The Morning Report
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I have an overflowing inbox of things to write about but I just got news from Carl DeMaio and Donna Frye. They report that their colleagues on the City Council, Sherri Lightner and Marti Emerald have signed on to their plans to gut the powers of the Council President. Yes, remember this?
The foursome have agreed that they each want three reforms to be considered by the City Council. One would be that at least one City Council meeting a month would be held at night — enabling more working people to attend.
That’s not a big deal and I was surprised it didn’t garner any support at the committee level.
But Frye and DeMaio also persuaded Lightner and Emerald, apparently, to support the biggest reform possible: The measure that would ensure that any City Council member can get anything on the docket for consideration as long as he or she gets two others to support it.
This is big and it really would make the City Council president a less powerful person.
And for the third reform, the foursome has also agreed that they want a 45-day limit to be imposed on the time that can go by before the Council President puts one of these items on the docket. In other words, if they get the requisite three council members to support getting something on the docket, Council President Ben Hueso would have 45 days under this plan to do that.
“We’re thrilled,” DeMaio just told me.
“The reforms we’re proposing make it easier for the public to participate in their government,” Frye said.
Here’s the memo announcing the alliance of four. (DeMaio and Frye assured me that they didn’t violate prohibitions on serial meetings in forming the alliance.)
We’ll have more on this. Obviously, there are other perspectives to consider as we found out the last time we discussed this. But make no mistake, this would be a big deal.