Here’s the recap (the second writing . . . grrrr, I lost the first verison) of what happened at the Council meeting last night . . . As Mike Verveer noted we started with the “B Team” and it was a bit rocky, but we got it together. The Mayor and the clerk (Tammy Peters) were both late and Tim Bruer was stuck in an airport somewhere, so Mike Verveer, the Council President took the chair and I made the motions from the floor. After we got the roll call down . . . we got things under control.
In the first 15 minutes of the meeting, we dealt with items 1 – 9 and 63 – 127. Then we went back to the public hearings which start at 6:45. We dealt with Neighborhood Conservation Districts (that took two hours), and finished all the alcohol licenses. Then we passed the consent agenda with all items being dispensed with quickly with the outstanding issue of the poll workers and appointing a lobbyist to be a member of the Urban Design Commission. A quick synopsis of the three issues of substance that we discussed are below.
The only other items of note were that it was freezing in the room and the electricity wasn’t working so many alders who count on using their laptops instead of paper had some trouble following along. After the meeting, we adjourned to the Great Dane. We were a little lost without our “cruise director” Tim Bruer but there was quite the crowd again: Rummel, Clear, Rhodes-Conway, Schumacher, Konkel, Clausius, Webber, Gruber, Solomon, Judge, Kerr, Verveer . . . and we were joined by or we joined with City Atty Michael May, Rosemary Lee, Michael Jacob, Dane Guerra (Common Sense Coalition) and Carole Schaeffer (Smart Growth Madison). I hope I didn’t miss anyone.
Anyways, here’s the items of substance from the evening.
NEIGHBORHOOD CONSERVATION DISTRICTS
As predicted, Phil Salkin of the Realtors showed up in support of the Neighborhood Conservation Districts ordinance that they formerly opposed. Downtown Madison Inc did not show up in opposition. Only Smart Growth Madison appeared in opposition and there were several neighborhood folks who showed up in support. Many thanks to everyone for sharing your thoughts with us.
There were several questions of staff and Ald. Compton attempted to make four amendments and all four failed. The discussion was at times ideological, at times just plain silly. There was much cause for laughter and the meeting was a little raucous. Most of the entertainment coming from Ald. Compton during the two hour discussion.
The major votes of the evening were about whether tenants, both commercial and residential, should be allowed to petition their government to create a Neighborhood Conservation District. There was some hysteria about property rights and who the stakeholders in the community were, followed by some discussion about if this really prevents density or not. When all was said and done the motion to prevent tenants from helping to create a Neighborhood Conservation district was shot down. Voting no were Rummel, Schumacher, Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Clear, Gruber, Judge, Kerr, Konkel, Rhodes-Conway. Voting yes were Sanborn, Skidmore, Brandon, Clausius, Cnare, Compton, Palm, Pham–Remmele. Bruer absent.
The next vote was even more preposterous. They wanted to prevent tenants from even being asked what their opinion was. They wanted to prevent tenants from being included in a neighborhood survey and reporting the results to the Council and Plan Commission. That failed on a voice vote.
The final vote on Neighborhood Conservation Districts was 13 to 6, with Tim Bruer being absent. Voting against were Sanborn, Skidmore, Brandon, Clausius, Compton and Pham–Remmelle. Voting for were Rummel, Schumacher, Solomon, Verveer, Webber, Clear, Cnare, Gruber, Judge, Kerr, Konkel, Palm and Rhodes-Conway.
POLL WORKERS AND POLITICAL OPERATIVES
The Zach Brandon ordinance introduced as a result of the Mike Quieto issue that got way blown out of proportion was referred. Zach did his best to try to prevent it from being referred. He asked for reasons why it should be referred. He was apparently under the impression that Tim Gruber and Mike Verveer were referring it just to delay. Tim explained that a constituent of his asked for it to be referred to the Madison Advisory Elections Committee. Mike explained that if it wasn’t introduced at the end of a meeting instead of being printed on the agenda, we might have caught the referral. Zach persisted and so I gave him some reasons to refer including:
- There is a conflict in the wording that makes it unclear if volunteers are included in the ordinance.
- The term “officer and director” isn’t applicable to some of the committees included in this ordinance.
- The ordinance misses several types of groups or individuals that influence elections including Legislative Campaign Committees, Political Groups that are involved in referendums, Recall Committees, Independent Committees and Individuals.
- The ordinance lists 527 s as a way to capture some of the above, but 527s only have to register with the IRS if they spend over $25,000.
- The clerk’s office will spend hours, or possibly weeks, verifying that the 1,000 poll workers are allowed to work for them under the ordinance. This is not required in the law, but they will have to do it because they will be criticized if they don’t and they miss someone.
- There are 338 people registered with the Wisconsin Elections Board that would be considered “political operatives” under this ordinance and not be allowed to be poll workers in the all of most of the City of Madison. There are at least another 100 when you count people registered with the County Clerk and City Clerks office. Then, there is the whole issue of the 527, so this ordinance will likely mean that over 500 people will not be able to be poll workers in the City of Madison.
- People may be registered with a group that has an open account but has not been active for years, but they would still be precluded from serving as a poll worker.
- When you fill out the conduit registration forms, there are no “officers or directors” listed, only an “administrator”. They do, however, list a “sponsoring organization” and it seems that officers and directors of the “sponsoring organization” should be excluded in this case.
- This ordinance does not preclude campaign mangers, chairs of political party elections committees, staff from the Republican and Democratic parties from being poll workers – in fact, about the only people precluded are the treasurer for various committees and the candidate.
In short, this whole so-called “laser point” is not a laser point. It’s take a broad swipe and misses those that most would consider “political operatives.”
After listing all these issues, Zach persisted and said that there still wasn’t enough reason to refer. However, he realized he didn’t have the votes. Eli Judge, who was one of the original signers of the letter, said he had concerns, Marsha Rummel brought up some additional concerns about the definition of an “election employee” and Alders Schumacher and Rhodes-Conway discussed the the perception of a problem and how to make the process more transparent and to allow more public discussion on this issue. Eventually, Zach conceded that it should be referred, but he only wanted the committee to have one month to discuss it. There was no reason given for the rush job and I think it was ridiculous given that we don’t have any elections coming up, but we’ll see what the Elections Committee can do. They meet on June 12th.
LOBBYISTS ON COMMITTEES
After all the discussion about open and clean government and all the accusations being hurled at people, Zach had an objection to me referring an appointment of a real estate third party lobbyist to the Urban Design Committee where she would make decisions on projects that may be in competition with the projects she is hired to be lobbyist for. The Mayor had no objection and it was referred.
Note: I don’t know what I was thinking, there was no way I was going to take a “lunch break” and be able to do this at work . . . sorry, I’ll add links and check grammar/sentence clarity/spelling etc when I get home tonight after my last meetings around 9:00.
