By Adam Pagnucco.
Yesterday, I wrote a post calling for the county council to appoint planning board members in open session. In a very positive development, it appears that the council intends to do precisely that.
At its regular meeting yesterday, the council considered a package of proposed rule changes to increase transparency. There was quite a lot of good stuff in here and the council supported much of it. One rule change proposal of special interest came from Council Members Andrew Friedson, Kate Stewart and Dawn Luedtke. Following is its text:
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Rule 3. Appointment process.
(e) Special process for certain Council appointments.
(1) Scope. This subsection (e) applies to: any appointment to the Montgomery County Planning Board; and any Council appointment for which a Councilmember requests the use of the process under this subsection. This subsection does not apply to an Executive appointment.
(2) Nominations. At a Council meeting to consider or make an appointment under this subsection, each Councilmember may nominate an individual who has been interviewed by the County Council for the appointment. If the nomination is seconded, the Clerk must add the nominee to a list of eligible nominees.
(3) Appointments. The Clerk must announce the list of eligible nominees and call the roll of Councilmembers. Each Councilmember may vote in the affirmative to appoint an individual from the list of eligible nominees. If a nominee is selected by a majority of Councilmembers present and voting, the nominee is appointed. If no nominee is selected by a majority, the Council may repeat the nomination process, repeat the vote, or defer the appointment to a subsequent meeting.
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The council unanimously supported this change to their rules of procedure through a straw vote. The final official vote will take place next week.
We will have to see how the rule change is used in practice, and since a new group of planning board members will be appointed soon, we will have that opportunity. But it clearly contemplates an open process of nominations and roll call votes. If that’s how it is used, it will be a big improvement over the closed sessions the council has been using to make these appointments for roughly a decade.
You can view the discussion on this proposal and another proposal on the planning board interview process below.
One rule change that did not have majority support was a proposal by Council Members Will Jawando and Laurie-Anne Sayles on electing the council president and the council vice-president. The existing rules say:
Election of Council officers. The Council elects a Council President, a Council Vice-President, and other officers as the Council desires.
The proposed rules change by Jawando and Sayles stated:
Election of Council officers. The Council elects a Council President, a Council Vice-President, and other officers at the first Council meeting each December or more frequently as the Council desires.
The key here is “or more frequently.” Council officers are customarily elected at the first meeting in December. This would enable them to be elected at any time.
Now here is a confession: I have never understood why council members so badly desire to be president. For the most part, it is a largely ceremonial position. Its main function is to set the full council’s regular agenda (although not its committee agendas) but there is a big caveat: a majority of the council can amend the agenda when they want, which forces the president to play nice. The president also has the power to propose a committee structure at the start of the term, but again, it must be approved by the full council. An additional constraint on the president is that the position applies for one year only and then turns over. So an abusive president risks being abused by a successor. All of this makes the position weak compared to, say, the state senate president and the speaker in Annapolis. Mike Miller and Mike Busch would have laughed at our system.
Nevertheless, competition to be council president is fierce. Every fall, the council members have a behind-the-scenes contest to decide who gets to be council vice-president. Every December, the council elects a new president and vice-president with the working assumption that the new president will almost always be the prior vice-president. That makes the election of vice-president the real contest. And yes, it can be FIERCE. I remember when I worked at the council seeing one member go absolutely ballistic at the mention of another member potentially beating them out for vice-president. It shouldn’t be a big deal but it absolutely is.
The effect of the Jawando/Sayles amendment would be to make the September-November vice-president competition potentially be a year-round thing. Look folks, there is a time for political rivalry and that’s fine, but there is also a time for collaboration and governance. The council members, like all elected officials, need some space to work together when possible and not always be at each other’s throats. Jawando and Sayles appeared to recognize this and agreed to strike the “or more frequently” component of their rules change. This was another positive event.
Enough positivity for now. We will go back to regularly scheduled negativity tomorrow!