It's my fault. Am I okay to go? Yeah.

Sorry, colleagues, I just wanted 30s to actually look at this full section outside of the amendment and make sure that it doesn't do anything more than the designation to committee and that that actually works without it being general. So we have the designation. We have a committee. What a committee can do with it. We have what happens if it's not referred to a committee. And then emergency ordinances? I think that could all fit loosely. There's some that fit more tightly than others, but I think it all could loosely fit. Okay. I'm sorry. Thank you for that extra 30s.

To look.

Into that.

All right, Clark, are you ready to call the roll?

Yes, Dunphy. I pirtle-guiney.

I, Ryan.

I think I'm following what we're voting on right now. I.

Clark. I Koyama Lane. I with five I's. The motion carries.

Should I. Just withdraw the.

I want to ask a question about this.

Practicing the walk on amendments.

Yeah.

Just wanted everyone to know.

That I actually talked about that in preparing for this. Did I catch correctly that my colleagues, you were saying that even without what councilor Dunphy is proposing to add here, councilors will have the ability to direct something to committee of the whole. Okay, so we're recognizing that we might need to come back and clean that up. Okay. All right. Now I'm ready if you'd like to withdraw that.

Yeah. Diego.

Do you want to talk about it? Councilor Clark.

Olivia Clark: Can I withdraw the remainder of the amendment at this point?

So just so I'm tracking, I'm. If I may suggest naming them. Dunphy, 1.1, 1.2, etc. Okay. And if I'm understanding correctly, that would be to withdraw 1.3 and 1.4.

Yes.

Perfect. Thank you.

Yeah. If if as we're going down the road, I'm looking at one, two three, four. And then page three is considered. Dunphy 1.5. If we're looking at every red line as a subbullet. We just voted on 1.1. I would like to withdraw 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4, and we already voted on what in this new scheme would be called 1.5.

So Dunphy one is off the table, all.

Of it.

The remainder. Remainder parts that we did not.

So now we are discussing the underlying. Yes. Councilor.

No, I still have two other amendments.

Yes.

So until we until you put those on the.

Table.

I make a comment though, you're you're withdrawing that council president. I just wanted to say that I thought the second part was okay. B I thought b was okay, but we're not going to do it today. I understand that you're going to continue to massage this. Yeah. Or workshop as we say. Yeah. But just yeah. Okay. Just had to get that out there.

This obviously needs a little bit more.

So did you have another amendment that you'd like to introduce.

To two two.

Sorry. I think I just inadvertently created a pause there. Chair. I'm sorry. I was looking at what councilor Clark was talking about, which was the difference between a where a councilor in Dunphy, one a where a councilor Can send something to a committee, and b, where the council president sends something. And councilor Clark was mentioning wanting to make sure that we actually did include that second piece, which was, I think.

And I think it's still implied because their committee of the whole will be an option of which I can designate a committee for review.

For what it's worth.

If I may, if reading what's not there creates intent as much as reading what's there. If we included, including a committee of the whole in b, might that create an intent that the council president had that ability, but individual councilors did not, and give us at least a cleaner place to start from as you do the rest of the work, councilor Dunphy.

Jamie Dunphy: Oh, that's really interesting.

Yeah. I wonder.

If it's actually cleaner if we move. Dunphy 1.3. Also, per councilor Clark's. Great suggestion there.

All right. 1.3.

Which is.

Can I move it?

Yeah. Okay. I would like to move that then. Dunphy one it would be b. 1.1.

A Dunphy 1.3. A1b.

Ba1b.

Yeah a1b.

Are you following on that.

That was 1.3 a one.

Yeah we would be the b section. So this would again if we're going 1.11.2 this would be including 1.3 which is a addition of the phrase including a committee of a whole to subsection b right there on page. The first page.

Is there a second.

I'll second that second.

Okay.

And was there a motion. Was that from vice president Clark? Yes. Okay. Thank you.

If there's not any further any further discussion?

Okay. Yeah.

On Dunphy one b and that is where it reads, if not designated for a particular committee's review by the councilor who proposed an item or if proposed by the mayor or auditor, the president may designate a committee for review, including committee of the whole, or designate the item for consideration by the full council.

Yeah.

So specifying if you do not pick a committee, committee of the whole will be an option.

President may.

Yeah, I like that.

All right. Daigle, will you please call the roll on that teeny tiny amendment within the amendment?

Dunphy I. Pirtle-guiney I. Ryan I.

Clark

Koyama Lane I.

With five eyes the accept bid councilor.

Dunphy. Did you want to introduce another amendment?

I got a note from my team about f. So sorry. I'm trying to very quickly read that, but. Sorry. Okay. Dunphy. Amendment two is about clarifying discharge petitions. This adds a tweaks the language at the end of 3.02.020. Dot b dot. It's a ways down there. .1. A .1. E. Specifically it would strike and add language so that section e would read when an item has been assigned to a committee, any four councilors may require in writing that the item be considered by the full council, which has the same effect as a referral to the full council. And if a committee votes not to refer an item to full council, it is deemed inactive and will be placed on file by the council clerk. This is specifically to try and clarify that while we have a discharge petition, if an item is stuck in committee and not being scheduled by the chair, that is a different action than a discharge after a a vote that did not go your way. This is to clarify that if a committee votes on your bill and the committee says no, that you cannot then turn around and refile, or you can refile it, but you couldn't sign a discharge petition for a bill that the committee has deemed not to not not to move forward.

Okay.

Can I so if yeah, if we have an example of something is voted down in finance, but there are four other councilors that really wanted that to go to the full council. They can't bring that item, but they could refile it again and bring it. Right. Okay. So does this also mean that an item wouldn't have to go to committee at all. And four councilors can force it to the full council? Because I have I think that would be good for it to be for that to be clarified, I've heard different councilors having some different opinions there. I think already we're not quite sure if that is.

It wasn't my intention that this is specifically a tool to get something directly on the full council, but rather to clarify the question of whether, say, for example, that this committee votes no on this policy, but then councilor Pirtle-guiney gets three other people to join her and puts it back to life that that wouldn't be allowed under the current plan. That committee voting something down is, in fact, a a final step in that process. And if councilor Pirtle-guiney wanted to refile this document and either move it to the full council or a different committee, that that is a path forward, but rather once, once the committee has taken an action, that action is final.

And I kind of like the idea of four councilors being able to revive or undead or bring to life or something. Yeah. So but this is interesting. Okay. Councilor. Pirtle-guiney.

Thank you. Chair. Council president I am not opposed to the change you're trying to make here and what you're trying to clarify, but I want to talk through, just so I understand on the front end. So I see three possible places where councilors could want to pull something from a committee. Once something has been sent to a committee and before it's scheduled to essentially bypass the committee. Right. I had to send this to a committee. The council president said I had to I want it to go to full council. So I'm going to use this as a tool to do that. I do believe that somewhere in here, we create some deadlines by which a chair has to put something on a committee agenda, so things can't languish forever. The second. So there is a backstop there, but it is a little longer. It does allow things to languish for a little bit. The second period of time would be a chair puts something on an agenda, and then either we run out of time so we don't get to it. The chair pulls it off an agenda. There's a discussion, but there's not a vote. And then it kind of language languishes. Possibly if we pass these changes for 180 days, possibly if we don't pass these changes indefinitely, or if we invoke robert's rules at the two year mark. So that's the second place where I think this is actually really important. And then the third is after something is voted down, which is what you're trying to make sure we're not using this for. I agree with you on that third one. I worry that this creates an opening for the first one where if a chair just hasn't had time to get to something yet, people use this as an excuse to pull everything to full council. And I'd love to offer language if folks are interested in how we could narrow that first part so that this really is focused on a chair, put something on a committee agenda. They've fulfilled their requirement. They have 180 days to put it on a committee agenda, but then they just let it or 90 days, I apologize, 90 days to put it on a committee agenda, but then they just let it languish and they never bring it to a vote. And they're being heavy handed and not letting something come to a vote and narrowing this to be used for that type of situation. So I just.

Yeah.

I put that out there to see what folks think. I did write down some potential language. I'm sorry I didn't see these until this morning, so I couldn't file it 24 hours in advance.

I don't think.

I found where we could narrow the first part, if folks are interested in that.

I'm sorry to interrupt. Can we get a motion to discuss?

Dunphy two. So moved. Second.

Thank you. Colleagues.

Madam chair, for the purposes of helping me, whose brain is kind of mushy right now, could I ask my staff to come up and help me clarify some of the things that I did not say particularly eloquently?

Sure.

Come on up. State your name for the record.

Hi, I'm evan hofer, policy support for councilor Jamie Dunphy. Just to clarify. So we've had some back and forth with the city attorney on on under what circumstances can this four vote rule be invoked and their current what they've expressed to us is that in any of those three situations prior to something being scheduled, if it has been held indefinitely or continued without without a vote, or if it has been voted on and voted down in any of those situations under the current language, councilor Can invoke subsection e here and send something to full council. So that's my understanding of what the current situation is. You can, as councilor Pirtle-guiney said, you can just use four votes and leapfrog council once. A committee once assigned before something has been scheduled. What this this amendment would not change that. What it would say is if something is voted down just on the administrative end, that item would go away and you'd start a new item. If you wanted to send something back to full council, which inside the council world would make things a little simpler. Did I make things easier or harder? I apologize.

Councilor pirtle-guiney is giving you a thumbs up.

I'll stick.

I have a question though. I think you made it easier. But I have a question.

Yes.

So when you say they'd have to restart the clock if you will like. It was voted down so they just couldn't take that and then repurpose it and bring it to get enough like four signatures to bring it to full council. What does that mean? I mean, does it mean they just restarted with new names on it? And they and even though they're keeping all the same language because they still want that to be passed.

Exactly. So you think of it, if any time something was voted down in committee, whether or not there was the anticipation of it being filed, then it would just stay in that committee's inactive queue sort of indefinitely, maybe 180 days, maybe two years, depending on what this body decides. What this change would say is like, okay, once it's voted down, it stops. You can always file a new item with the same content and then reassign it to committee, or come forward with four signatures to send it to full council. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Okay.

But when you first said it, it it you had to ask this question to make sure you understood that, that it could still be the same legislation.

Yes.

It's just being re submitted with new sponsors and coming to the committee as a whole.

Same content, different item. Exactly. So you could refile the same.

Item, not different content of the previous item that failed in a committee.

Correct.

That same item that failed in the committee can be a new item, of course, because we established that with new sponsors. And then it comes to the committee of the whole.

Not necessarily.

To full council. Yes.

This would.

Be reintroduced.

To the full council a second. Yeah. Okay.

Sorry.

Same thing. Yeah.

Evan, is this what the city attorney is saying? This is clarifying his interpretation of how things are now? Or is this is this changing?

This is this is really just responsive to conversations with the with the clerk about what it means for when things are voted down in committee for them to sort of be in an administrative gray space after that, sort of indefinitely. So this really this wouldn't change anything about the current practice, except it would just end that administrative item after that vote and everything, everything else stays the same.

My guess is that this is coming up because in our past, a little over a year, we have maybe our first item that some councilors are thinking about for kind of doing that override. So this is clarifying is the question that you're going to revive something that was dead, or are you making a new one and then just sending it to full council?

Is that right? Exactly. Do you get to continue that thing on to full council, or do you just go back to the beginning and do it a different way?

It's not really dead. You're just cloning. I mean, it's the same item.

You wouldn't want to go back to the same committee because.

They'll cloning it.

The action will be the same.

Okay.

Right. I mean, presumably, yeah.

And we have four more minutes. Anyone else? Is anyone else wanting to discuss Dunphy to councilor Clark, are you in the queue to discuss Dunphy to the clarifying discharge position petition?

Well, I'm. Just I'm not sure where I am on this. Yeah, at this point, but it sounds like it's a scribner's thing. It's like if it dies in committee, the clerk just wants it to go away, not it hangs out there and the clerk wants it to be reintroduced in some other form. Right. Start over again, not have it hanging around.

If ordinance number five gets voted on by this committee, and this committee says no, ordinance five is gone. But if I come tomorrow and I file ordinance number six and it's the exact same language, the process starts again.

But then what happened? Does it go to back to a committee or.

Well.

It would be referred to either as with the earlier thing in here. It said it would be either with a preferred committee by the by the filer, no committee preference or could go to a full council or it could be. And there's further work that still needs to be decided about what items come to a full council versus skipping the committee. And I'd like to make sure we do some work on that to clarify what that pattern is, because I don't want to just bypass committees. But in theory, if I, you know, my new item six comes in and I can send it instead of sending it to governance, I send it to finance for a different conversation. That's a new item with the same language inside of it.

Okay, I'm not sure where I am on that.

There's nothing. Currently, the current rules would allow us to do that same practice.

Yes, but also the current rules are unclear. If in this hypothetical ordinance, if ordinance five could come back to life. And from the clerk's perspective, when a when a committee votes no on something, it goes away. But this would be to discharge or to file a discharge petition means that the clerk's going to have to hold on to every no vote document that we've ever had, and this would just reclarify that you come in anew. And in theory, because this is sort of a gray area, anything that has ever been voted no by this, by any committee or the body could be revived. And that's a pretty obnoxious rule to be allowed to play.

Vice chair. Ryan.

I think I can't figure out what the problem is we're solving with, with the current rules that we have. We could still do that. And I think I know there's a recent vote that went down 3 to 2, and in arts and economy that I just assumed for people on the council would try to bring this to the full council. And so they could already still they could still do that. But what this would do, it's kind of like a housekeeping thing. It would allow that committee to formally know that they did vote it down and it didn't come from them, and that we need this administrative policy, which feels more like an administrative policy to clean that up. Is that what we're talking about right now?

Yes. Okay. Yeah.

If we want to be more explicit. Yeah. If that policy that failed 3 to 2 at arts and economy, the per my preferred way and the council clerk's preferred way would be to have that become a new ordinance with the same subject, even the same language.

It's the same thing.

Yeah. Just we don't want to continue to revive zombies.

Oh, I did get a note earlier that keelan. This is what keelan prefers.

I get it from cleanliness standpoint.

Yeah.

Councilor pirtle-guiney.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney: Councilor Dunphy I mentioned this early on, but I'll just say the language out loud. Would you be open to this saying after an item has been assigned to a committee and placed on an agenda, any four councilors may require in writing that the item be considered by the full council, and then so on to the language that you added, so that. Instead of when after an item has been assigned to a committee and placed on an agenda. Yeah, any four councilors. And what that would do is ensure that a committee has to at least take a bite at something first. You can't just send to a committee in order to have that administrative box checked and then do the poll without trying to work it in committee first, that this is really about something not getting the work and time that it deserves in committee. Would you be open to that as an amendment to your amendment?

I would be open to that. As an amendment to an amendment. Yes.

Okay.

Mcclymont and I did want to clarify that the language that dana gave me was that keelan is supportive. I think I said she prefers I'm not sure what she prefers, but I was told that she is supportive.

She's not here.

Yep.

And so I.

But dana is here.

I don't think this is ready to vote because I get what we're talking about. And I think that we're maybe supposed to have this conversation, but for me to hear from the council clerk would be really helpful.

And we are at 430 if we want to carry this over. I'm certainly comfortable.

I just think we have to make sure that this is really ready to vote on. And I don't feel comfortable voting on this until I hear from the council clerk.

Keelan are you online? I just got a note saying you're here.

Oh.

There she is.

There's a council clerk.

Hi.

It's good to see you.

Can you give us some of your opinion, thoughts, advice about Dunphy to clarifying the discharge petition?

Yeah. Thank you. Chair Koyama Lane aye, Morillo, committee members I, I actually everything that. Councilor Dunphy has said is it reflects what we have talked about. And I think like I understand where councilor Ryan is coming from. And I think the only thing, the only thing I would add is that from our offices perspective, when an item is not referred out of committee to full council, we understand that item to to have died in committee. So we are looking at how we can appropriately disposition that item to reflect that action that the committee has taken. So that's kind of where we're looking at. Once that item gets voted down, we are then going to place it on file as part of that permanent record with our agenda or with our document archive system. And then if there is a desire by one or more councilors to have that item revisited by the body, by either a committee or full council or committee of the whole, that item would then just be filed again as another item to be considered as though it were a brand new item.

Thank you. Keelan councilor Pirtle-guiney. We have a couple more minutes. Diego has confirmed that we could go a couple more minutes, and then we're going to probably carry most the main chunk of this item to the next meeting. But go ahead.

I would like to propose this amendment that I just ran by councilor Dunphy. Chair, I just sent this to you so you can get it to the appropriate people at the in. In the first line of councilor Dunphy's amendment, it currently says when an item has been assigned to a committee, I am proposing an amendment to the amendment that would replace when with the word after and add after the word committee and placed on an agenda so that it would then read after an item has been assigned to a committee and placed on an agenda. Comma, any four councilors may require in writing that the item be considered by the full council, which has the same effect as a referral to the full council. If a committee votes not to refer an item to full council, it is deemed inactive and will be placed on file by the council clerk. This would ensure that committees aren't used as a checkbox stop to actually get things to full council, and that we give a real attempt at doing the work in committee, but allow that escape valve so that if a chair puts something on an agenda to meet that administrative timeline, but isn't allowing true time for debate or for something to come forward to a vote, that that release valve of four councilors is still a an effective tool?

Did you make a motion?

I am moving this amendment. Yes.

Second.

Thank you.

Does anyone in the queue to debate?

Yeah I have a quick question about well so. Correct me if I'm wrong, but do I don't think that committee chairs have a timeline requirement to schedule something for an agenda. I couldn't a committee chair once, I once the once an item is assigned to a committee, the chair has to isn't under the same timeline obligations right as the. Yeah. You hear what I'm saying?

Currently there is no deadline for committees. If we adopt the ordinance before us on page 17 of 21, under 3.02050 rules, we are adding a sub one that says a committee chair or co-chairs must place items that have been referred to their committee on an agenda in a timely manner, not to exceed 90 days, which parallels the language that is applied to the council president for the full council.

Thank you. Councilor Ryan. Yeah.

Thank you, chair, and thank you for allowing this conversation to go on. And thank you, staff, for allowing us to go a little bit over. And I do think it's clear this is going to be brought up hopefully as the first item at the next meeting. I think when we when we spoke with the council clerk. Thank you so much for weighing in. I heard clarity from us about when we vote something down that it's that it's that it's done. And I want to kind of decouple that from then what action do you take then to bring something that that that happened to on. But having them commingled is perhaps where I'm having trouble, because what I heard from her is that their office needs clarity on not allowing things to be voted down, just to sit there forever. And I can appreciate that as a neatnik. So but the next step is something that I think we need more dialog about.

Yeah.

Thank you councilor. Does anyone else in the queue to debate the motion? Okay. Diego, will you please quickly call the roll then?

On what?

On the motion that's on the table that.

The amendment to the amendment, which I proposed in councilor Dunphy seconded. Did you send that language to the clerk and the committee?

Thank you.

I haven't read it. Please.

Read to them.

So councilor Ryan's asking for it to be read. So the first word, instead of when it is now, after an item has been assigned to a committee and then it has been added in and placed on an agenda.

Wait, do we have to do that opposite? Don't we have to? We have to vote on the amendment, my amendment and then amend the amendment.

I think we vote to amend the amendment first and then we vote to adopt.

The amendment. Yeah.

Okay.

Cool. I can take the details and go back up here. Okay.

All right. Will you please call the roll?

Dunphy. I pirtle-guiney. I Ryan.

Is that an I or an I?

Clark.

Okay.

Koyama Lane I and without further objection, we will carry this item over to a further committee meeting. Thank you for everyone's patience. We have more work to do on here. Our. Thank you everyone. Our next meeting is will be Monday, February 23rd. I'll now adjourn this meeting of the governance committee.

Thanks. Kind of.

Like the work.