I mentioned the establishment of a Proposition A committee yesterday, so let’s take a closer look at it.
Tensions flared at Houston City Council on Wednesday, as Mayor John Whitmire and council members clashed over the application of a new charter amendment that allows members to add items to council meeting agendas.
Last November, Houston voters passed Proposition A, an amendment that allows any three council members to come together and add an item to a council agenda, marking a sharp shift from the “strong mayor” system that dominated Houston politics for years.
[…]
Since Whitmire has taken office, his administration has created a Proposition A Committee that serves as a platform to review proposals that members want to bring forward.
The city charter does not require a council member to go through the committee in order to add an item to the agenda, but a lack of council feedback on a Wednesday agenda item sparked a heated debate at City Hall about Proposition A and Whitmire’s committee structure.
Council Member Edward Pollard presented an ordinance change that would make it easier for council members to add speed bumps in their neighborhoods. The agenda item was cosigned by Council Members Carolyn Evans-Shabazz, Fred Flickinger, Tarsha Jackson and Tiffany D. Thomas.
Whitmire told council at the start of the discussion that while he supported Proposition A, he thought Pollard could have approached the issue in a way that encouraged feedback from other council members, the public and first responders.
He stressed that he thought the item should go through the Proposition A Committee, and said that council members needed to consider the “unintended consequences” of the items they tried to add.
“I just think it would be better if you allowed a public hearing and let your colleagues that are not familiar with the process that you’re trying to correct play a role,” Whitmire said.
Pollard argued that his approach was in line with what voters approved in November and running proposals through committee was not a necessary step.
“That charter change was not meant for committee hearings,” Pollard said. “It was meant for council members to bring any item that is lawful to the agenda at any designated date. That is what it says.”
A city attorney told the council that while items did not need to be heard by the committee before being placed on the agenda, they were subject to the same rules as other agenda items once they were added. Whitmire argued that was the precise reason he believed the committee was necessary.
Since the speed bump item had not been discussed in committee, Whitmire said it required his office and the city’s legal department to rewrite it so that it was legally compliant.
As noted, this was in yesterday’s post, with a link to a Houston Landing story that covered a lot of this ground. As you know, I was very much a skeptic of this proposition when it was first announced – I thought three was too few Council members to trigger the agenda item, better to have more like six to make it harder to pull shenanigans with it – but over time I came to accept it as a worthwhile idea.
I was also a little skeptical when I first saw that the speed hump proposition had been referred to this committee, which I thought could be its own kind of speed hump, designed to at least slow down these proposed ordinances, if not deter them outright. On further reflection, I thought that was an overreaction – this isn’t the Legislature, I don’t think there are a plethora of ways to bottle up bills in the committee process. That said, it could certainly be a way of altering the initial proposals, perhaps to a form the Council members who brought it forward would find objectionable.
I take the Mayor’s point that the City Attorney should have some ability to review proposed ordinances to ensure they’re legally kosher, and there’s value in taking some time to vet and discuss them before a final vote. Where this will get contentious is if an ordinance put forward via the Prop A mechanism gets truly slow-walked or derailed; it’s not hard to imagine a lawsuit resulting from that. We’ll see how this plays out in practice, but for now I’ll take the Mayor at his word. I’m OK with the existence and use of this committee. And I await the outcome of that speed hump proposal.